Shi Yigong: The Least Important Quality Is Your IQ

This is a speech by Professor Shi Yigong. It is wonderfully delivered; I transcribe it in full here to encourage myself.

The full text follows: Good morning, everyone. It is a great pleasure to share some of my thoughts with the graduate students here. In the past I used to spend a very long time on this section, but today it takes up only one slide. The title I use today is the one I used five years ago when I shared my experience with the graduate students who entered in 2010: "A Young Man's Lofty Ambitions Know No Sorrow." It is the theme song of a television series and also the song I most love to sing.

My Road of Growth

In the past I used to spend a very long time on this section, but today it takes up only one slide. Some of you here may not yet have figured out what you want to do in the future and may feel anxious: what if I am not interested in research and have not decided on my future path?

What I actually want to say is that when I was your age, more than twenty years ago, I had not figured it out either and was just as lost. That confusion lasted until 1995, when, after finishing my postdoctoral work, I finally began dimly to know what I wanted to do and made up my mind.

My confusion then came from many directions, including choosing a major in college. Unlike some of you, who knew what you wanted to study the moment you entered—economics and management, architecture, life sciences, chemistry, engineering, and so on—I was admitted through guaranteed recommendation. The first major I applied to at Tsinghua was, perhaps surprisingly, the Department of Mechanical Engineering (applause).

Before applying to mechanical engineering I had also applied to the physics department of Peking University. It was not until May 1985, when a Tsinghua recruiter came and told me that biochemistry was "the science of the twenty-first century" (applause), that I connected biology and chemistry for the first time. Suddenly everything clicked—so biochemistry was the science of the twenty-first century! And so, by a twist of fate, I boarded the ship of life sciences. I had been the top scorer in the mathematics competition in Henan Province and was recommended to Tsinghua, so my mathematical and physical abilities were strong.

Those of you here who are good at math and physics may have the same knotty problem: being strong in math and physics often means being weak in biology and chemistry.

I once told students who excelled in biology competitions, "Never feel inferior." People who win math and physics competitions have a kind of cleverness, while people who win biology competitions have great wisdom. This claim is controversial, and much of what I say today may be controversial.

Studying math and physics emphasizes rigorous thinking and reasoning, while biology is different—these happen in different brain regions. I did poorly in biology at Tsinghua, so I pursued a double major in mathematics, compensating for my weak biology grades by strengthening my math and physics coursework until my grades ranked first.

So you see, I chose my major neither by interest (first) nor by specialty (second), but by a single sentence from a Tsinghua teacher. Of course, that is a joke.

Then what should choosing a major be based on? I tell my students: on the needs of the future world. The development of this world does not turn on the will of any single person here, nor on media propaganda, nor on whether you can find a job after graduation.

In the development of this world, more than half of all academic questions arise from concern for human beings—this is called life sciences. Regardless of domestic employment or the state of other disciplines, the broad life sciences are the biggest disciplines in the twenty-first century.

You can look it up: what is the largest discipline at MIT, Stanford, or Harvard? I think when you choose a major, choosing by interest is fine, and if you have no interest, you can cultivate one. Sometimes I think: people are fickle, other aspects of your life can change, so why can't your major change?

A hobby you love may bore you if you do it every day. I think doing something entirely on the basis of interest is, for me, unreliable. During college I truly loathed biology because I couldn't learn it well. My genetics lab, genetics course, cytology lab, and cell course were all in the lower-middle of the class.

Having covered my undergraduate years, let me talk about doing my PhD abroad. I graduated from Tsinghua a year early, in 1989. At that time I had no interest in academia; I was interested in going into politics. Some of you may know that my father's death had a great influence on me.

I believed that going into politics could change a society and let one speak and act on behalf of ordinary people. I wanted to go into politics, but I had no way in, so I thought I should first go into business. I signed an agreement with Tsinghua University Science & Technology Wholesale Corporation to represent the company in business in Hong Kong, doing public relations (laughter).

You can hardly imagine it? Looking at Teacher Shi, who is quite articulate, public relations should suit him well. When I was young I was far more capable than I am now, but the employment contract was torn up for reasons beyond my control. After a night of agonizing on July 24, 1989, I decided to take the TOEFL and GRE and go abroad.

In the heart of the young, cocky Shi Yigong, going abroad was not really a path. In the end I decided to go abroad to study for a PhD in biology.

The five years of my PhD at Hopkins were hard, especially the first two years when my emotions were very unstable. Because my mathematical and physical thinking was so rigid, I often couldn't get out of that loop and kept feeling that biology was impossibly hard. In one biology course I took three exams and scored 52, 32, and 22; only the first was a pass. I went to beg the teacher to let me off: "I am a good student and I am still adjusting to studying biology. If I fail, I will lose my scholarship, and without a scholarship I cannot continue and will have to drop out."

