Eric Schadt - själv-utnämnd biologi-revolutionär

And because when you ask him his grandest aim, his most cherished ambition, what he really wants to be, he answers, without hesitation, is a \"master of information.\"

Eric Schadt's the biggest thinker in biology, but meeting him sometimes feels like meeting Einstein and finding out that what he really liked about physics was the parties, like meeting Niels Bohr and having to look at his autograph collection.

\"When I was interviewing for that job, the head of the company's research department said, 'You're either completely full of shit or the smartest person on earth. We're not smart enough to know. But we're willing to bet that you're the smartest person on earth.' \"

What he said, in Eric's recollection: \"You are of the devil. Leave and never come back.\" Eric's answer, of course, was to do the hardest thing he could think of doing, even after his mother called a year and a half later and invited him back into the fold. He went to UC Davis to get a doctorate in pure math.

A paradigm shift requires not only scientists practicing extraordinary science; it requires \"attackers\" and \"persuaders\" willing to declaim the end of the old order and announce the dawn of the new. Schadt has turned out to be both. He's very aware that biology is in the middle of a paradigm shift and very aware of his role in both the murder of molecular biology -- the king is dead! -- and the establishment of its successor.

He likes to do his supercomputing on planes now, because that's the one place where he's alone. [...] On cross-country flights he tells Amazon what data to crunch after takeoff, and for a few hundred bucks the job's done by the time he lands.