The Presidents' Corner: Paul Nakane

My Mentors, by Dr. Paul Nakane, 1979 President of The Histochemical Society, 2007 Gomori Award Winner

Mentor was the son of Alcumus, a friend of Odysseus. When Odysseus left for the Trojan War he placed Mentor in charge of his son, Telemachus, and of his palace. The first recorded modern usage of the term can be traced to a book entitled "Les Aventures de Telemaque", published in 1699 by the French writer François Fénelon. In the book the lead character is that of Mentor. This book was very popular during the 18th century and the modern application of the term can be traced to this publication. Today mentors provide their expertise to less experienced individuals in order to help them advance their careers, enhance their education, and build their networks. The student of a mentor is called a protégé or mentoree. More accurately, for the recondite, the protégé would be called the telemachus (pl. telemachuses or telemaches). (Excerpted from "Mentor" in Wikipedia)

Who were my mentors? My parents who taught me how to catch butterflies and cicadas; my home town high school biology teacher, Mr. Kokubu, who taught me what were genus and species; and my college biology teacher, Dr. Barrow at Huntingdon College, who taught me histology. They are all my mentors and had effects on formulating my future enquires on the living beasts.

The mentor who focused my scientific enquiry and guided me on how to prove enquiry was Dr. J. W. Wilson at Brown University. Dr. Wilson drilled me for days on scientific methods, dangers of scientific prejudices, the confinements of the natural laws, and introduced me to the field of cell biology. As my first employer and a mentor, Dr. David Glick at Stanford University introduced me to the field of histochemistry and the value of methodology in the fields. My employer, mentor as well as my colleague, Dr. G. Barry Pierce at the University of Michigan steered me to the fields of experimental pathology and immunohistochemistry. Each of these mentors represented their academic fields of the time and I was extremely fortunate to have them. While I was a mentoree, observations of mentors prepared me as a future mentor. The methods of teaching varied from mentor to mentor. Some mentors spoon fed while others let the mentoree make mistakes. Observing my class mates and my mentor, I found that the style of mentorship depends on mentoree; some need to be closely supervised and others may be left alone after initial steering. There is little room for error with this decision. A bad decision may alter the academic future of the mentoree. The mentor-mentoree relationship is critical. Some mentors refuse to acknowledge when the mentor-mentoree role is reversed. Later on as a mentor, I also found that it is difficult but one must accept that reversal if and when it happens. During my academic tenure, I was fortunate to be called a mentor by over one hundred graduate students and fellows. Over thirty of them are now professors and I am congratulating my self for a job well done. Among them, those currently involved with the affairs of the Histochemical Society are Dr. Mazurkiewicz and Dr. Osamura who continue to contribute on the development of histo/cytochemistry.

March 25th, 2008