On Monday, one Harvard professor was awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine. But if Victor R. Ambros had not been denied tenure more than three decades earlier, it could have been two.
In 1992, Ambros — then a young professor at Harvard — left the University after eight years after his application for tenure had been denied.
His collaborator and co-laureate Harvard professor Gary B. Ruvkun received tenure and remained at Harvard while Ambros went on to start a new chapter of his career at Dartmouth College and, later, the University of Massachusetts.
After completing his undergraduate and doctoral degrees at MIT in the 1970s, Ambros worked with Ruvkun as postdoctoral researchers in the lab of MIT professor H. Robert Horvitz, who won a Nobel Prize in 2002.
At this time, the pair began to study two genes in the tiny worm “C. elegans,” discovering that the gene encoded a small RNA segment, known as microRNA.
It wasn’t until 2000 — eight years after Ambros had left Harvard — that scientists found microRNAs to be evolutionarily conserved across all species, recognizing their value in both basic science and therapeutic applications.
Ye Duan — a postdoc at Harvard who completed his Ph.D. in Ambros’ lab at UMass — described Ambros and Ruvkun’s discovery as opening up a “whole world of materials.”
Since then, microRNAs have become a vital tool in biology, with two papers from Ambros and Ruvkun in 1993 garnering nearly 150,000 references as of September 2022.
“He made a revolutionary discovery,” said David Baltimore, a former president of the California Institute of Technology and a 1975 Nobel laureate.
“It was a long time coming — his prize — but very, very appropriate,” Baltimore added.
According to former students, apart from being a revolutionary scientist, Ambros has taken an especially hands-on role in mentorship.
Duan recalled the experience of arriving in the U.S. for his Ph.D. as a non-native English speaker. Ambros spent time personally mentoring Duan in how to write and give presentations in English, which Duan said proved “very helpful.”
Duan said Ambros also taught him how to believe in himself as a scientist.
“You have to learn how to survive in such a solitude,” Duan said, while believing that “my work is rigorous and my vision is true.”
Some students also pointed to Ambros’ intellectual interests as a source of inspiration.
“Victor is just an intensely curious person, and that curiosity is infectious,” said H. Scott Silverman, who worked in Ambros’s lab as an undergraduate at Dartmouth.
“You can’t help but just be really curious around him because he’s always asking interesting questions and being provoking,” Silverman added.
Unlike many primary investigators who step away from lab work to focus on the administrative and funding concerns of running a laboratory, Duan and Silverman pointed to Ambros’ uniquely close relationship with research at Dartmouth and UMass.
“Victor is not a very typical PI because he has his own bench,” Duan said. “He wants to stay closer to the science.”
Per Silverman, Ambros would work “side by side with all the other people who were actively doing the same.”
Though the weight of Ambros’ work was not appreciated until decades after his departure from Harvard, some colleagues and students speculate that additional factors may have contributed to the University’s denial of Ambros’ tenure application.
“The denial of tenure was consistent with Harvard’s hiring junior faculty and then not giving them tenure,” Baltimore said. The fate of junior faculty at the University, he said, was to teach and conduct research — but ultimately be replaced by new junior faculty before they could rise through the ranks.
“It just underlines the foolishness of that approach to building a great department,” Baltimore said.
A spokesperson for Harvard declined to comment on Ambros’s case, citing a policy against discussing individual tenure cases. A University of Massachusetts Medical School spokesperson declined an interview request on Ambros’ behalf.
Silverman said Ambros may have been denied tenure because he clashed with the culture of science at Harvard.
For Ambros, collaboration is in “his DNA,” he said. “He’s fundamental to it, and it’s what’s created his success.”
But at the time Ambros was working at the University, some of the personalities may not have been “compatible” with Ambros’ “highly collaborative” nature, per Silverman, resulting in the failure of his bid for tenure.
Silverman also speculated that other professors at Harvard may have been intimidated by Ambros’ intellect.
“In academia, you’re compensated based on the respect and admiration of your peers,” Silverman said. “That’s a direct quote from Victor.”
“You can imagine that a very brilliant young aspiring scientist might be intimidating to other folks,” Silverman added.
—Staff writer Veronica H. Paulus can be reached at veronica.paulus@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @VeronicaHPaulus.
—Staff writer Akshaya Ravi can be reached at akshaya.ravi@thecrimson.com. Follow her on X @akshayaravi22.