How openness and inquisitiveness led to a career as a sleep researcher and a broad contribution to sleep science.

After describing my serendipitous discovery of sleep research as a potential career, I note how my openness and inquisitiveness led to a broad contribution to sleep science. After a PhD in biological psychology, I completed a postdoctoral fellowship in alcoholism and drug abuse. This led to my first studies on rebound insomnia. I then describe early studies on the relation of sleep continuity/sleep time to daytime sleepiness and function. This led to studies of how basal sleep time/sleepiness interacts with the effects of sedating and alerting drugs. Several collaborations led to studies on sleep and hot flashes in perimenopausal women and on sleep and acute and chronic pain.