Cech entered Grinnell College in 1966 and found that he enjoyed studying literature and history as well as the sciences, but it was chemistry that he pursued. As he honed in on his studies and through undergraduate research experience, he discovered that he was "attracted to biological chemistry because of the almost daily interplay of experimental design, observation, and interpretation," he later recalled in Les Prix Nobel, as noted in his autobiography from the website of The Nobel Foundation. His choice of study would prove to be a wise decision.
It was while an undergraduate at Grinnell, he recalled in his Nobel Prize autobiography, that he met Carol Lynn Martinson "over the melting point apparatus" in a chemistry lab. They graduated from Grinnell and married in 1970. Thomas and his new wife chose the University of California, Berkeley for their graduate studies. He was fortunate to have John Hearst as a thesis advisor, one who had a contagious interest in chromosome function and structure and greatly assisted Thomas in his studies. The Cechs received their Ph.D.'s in 1975 and accepted jobs in the Northeast; Carol went to Harvard and Thomas took a position with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T.) where he began his post doctorate research.
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