Nobel Prize Conversations

“The best thing was to come up with the experiment itself”

In this podcast episode, conducted in May 2022, Ardem Patapoutian tells us about his shock and happiness after receiving the Nobel Prize, or as he puts it: “All of us in science know that the Nobel Prize is a big deal but I really didn’t anticipate it to be this big of a deal.”

Patapoutian also shares his life story immigrating to the US from war-wrecked Lebanon as a young boy. He speaks about his beautiful home country and its excellent food and warm people and the new life in the US and his university experience at UCLA. Patapoutian tells us that he quickly fell in love with the idea of doing science: “The best thing was not to see if the experiment worked, the best thing was to come up with the experiment itself.”

He also shares a strong and valuable message: “We all take things for granted, whether it is our jobs, our schools, our parents, our family and the best thing to not take anything for granted is to let go off it a little and then you realise how much something means to you.”

The host of this podcast is nobelprize.org’s Adam Smith.

Nobel Prize Conversations was produced in cooperation with Fundación Ramón Areces.