title: The Independence of the Junior Scientist's Mind: At What Price?
abstract: When I was facing the daunting task of recounting my approximately 70 years of scientific career and some aspects of my personal life, I decided to write this autobiographical piece in a "different" way. After a section on the almost bare facts of my life (Section 1), I include several other parts, loosely connected in time, in each of which I make an almost self-contained point, decreasing in this way the need for consistency and coherence in the whole article. I discuss, for example, the importance of original ideas, the independence of junior colleagues, and my work with molecular beams and in nanomedicine. I end by acknowledging those I was lucky enough to learn from in my intellectual development as a research scientist and with a couple of recommendations that may be useful to my junior and not-so-junior colleagues.
authors.affiliation: Dipartimento di Scienze Mediche e Biologiche, Università degli Studi di Udine, 33100 Udine, Italy; email: gscoles@princeton.edu.
authors.forename: Giacinto
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Scoles
keywords: Autobiography; bolometer; interdisciplinary research; intermolecular forces; molecular beams; project teaching