Also brings to mind John Sulston (Physiology and Medicine 2002), working for many years in a relatively low-key "staff scientist" job before emerging to lead so

Also brings to mind John Sulston (Physiology and Medicine 2002), working for many years in a relatively low-key "staff scientist" job before emerging to lead some of the early genome projects. Quotes from [1]: >>> JG: You never entered the professorial track, but remained a staff scientist at the LMB. Did that suit your temperament? >>> JS: Absolutely. It was a very good fit for me. If there was something that I thought was important and worth doing, I could just focus on that, and the only pressure was from family life. It meant you had time to sort all this out and not feel the pressure that you had to cut corners or guess. [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1756915/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1756915/