00:42
Craig Venter Highlight
I've never been influenced that much by other people's comments or goals; I work hard to make up my own mind with as much information as I can get.
About Craig
- Got in trouble in elementary school for refusing to take spelling tests; was about half of a grade away from not graduating high school.
- Originally didn't like school, says it was unrewarding, but he needed to support himself.
- Worked nights at Sears so that he could surf all day.
- After returning from his deployment to Vietnam, decided to go back to school to study biology, pharmacology, and physiology.
- Eventually got his Ph.D. and went to work with the National Institutes of Health.
- Started his own biomedical companies; in 1998, one of these companies decoded the genome of a fruit fly.
- Three years later, he and his team had decoded and sequenced the entire human genome.
- Says before you make career decisions, decide what you want to accomplish in life, then build your path.