Ted Geballe, a friend and distinguished colleague of mine at Stanford, who also went from Berkeley to Bell Labs to Stanford years earlier, described our motives best:
“The best part of working at a university is the students. Theye in fresh, enthusiastic, open to ideas, unscarred by the battles of life. They don’t realize it, but they’re the recipients of the best our society can offer. If a mind is ever free to be creative, that’s the time. Theye in believing textbooks are authoritative, but eventually they figure out that textbooks and professors don’t know everything, and then they start to think on their own. Then, I begin learning from them.”
My students, postdoctoral fellows, and the young researchers who worked with me at Bell Labs, Stanford, and Berkeley have been extraordinary. Over 30 former group members are now professors, many at the best research institutions in the world, including Harvard. I have learned much from them. Even now, in rare moments on weekends, the remaining members of my biophysics group meet with me in the ether world of cyberspace.