He peered at me through his glasses for a long time, as if checking whether I really was a good student (laughter). In the end he gave me a B-, and I am truly very grateful to him.

When I was an assistant professor at Princeton and first went back to Hopkins to lecture, I visited that professor. I asked, "Do you remember when I begged you to pass me?" He said, "How could I possibly forget?"

In fact, because I had not settled on a major, I was deeply torn for the first two years of my PhD. Normally I was full of energy, but the moment I read a paper I fell asleep; at seminars I would doze off after ten minutes and wake up the moment everyone applauded, just in time to leave together.

Many of you here may be the same. It was not until my third year of PhD that I began to get a feel for it and discovered I could actually do something; by my fourth year my confidence had grown because results were coming out; by my graduation year, the fifth year, I felt that I could indeed "make a living" in academia.

After finishing my PhD, I did not know what I could do or what I was good at. At my most struggling I considered transferring—to the math department, the computer science department, the economics and management department. Transferring to any of them felt easy, because those are places where I could use my math and physics strengths. But I did not transfer. I was persuading myself that perhaps staying put was the best way to respond to change.

If I hurriedly transferred, perhaps after arriving I would find that math, physics, or economics was even less interesting. So I was persuading myself that maybe life sciences really were the science of the twenty-first century. It was a kind of moving forward amid contradiction. After my PhD defense on April 12, 1995, I still did not know what I would do.

I never forgot that at Tsinghua I had been an active member—a vice president of the small inventions association—and had taken part in many extracurricular activities, doing public relations. So I thought perhaps I could go into business. I even interviewed for the position of chief representative of MetLife in China, selling insurance, and I got the offer.

I almost became the first person in China to sell insurance, with a six-figure salary. After my PhD I also set up my own company, doing trade and exchange between China and the United States with two buddies; that experience was interesting too.

In November 1995 I made up my mind to take the academic path; it has been less than twenty years now. In December 1995 I wrote in my diary: "The chances you should have explored, you have now explored; now it is your turn to settle down, never again to harbor a divided heart, and to do scholarship well." That is exactly what I did.

So from November 1995 until now I have put all my major energy into doing research, and I told myself that this interest could certainly be cultivated. If any student here feels no interest in their field, I tell you, you cannot compare with me. I only began to cultivate my interest half a year after finishing my PhD; now my interest is extremely deep, to the point where I can forget sleep and meals, work day and night, and take joy in it.

I think interest can be cultivated; it is not something you are born with, and it is not that you suddenly take an interest in something after a lecture. I don't think it works that way at all.

To outsiders my postdoctoral years looked extremely bitter, but immersed in them I did not feel it; I often felt that if I did not do it this way, I would be losing out. That is truly how I felt. From November 1995 to April 1997 I spent a year and a half as a postdoc and landed my first job, an assistant professorship at Princeton.

I was quite lucky. Princeton is not like Harvard, with many schools—medical school, law school, and so on—but only a main university and a school of international relations. It is small. I consider Princeton a sacred place of scholarship. That is why, when facing invitations from MIT, Caltech, and many other American universities, Einstein chose Princeton without hesitation; those who have been there may feel it.

I feel I was lucky to begin my independent research career at Princeton in April 1997. I was once very confused about my field and my research and took many detours, but I think I made it through. I also advise the students here: when you are confused, I suggest you not think that you can take the next step only after you have resolved all your confusion and problems; I strongly disagree with that.

One thing I do believe: do not give yourself excuses. When you feel insufficient interest, lack firm confidence, face family troubles, need to overcome psychological scars, or move forward through pain—whatever arises in family, personal life, or hobbies—you should go all out, handle your life well, and move forward. Do not give yourself excuses. Because once you fall behind, your mindset changes and it is very hard to set it right again.

File photo of Shi Yigong

Know Yourself

Students may think teachers are confident. I want to tell you that the inferiority I felt when I was studying is now gone, though occasionally I still feel a sense of insecurity. But throughout my schooling—from elementary school to middle school, college, and PhD—I was a very inferior person.

It may be hard to imagine. For example, in high school when our chemistry teacher explained Le Chatelier's principle, I was daydreaming and didn't understand. Later, when I read the book, I still couldn't understand it and felt devastated. I always felt that the other students in my class were smarter than I was; I truly felt inferior.

Look around you. When others are about as smart as you are, you feel they are smarter. So when you feel someone is smarter than you, he may not actually be; don't feel too inferior.

At the same time, another trait of mine is competitiveness. Many of you here are probably like me: without competitiveness and self-reliance it would be hard to get where you are today. But people who are especially competitive and self-reliant are also more easily struck down and more prone to inferiority.

