The lone scientist based himself in rented apartments in cities like Kuala Lumpur, and sampled many indigenous foods. “I remember eating the most outstanding homemade noodles and chicken soup in a roadside stall,” Stern recalls, “and a vegetarian restaurant where everything was supposedly made from bean curd but looked identical to, and tasted strongly of, every imaginable body part. I remain skeptical to this day.”

After completing his doctorate, Stern continued to study evolution and development in aphids, but his interests shifted. He began to study the fruit fly and devised powerful methods for hunting genes that he plans to use in probing the control of quantitative traits, such as body size, life span, reproductive rate, and—Stern's current enthusiasm—behavior. Aphids haven't disappeared from his radar screen, however. Back in 2001, he pushed hard for funding to sequence the aphid genome, a project that is now nearing completion.

And the lifelong gardener says that on his mile-and-a-half walk to his Princeton lab, he checks daily progress on several trees that are forming galls.

“I must admit I still harbor some crazy plans to attack the problem of gall development,” he confesses. “But I'm putting it off”at least for a couple of years.”

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