Jennifer Doudna was born on February 19, 1964, in Washington D.C. At that time, her father, Martin Doudna, was a speechwriter for the Department of Defense, and her mother, Dorothy, was a professor of history at a local community college. However, Martin had always wanted to be a professor of American literature, so he moved his family to Ann Arbor where he got a doctorate at the University of Michigan. He was only able to get one job offer, so in August of 1971 they moved again to Hilo, Hawaii where he could work as a professor at the University of Hawaii, Jennifer was 7 at the time. As a kid Jennifer often times felt ostracized from her peers at school as she was frequently teased for looking different from the other students and being nerdy. That environment led her to try to escape by reading lots of books, and somewhat isolating herself from others. Fortunately, in third grade, she was able to move to a new school with smaller class sizes where she was able to do very well in her classes and even made a lifelong friend, Lisa Hinkley, who helped her build her confidence. In the afternoon, Jennifer and Lisa would bike and hike through the wildlife near their neighborhood. They would explore meadows and sugarcane fields lush with mosses, mushrooms, arenga palms, and lava rocks covered in ferns; together they even found a species of spider with no eyes living in a lava flow cave. The plant that fascinated her the most was the hilahila or “sleeping grass”, which was a fern plant that’s leaves curled up upon being touched. It sparked a scientific curiosity within her as she would ask herself what causes the plant to act the way it did. Video of the hilahila plant curling up as someone touches it. She soon found people that could help her answer the questions that she had about the natural world around her. In particular, a family friend named Don Hemmes who was a biology professor would go on nature walks with the family to study and photograph mushrooms and other types of fungi. He would teach Jennifer how to identify certain mushrooms. She also had a biology teacher, Marlene Hapai, that helped encourage her interest in the field and the idea of discovery in science. She was also able to get a summer job at a biology lab where she got hands-on experience with different types of lab equipment like an electron microscope. Her first major exposure to the field of biochemistry was in sixth grade when her dad left a copy of The Double Helix, a book written by the co-discoverer of the structure of DNA, James Watson, that recounts his discovery. At first, she didn’t read it as she thought it was an old detective book, but when she did begin to read it she was captivated by the story and how it unfolded like a mystery where the scientists were the detectives. The book helped introduce two major ideas to her as a child. One was that women could be scientists, which was eye-opening for her as that was an idea that had never been brought to her before. Secondly was the idea that beyond just hunting the interesting things in nature, like the hilahila, scientists could truly explore why nature developed how it did. Sources:
0 Comments
|
AuthorMy name is Nathan Eberhart. I have a curious mind and am a creative thinker with an interest in biomedical engineering and medical devices. Archives
January 2022
Categories
All
|