He has that special imagination and view of the world that makes a great scientist. Part of that skill is to choose the right problem and not to be put off by side issues. He also likes to work in the middle of the night. This led him to take a course in the genetics of viruses that infect bacteria and he was instantly converted to biology, specifically to genetics. The modern theory of the gene comes from Thomas Hunt Morgan's study of the fruit fly Drosophila a hundred years ago.
Most fruit flies have red eyes but occasionally some appear with white ones.
Shortly after Benzer entered biology, James D. Watson and Francis Crick discovered the double helix of DNA, and what was needed was to connect their studies with the classical maps of the genes started by Morgan. In 1963 Benzer began thinking and reading about the inheritance of behavior. Genes were to be his foundation stones. He spent some time in the laboratory of Roger Sperry, famous for his work on the split brain and for discovering how neurons find their way from the eye to the right location in the brain during its development. To study the kind of animal instincts that most biologists investigate in the wild, Benzer gathered fruit flies.