Robert Lefkowitz: In 1968, when I went to the NIH, there was no receptor biology. And in fact, there was no consensus that these receptor molecules even existed. But my two mentors there thought they might, and I was given the project of trying to develop techniques to study a particular kind of receptor for a hormone. And I didn’t realize just how challenging — since I had no perspective — I didn’t realize just how challenging and daunting that assignment was. Nobody had ever done anything like that. And, as I said, for 18 months, I flailed and failed. But I did eventually meet with a modicum of success, and started to like it and saw the value in studying receptors. I could see a vision of where that might go, although in retrospect, I had no idea just how far it could go. So when I set up my own laboratory at Duke, I decided to study receptors. But since I was now a cardiovascular physician, I chose very deliberately to study something called adrenergic receptors, which means receptors for adrenaline. These are the targets of beta blockers, which are commonly used drugs. In retrospect, that turned out to be a very felicitous choice. Of course, I had no way of knowing that then. So that’s how I got interested in it in the first place, and then I just kind of ran with it.