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December '01
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Scientists Recall Country Roots
   

Some of the world's greatest scientists grew up in the hinterlands. Mathematician Isaac Newton was on his family farm in England when the famed apple fell on his head. Gregor Mendel, the father of genetics, was raised on a farm and orchard in Austria. HHMI also has its share of scientists whose interests in biology or chemistry were germinated in the wide-open spaces of their youth.

Stephen J. Elledge, an HHMI investigator at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, was in love with science at an early age but wasn't sure he wanted to go to college. Teachers convinced him it might be a good idea. Today, he studies the cell's response to DNA damage and works on genetic technologies to improve drug development.
Full Story...

Daphne Preuss, an HHMI investigator at the University of Chicago, uses genetic and biochemical approaches to identify how plants recognize each other. As a student in rural Colorado, she searched for female role models in science. Full Story...

Gerald R. Crabtree, an HHMI investigator at Stanford University School of Medicine, was enamored of explosives as a child in West Virginia. Now he studies the biochemical pathways that cells use to communicate with each other and is working to develop new techniques to study these pathways.
Full Story...

 

 

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Scientists Recall
Country Roots

Three HHMI investigators share experiences

 

 

 

From Exhausted to Outstanding

 

 

 

 

 

 

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