Life is full of surprises and you never know how things will turn out. Sir John Gurdon is a good example of this. As a boy, he was told that he was hopeless at Science and was at the bottom of his class. Later, aged 79, the very same Gurdon shared the 2012 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Japanese stem cell (干细胞) researcher Shinya Yamanaka.
Like so many scientists, Gurdon shows us where the power of curiosity and perseverance can lead to.
At the age of 15 in 1948, Gurdon ranked last out the 250 boys at his high school in Biology. Gurdon's high school science teacher even said that his dream of becoming a scientist was "quite ridiculous. "
In spite of his teacher's criticisms, Gurdon followed his curiosity and kept working hard. He went to the lab earlier and left later than anyone else. He experienced thousands of failures.
"My own belief is that we will, in the end, understand everything about how cells actually work," Gurdon said. In the 1960s, Gurdon took a cell from an adult frog and moved its genetic information into an egg cell. The egg cell then grew into a clone (克隆) of the adult frog．This technique later helped to create the sheep Dolly in 1996，the first cloned mammal (哺乳动物) in the world.
In 2006, Gurdon's work was developed by Yamanaka to show that a sample of a person's skin can be used to create stem cells. Using the technique, doctors can repair a patient's heart after a heart attack.
"Luck favours the prepared mind," Gurdon told the Noble Prize Organization. "Ninety percent of the time things don't work, but when they do, you have to seize (抓住) the chance. "
