Digital Collections

Oral history interview with Ronald A. Milligan

  • 1992-Oct-22
  • 1992-Oct-24
  • 1992-Dec-17

Ronald A. Milligan grew up on a farm outside of Londonderry, Northern Ireland, the youngest of five children. Life was, in his words, "primitive." He spent most of his free time outside, never feeling bored. He was interested in birdwatching, eventually in hunting birds. He passed his 11+ exam, attended grammar school, and went on to university, the first in his family. He had been interested in biology all through his childhood, and when a school trip to Queen's University in Belfast exposed him to bacteriology, he decided he wanted to study botany and bacteriology. His scores admitted him to the University of Leeds. He had made the decision to be a research scientist earlier, though he does not remember how he learned what a scientist did. During his teenage years religious conflict in Northern Ireland became extreme; there was the outbreak of terrorism and British military occupation. Milligan was graduated with a lower second-class honors degree and began to hunt for a job. He took a position as a research assistant at the Nuffield Institute of Comparative Medicine at the London Zoo, where he studied botulism and bovine pleuropneumonia. From there he became a research assistant at the Medical Research Council (MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, England, going to work on nuclear pore complex (NPC) in Nigel Unwin's lab. When Unwin was recruited to Stanford, Milligan went along as a graduate student. Here Milligan discusses Unwin's reasons for leaving MRC and his [Unwin's] own experiences at Stanford. Milligan goes into detail about his work on low-temperature ribosome crystallization and how electron microscopes damage specimens. He spent three months in Heidelberg, Germany, studying cryo-electron microscopy; his results allowed him to acquire independence as a researcher. Milligan talks about his NPC research, grantsmanship, and "safe science"; he explains his work of freezing specimens in amorphous ice and the damage caused by electron microscopy and by freezing; he goes into methods of enhancing imaging, synthetic universe visualization software, omega energy filtering microscopes, field emission guns, atomic force microscopy, and relations with competitors; and he continues with explanations of cell symmetry and the structure of the NPC and NPC intermediate structures. Milligan's research continued with studying muscle cell structure with cryo-electron microscopy, and he collaborated with Paula F. Flicker: there was a lack of evidence for the cross-bridge muscle cycle theory but a discovery of new myosins. He attended cell biology conferences and spent money setting up a lab. He conceived an interest in molecular motors and talks about microtubule dynamics. Milligan winds down his interview with answers to general questions: he talks about the need to work in the mainstream of scientific research; personnel in his lab; the role of computers; how funding trends shape research; the autonomy provided by Scripps Research Institute; Milligan's raison d'étre; pure science and applied science; scientists' motivations; Scripps's ties to Johnson and Johnson; how Scripps recruited Milligan; and the Scripps administration. He finishes with insight into his marriage and thoughts about his future.

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