The failed job interview

Some time ago, after I had made the coolest (ever) measurement of the gravitational constant, I shopped around for a new job. A very nice friend of mine had put me on the short list for a professorship high up in the Rocky Mountains. A week before I went I bothered to read the actual job posting and it stated in its last line “...and we are really interested in hiring in biophysics.” My jaw dropped. I really was not a biophysicist (at the time), but I also did not want to give up. I had heard about people working on little holes through which they drag DNA in an attempt to sequence the DNA and so I had the audacity to tell the Rocky Mountains folks that I would research the secrets of the universe with gravity and also develop nanopore sequencing. And so I gave two talks, one in which I exactly knew what I am talking about and the other one in which I was naïve as can be. They put me through the ringer with biochemists in the room. Needless-to-say I did not get the job, but back in Seattle I mentioned this to a graduate student who felt that the nanopore idea sounded intriguing, and so we tried it out....