Yolanda O’Bannon taped this conversation with Dr. Bruce Alberts in his University of California, San Francisco office in April 2010.

Dr. Bruce Alberts is my boss. He also happens to be a United States Science Envoy to Indonesia and Pakistan, the Editor-in-Chief of Science magazine, professor emeritus at the University of California, San Francisco, and the former president of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences. Bruce has dedicated his long, illustrious career to promoting science education in the United States, and abroad, and to building greater international scientific cooperation. Committed in his international work to the promotion of the “creativity, openness and tolerance that are inherent to science,” he believes that “scientists all around the world must now band together to help create more rational, scientifically-based societies that find dogmatism intolerable.” Bruce is not only successful, but also a remarkably wise and inspiring human being. So I asked him if he would talk on tape with me about an experience I've heard him discuss in lectures, a spectacular failure that had a lasting positive impact on his life. It's important to hear this kind of story, I believe, from the life of someone who is so successful in so many areas of his life. (In photo: Bruce Alberts with Indonesian President Yudhoyono on May 9, 2010.)