Carol Greider, a molecular biologist at Johns Hopkins who this year became one of only 10 women to win the Nobel Prize in medicine, discovered evidence of an enzyme called telomerase when, 25 years ago, as an exceptionally gifted graduate student at the University of California at Berkeley, she visited her lab to check an experiment. The enzyme helps maintain telomeres, the caplike structures that protect the ends of chromosomes. The discovery was a breakthrough—telomerase is implicated in cancer and genetic disease. She shared the Nobel with Jack Szostak, a Harvard scientist who, together with Greider’s mentor Elizabeth Blackburn, did groundbreaking work in telomeres.

For the most part, Greider concentrates on work when at work and on home when at home. She has always had an ability to focus, ever since she was a kid with dyslexia and had to learn to tune out distraction. “I think to a degree, it was my learning to overcome obstacles early on in my life,” says Greider, a dynamic, down-to-earth woman with rumpled surfer-girl hair. “That’s how I deal with family and work. I focus on one thing. I never call home. I mean, I try to set things up as safe as I can, and I have my cellphone on and that’s it, and I don’t even think about it.”

Dyslexia arguably was responsible for the prize itself—or at least, for the series of decisions that put Greider on the path to winning. Greider’s mother, who died when she was six, was a biologist; her father was a physicist who encouraged her to find work that engaged her. After college she decided to go to graduate school in molecular biology, but because of her disability she did not test well, and a number of schools rejected her because of poor GRE scores. Just two—UC Berkeley and Cal Tech—took note of her stellar grades and invited her for an interview. She chose Berkeley in part because one of her interviewers was Blackburn.

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