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Martin Grant earns Morty Yalovsky Lifetime Achievement Award
Early in his career in physics, Martin Grant thought he had it all figured out.
“When I started, I said to myself ‘well, this is good. Nobody’s going to tell me what to do,” said Grant, Emeritus James McGill Professor and former Dean of the Faculty of Science. “I’ve got the world’s greatest postdoc – me – and I’ll be able to do all the projects that I want to do pretty much by myself.”
“But I quickly realized that if I followed that route, I would be doing a disservice to the students.”
Grant knew that, while he could have done the work himself, students would benefit greatly if they were involved in the hands-on research.
“The downside to that approach is that it’s not all about you anymore,” he said. “The upside is you give students an opportunity to really learn.
“The people I look up to are the people who embrace this idea of the role model, and who are willing to get satisfaction out of other people’s successes and other people’s accomplishments. I hope I’ve lived up to that.”
