He had no specific interest in biology at all, but we supported him because metals are omnipresent in biological systems, and it was, and is, important to understand their chemistry. Preclinical studies of a family of related drugs are now under way. Think of a jigsaw puzzle, with each piece a new discovery. When NIH was just beginning its postwar expansion, most of the jigsaw puzzle was blank, and although each new piece linked up to a few others, the picture was barely visible. The area covered by basic research had very few connections to the applied fields of biology and medicine.
Publications are one index, and patents are another.
Both of these measures have limitations, but patents in particular can serve as an indicator of invention and technical change. Intuitively one would expect that an Institute such as the National Institute of General Medical Sciences, which focuses on basic research, would not have a high patent rate. It is because the effort to understand the fundamental nature of biological systems is closely linked to the desire to find applications for the concepts that emerge. It is important to recognize that basic research and the application of the research are inextricably linked. If the basic research is diminished, so will be the applications.