Food for thought

Came across this in Eric Kandel's autobiography In Search of Memory, and later tracked it down to its source.

If pure scientists were motivated by curiosity alone, they should be delighted when someone else solves the problem they are working on--but that is not the ususal reaction.
-Alan Hodgkin

Hodgkin was a major founder of the field of neurophysiology. It's hard to imagine him ever feeling "scooped," which makes this comment particularly funny.