Missteps and mistakes, friends and heroes

‘There is that moment in discovery where you are the only person in the world who understands how something in biology works – the only person – a small secret between you and Nature, just for a few moments…’

With those words ringing in my head, spoken by a scientist at some program, I have long since forgotten, I joined the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at the Oregon Health Sciences University (OHSU) in 1981 to begin my journey as a research scientist. In truth, I had arrived at that point in my life in a rather roundabout way. My parents had raised my brother, sister, and me in an environment where academics was paramount. My father was a librarian and books were everywhere in our New Jersey apartment. When my dad worked after-hours at the library, my brother and I would sprawl on the library floor reading and drinking Orange Fanta. My brother, who you will discover is one of my heroes, gravitated toward adventure books, eventually becoming a marine biologist. By comparison, I read about animals, never expecting it to be so foretelling.

I had always figured I might be a teacher and I was content with that notion, until the day of my high school biology final. My perfect record of straight A's was broken with a single Genetics question. ‘If a woman is pregnant with a child and she currently has 9 boys and one girl, what is the chance she will have a girl?’ The right answer was, of course, 50:50. But I answered one out of ten. I was very wrong, and very angry. ‘It was a trick question, it wasn't fair, and I'd been cheated out of my perfect grade’. In that singular moment, I decided to become a geneticist. I …