As the professor sat in his office on the second floor of the Helen Vera Prentis Lande Building, he expressed surprise and more than a little embarrassment that anyone was interested in the continuous funding. After all, he said, other faculty members have received funding over a period of years. Dr. Brooks' first grant came in 1964, six years after he received his doctoral degree, when he was working at the Detroit Institute of Cancer Research, the predecessor to the Michigan Cancer Foundation. He and Dr. Horwitz are still collaborators and close friends. After the first grant, the others came steadily but not always as expected.
Serendipity is a big part of research.
You never know where you're going to go. You can't have all your eggs in one basket. I'd have two at least, so if one didn't make it, the other one did. Often was the time that I would have two grant proposals, and I'd think one was really great and the other was just research that I had to do anyway, but I wouldn't get the first, I'd get the second. You have to be flexible.