Since high school I have always felt I was not smart, so I always worked extremely hard, feeling I was the slow bird that must fly first. For example, I was competitive about everything. At the Tsinghua physical exam I was not tall and couldn't stand on tiptoe; so when measuring sitting height I arched upward as hard as I could. As a result, though my standing height was not even in the top five of my class, my sitting height ranked first.

At the time I didn't figure it out and was quite smug—finally I had a first place. It was not until a classmate pointed it out that inferiority suddenly welled up. I asked my coach, "Teacher Sun, are my legs short?"

Teacher Sun's answer was very artful: "Yigong, you train very hard (laughter); given your physical condition, achieving what you have today has not been easy."

No one in my family had ever been an athlete except me. My brother and sister, my parents, were not athletes; I was a second-class athlete. It is rather interesting—it may be related to my personality: inferiority and confidence, competitiveness, went hand in hand.

When I was in ninth grade, my homeroom teacher encouraged me to sign up for the 1500 meters. I had just written my application to join the Communist Youth League, and the teacher said, "The time to prove yourself has come (laughter); the organization is testing you." So I signed up for the 1500. I signed up four days before the sports meet; the night I signed up I was so excited that my thigh cramped and I couldn't move my leg, only recovering by the day of the race.

The moment the starting gun fired I led by a full 100 meters, and in the end I was lapped by the second-to-last runner by a full 300 meters (laughter). I ran across the finish line to the cheers of the whole school and my class. Ninth-grade Shi Yigong loved nothing more than saving face; at the peak of puberty, when saving face mattered most, I lost face in front of my classmates, and my pride was wounded.

But I was very competitive. The day after the sports meet I began to train running. A year later I ran the 800 meters in 2:17 and the 3000 meters in 10:35. Coach Sun put me on the school team as a first-string member, representing Tsinghua in competitions. Actually, I think that in many cases your personality determines your future. I was very inferior, but I was also very competitive.

Qualities I Think Graduate Students Should Have

First, let me say what does not matter: the least important quality is your IQ. Regardless of discipline—physics, engineering, biology, the humanities—I believe the least important is IQ.

The Investment of Time

Do not think you can get by with clever tricks; there is no free dinner in this world, and this is an age-old truth. So sometimes I resent it when people say my success was entirely due to opportunity; that must be nonsense.

Of course, people usually say this out of modesty today, but this kind of modesty misleads many students. I don't believe any successful scientist has not made enormous sacrifices. Old Professor Pu, who was head of Tsinghua's biology department from 1984 to 1986, had already become a renowned tenured chair professor in the United States.

In his lab meetings there he taught his students: "In my academic career, my greatest trick is working hard, more than sixty hours a week. I know you cannot work as hard as I do, but I require you to work more than fifty hours a week, which means, if it is eight hours a day, you must work more than six days."

Do not think you can arrive at eight in the morning, potter around doing experiments, and leave at eight in the evening. He counts only the time you actually spend doing experiments and the time you actually spend looking up the simple literature related to your experiments.

Even your mealtime and the hour you relax after reading the literature must be excluded. Fifty hours a week is a very large workload. If you can do it, you meet my requirement and may stay in the lab; if you cannot, leave the lab.

What old Pu said is the plain truth, the words of a truly conscientious scientist. I want to use this example to tell you: anyone who does not invest time will never succeed.

Changing Your Methodology

My postdoctoral advisor was an original scientist, only a year and a half older than I, very young. Over the decade starting in the early 1990s, as corresponding author, he produced thirty papers in Nature and Science from his lab—one of the very best in the world.

When I entered his lab I was full of hope to learn from him, hoping to learn his methodology, his way of thinking, and his critical thinking. But what happened next left me deeply torn and made me realize how true critical thinking and true methodology should be formed. The examples I give are all extreme; I hope you will not simply accept them but think about them, because they may not apply to your own field.

For example: science teachers tell you to read widely, to have broad knowledge, to know where modern science has reached, to read broadly, and so on. In fact, when I was a PhD student at Hopkins, my teachers said the same thing—read Nature, read Science, read a few journals—and I did just that.

After arriving in his lab, I felt a strong desire to perform and wanted my advisor to know that I intended to become a professor. How could I show him I was capable and insightful? When the next Nature came out, I would read it carefully, and only after I had formed deep opinions would I go discuss it with him, so that I would look insightful.

So once, when Nature published a frontier paper in our field, I went to my advisor, but he said, "I haven't read this paper yet; let me read it and then we'll talk." I thought he must have been busy lately and hadn't had time. I was a bit utilitarian then and wondered if I had read so carefully for nothing? (laughter)

A month later I read another paper, already published for nearly a month, also an extremely important paper in our field. I again wanted to discuss it with him, and his face flushed as he said, "I haven't read this paper yet." (laughter) I began to wonder: does he not read papers at all? (laughter) I didn't dare ask.

