William G. Kaelin: “There are no shortcuts as far as I’m concerned.”

William Kaelin likes solving interesting puzzles. A physician scientist, like his fellow Laureates Peter Ratcliffe and Gregg Semenza, he sought to understand the basis of phenomena he observed in patients. “Our story,” he says, “Is really one of trying to generate knowledge and understand how things work.”

He is speaking with Adam Smith by telephone, early on the morning of October 7th, having just heard the news that he has been awarded the 2019 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.