What made Lerner so effective?
Aside from his skills as a scientist and in motivating people and running the lab, Aaron had guts and he wasn’t afraid of a fight. The first presentation at Yale of the structure of melatonin was to the department of biochemistry. After Aaron’s talk, the chair stated in the strongest possible terms that the proposed structure of melatonin had to be wrong—if both active groups of the parent molecule, serotonin, were blocked, the structure that Aaron had proposed could not be correct. Aaron, always soft-spoken, graciously but forcefully stood his ground. It was a dramatic moment, but as a medical student working with him I was terrified. Aaron was right.There are also many things I remember about Aaron’s style of administration. A well-organized and tireless worker, he came in after a swim early each morning, usually before anyone else, knowing exactly what needed to be done that day. He knew how he was going to balance the lab work with his clinical and administrative tasks. In five dec