By the second half of 1996, a famous Nobel laureate visited and invited my advisor to a one-hour one-on-one academic exchange. My advisor had his secretary reply that he happened to be away on a business trip that day. But on the day of the lecture, my advisor arrived very early, shut himself in his office, solved structures, examined structures, analyzed structures, and wrote papers.

I was very puzzled. By Chinese custom, when such a person comes, why wouldn't you go "build a connection"? Why wouldn't you go make a showing? So I asked my advisor, when someone like this visits, why wouldn't you exchange ideas with him? His answer was very simple: "I have no time."

Anything can be regenerated; time cannot. I boldly asked him: "Do you have time to read papers?" (laughter) He said, "I don't read papers." I want to tell you all: when you are doing a PhD you should read papers, but now I no longer read so many; I rely more on conferences, phone calls, and face-to-face, on-site exchange.

I then asked: if you don't read papers, how do you cultivate scientific literacy? He said: cultivating scientific literacy has nothing to do with reading the latest papers. Cultivating scientific methodology has to do with the history of science and with the data sources of major discoveries; it has nothing to do with the knowledge at the very frontier.

The frontier of scientific knowledge only lets you know, when you do research, where you stand in your field, whether you are at the scientific frontier, whether you are doing what others have already done—that is all. So good graduate courses are not necessarily the ones that tell you the very latest content.

During my time at Princeton, the most interesting course was "Humans and Heredity," whose last paper was from the early 1990s, telling the whole history and process of humans and heredity and how some key discoveries came about.

The very latest discoveries are directly relevant only to your own field when you do research; they really have nothing to do with cultivating your methodology. I asked my advisor: "Then how do you write papers?" He said: "When I write a paper, I read some papers." He was very honest. I hope you will ask why, and not simply accept things that have become routine; you need to challenge the past and have critical thinking. During my two postdoctoral years I gained enormously: I learned how to truly overcome difficulties in the lab.

Building Critical Thinking

Besides changing your methodology, this includes challenging academic authority. My PhD advisor was already a full professor and department head at the age of thirty-three. He imagined the structure of the zinc finger while driving—the first major structure in human history to be imagined in the mind.

He thought even in his dreams at night; every day was filled with thought. I was in my third year of PhD and was very afraid of him. He was 1.93 meters and 100 kilograms, immensely strong. Once, when we couldn't unscrew the lid of an ultracentrifuge, he simply twisted the rotor shaft off. He often said, "Doubt is the driving force of scientific discovery."

One day at a lab meeting he looked especially excited and said, "Today I'll demonstrate an idea to you; I hope you'll help me look at it and point out any problems." He began to draw a rectangle, with a divider in the middle—oxygen on the left, nitrogen on the right. Looking at the diagram and equations, I thought he wanted to prove the second law of thermodynamics, the process of entropy increase. He wrote equations, and after a blackboard full of derivation, step by step he proved that the second law of thermodynamics was wrong. We were all stunned.

But when I was in college, the best course I took was physical chemistry, taught by Teacher Zhu Wentao. Teacher Zhu had an extremely solid theoretical foundation and was very serious when he taught us. So I found three errors in the equations he had written.

At the time I did not dare raise it, but then I thought, well, even he can be wrong. Trembling, I raised my hand and said, "I'd like to point out the first error." The senior student across from me said, "Where is the error? Ah! Where is the error?" I finished trembling, and all the other students said I was wrong, but the junior boss in our lab said, "I think Yigong makes a good point."

Actually, I noticed that the moment I said my first sentence, Jeremy M. Berg's face turned red. Our lab was arguing; the boss said, "Lab meeting ends here today." Everyone thought I had defied the teacher and no one spoke to me; at noon I ate alone.

At one in the afternoon the boss found me and asked which university I had attended for my bachelor's. I said Tsinghua University, the best university in our country. He said, "I don't care which university you come from; I care that you learned it extremely well. Your teacher must have been a great master."

My undergraduate teacher had a deep theoretical foundation and explained things thoroughly. After that, colleagues at our institute would greet me on their own initiative, and this gradually gave me confidence.

When I found a position, they all said to me, "Congratulations!" That experience of openly summoning the courage to use what I had learned to correct the academic error of my department head and lab advisor gave me unlimited confidence on my research path and still has a great influence on me today.

I hope our students will set their sights high while keeping their feet on the ground. I have written some blog posts on my Science Net Weibo about how graduate students can improve their writing and reading. Always remember: if you believe you can, you surely can. And also remember: never be complacent!

I think research is a way of life. It lets me think about and solve scientific problems free of care. But we must also bear certain social responsibilities; our research should repay society and contribute to humanity.

In closing, I wish you all the resolve to keep walking down the road of scientific research.