Great Throughts Treasury

This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.

Mahlon Hoagland

American Biochemist, discovered transfer RNA (tRNA), the translator of the genetic code

"It is often the scientist’s experience that he senses the nearness of truth when... connections are envisioned. A connection is a step toward simplification, unification. Simplicity is indeed often the sign of truth and a criterion of beauty."

"As children we all possess a natural, uninhibited curiosity, a hunger for explanation, which seems to die slowly as we age - suppressed, I suppose, by the high value we place on conformity and by the need not to appear ignorant. It betokens a conviction that somehow science is innately incomprehensible. It precludes reaching deeper, thereby denying the profound truth that understanding enriches experience, that explanation vastly enhances beauty of the natural world in the eye of the beholder."

"Simplicity is indeed often the sign of truth and a criterion of beauty."

"Life builds from the bottom up. Life assembles itself into chains. Life needs an inside and an outside. Life uses a few themes to generate many variations. Life organizes with information Life encourages variety by reshuffling information Life creates with mistakes Life occurs in water. Life runs on sugar Life works in cycles. Life recycles everything it uses. Life maintains itself by turnover. Life tends to optimize rather than maximize. Life is opportunistic. Life competes within a cooperative framework. Life is interconnected and interdependent."