10-10-2020, 05:41 PM
From an interview in the NY Review of Books:
Claudia Dreifus: Where did you grow up?
Jennifer Doudna: Hawaii. I grew up in a small town, Hilo. We were one of the few Caucasian families there in the 1970s, and I certainly felt like a different animal from everybody else in my school.
My formative experience was trying to figure out who I was in the world and how to fit in in some way. I spent a lot of time reading. I can remember lying on my bed a lot, just kind of thinking and wondering about how things worked, especially nature and why the animals and plants in Hilo had evolved the way they had.
How was it that your family lived in Hilo?
Well, my father was a literature professor at the University of Hawaii. He loved reading popular books about science. It was he who gave me Jim Watson’s The Double Helix. That was one of the early ways I got exposed to the kind of science I’d be eventually doing. I thought: “Scientists can really do this? They can do experiments and find out the structure of molecules? Wow.” The book was mind-blowing.
The other thing was that it showed the human side of science, the conflicts, the collaborations. These were aspects of science I had no idea about because the science textbooks we had in school were very dry. Jim Watson’s book was a different vision.
https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2019/01/24...er-doudna/
She set out on her path in life after reading a book. In Hilo. In the 1970’s.
With internet access available at our fingertips in 2020 we on the Big Island, students and adults alike, could with even greater ease follow her example in our own small way.
Claudia Dreifus: Where did you grow up?
Jennifer Doudna: Hawaii. I grew up in a small town, Hilo. We were one of the few Caucasian families there in the 1970s, and I certainly felt like a different animal from everybody else in my school.
My formative experience was trying to figure out who I was in the world and how to fit in in some way. I spent a lot of time reading. I can remember lying on my bed a lot, just kind of thinking and wondering about how things worked, especially nature and why the animals and plants in Hilo had evolved the way they had.
How was it that your family lived in Hilo?
Well, my father was a literature professor at the University of Hawaii. He loved reading popular books about science. It was he who gave me Jim Watson’s The Double Helix. That was one of the early ways I got exposed to the kind of science I’d be eventually doing. I thought: “Scientists can really do this? They can do experiments and find out the structure of molecules? Wow.” The book was mind-blowing.
The other thing was that it showed the human side of science, the conflicts, the collaborations. These were aspects of science I had no idea about because the science textbooks we had in school were very dry. Jim Watson’s book was a different vision.
https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2019/01/24...er-doudna/
She set out on her path in life after reading a book. In Hilo. In the 1970’s.
With internet access available at our fingertips in 2020 we on the Big Island, students and adults alike, could with even greater ease follow her example in our own small way.