I'm Alan Alder and this is Clear In Vivid, conversations about connecting and communicating.

In that class, four of us went on to one of the Nobel Prize and one who didn't was Tony

Fauci, he was another colleague.

We all knew each other then and you know when I look back on it, who would have been

dreamed of such a thing.

So the question is what, how did that happen?

That's Nobel Prize winner Robert Lefkowitz.

He won the Nobel Prize for figuring out how receptors on the surface of our cells can be

targeted by drugs.

But he got his start as a researcher as a member of an extraordinary group of young physicians

who worked at the National Institutes of Health as a means of fulfilling their draft obligations

during the Vietnam War.

This conversation is an edited version of a long talk I had with Bob and some of his colleagues

for an audible.com podcast called Soldiers of Science.

In a moment we'll get to how the work of that group of researchers helps save millions

of lives.

But first, here's a typical Bob Lefkowitz anecdote that not only speaks to his approach

to science, but also his love of a good story.

I remember the date, October 10th, 2012.

I was at a press conference because I had received word that morning that I had won the Nobel

Prize.

And one of the question has said, I see you're a native New Yorker.

...