Harvard University Alumni

"But what I love so much about the collision between time and space that has happened right now is the fact that I am in no way the face of anything, because when I look at so many of my peers, there are people doing the same work, more work, different work than I am"

"I describe my future as being policy-adjacent"

"I have an unreasonable belief that I should be good immediately, and that's no way to discover new paths"

"One of the biggest exercises in being curious has been the first step of self-work, of talking to myself about being bad, and allowing myself to be absolutely an amateur with no goals of being advanced at something"

"I realized that when my norms did not fit those of the world around me, it was time to change the world norms"

"We cannot rely on the status quo, and we will need to pursue unconventional paths"

"Let yourself be bad at things"

"Finding what fulfills us is the ultimate success"

"My parents instilled this idea that learning is a lifelong adventure, whether that's in a classroom or out in the world"

"It's OK to not have all the answers"

"Not every attempt of mine would be a surefire success"

"It's OK to have multiple passions and to pursue them in various capacities"

"Being Black and Iranian is something that even subconsciously plays into what I bring to a role"

"We need every voice. We need every person"

"“It’s not about appearances or needing to seem like I’m good at everything"

"On a set, you’re a character. Everything about you is altered. In the tent, the goal is to be yourself."

"Education has always been an integral part of my life"

"Allow yourself the freedom to explore different fields"

"The best learning happens when we give ourselves permission to fumble through something new"

"It’s overwhelming to think about how broken some of these systems are, how imperfect some of our tools for change are"

"My 20s has been a jarring experiment in figuring out how to give myself space to be mediocre at things"

"Young people rise to the occasion time and time again, especially when we’re faced with things that are of deep concern to us"

"The question of why should the audience care is something that we’re always having to answer"

"s have a secret. While our research is motivated by a desire to reconstruct , it can also provide novel insights into fundamental cellular mechanisms in modern s. Studies of evolution reveal how the cell's component parts were “assembled” over time, how and why cells are vulnerable to disease and death, the molecular mechanisms that are responsible for fundamental cellular processes, and those mechanisms that distinguish the and of different lineages of organisms from each other. Studies of “evolutionary cell biology” promise to deepen our understanding of how cells function."

"... in the closing line of Darwin's ', he remarked on 'endless forms most beautiful', and he was referring to the incredible diversity of s ... much of his research and thinking had to with trying to understand: How do we get this diversity of s? And, there's been a great deal of progress in this regard, largely from the work of s, s, and s working together to try to understand what are molecular mechanistic underpinnings of the diversification of animal body plans. ... Animals are united by their shared ancestry. They all share a common ancestor … And, in fact, we know relatively little about the nature of that organism."

"Genuine objective journalism not only gets the facts right, it gets the meaning of events right. It is compelling not only today, but stands the test of time. It is validated not only by 'reliable sources', but by the unfolding of history. It is journalism that ten, twenty, fifty years after the fact still holds up a true and intelligent mirror to events."

"The transition to that launched the evolution of animals from marks one of the most pivotal, and poorly understood, events in . Advances in and , and particularly the study of s, are yielding new insights into the biology of the unicellular progenitors of animals. and gene families critical for animal development (including s and s) evolved in protozoa before the origin of animals. Innovations in and expansions of certain gene families may have allowed the integration of cell behavior during the earliest experiments with multicellularity. The protozoan perspective on animal origins promises to provide a valuable window into the distant past and into the cellular bases of animal development."

"... one of the virtues of Creager's admirable book is that the attentive, even if scientifically uninformed, reader will learn a great deal, not only about these subjects but more generally about the character of during the last two-thirds of the twentieth-century. By tracking the history of from the applied realm of through its acceptance as —a widely and conventionally accepted laboratory tool—Creager traces more general trends in the development of , genetics, and . ... The power of Creager's method lies in how it underlines the dynamic set of relationships between ideas and experimental practice, between the laboratory and its sources of support."

"s used s to reveal the sequence of chemical reactions in . s followed the assimilation and turnover of key s and tagged molecules such as to track the movement and activity of s. s labeled s with radioisotopes to follow the replication and expression of s. Physicians utilized radioisotopes such as and to diagnose and detect s. Ecologists profited as well, using to trace through the living and nonliving parts of aquatic and terrestrial landscapes, giving concrete meaning to the notion of an ecosystem."

"In Life Atomic, Angela Creager weaves an engaging tale of the history of s. Much of her material came from government documents from the Manhattan Project that were declassified during the . ... Creager introduces the concepts and vocabulary of radioisotopes at a level that any reader can appreciate."

"put to work in , having induced in an inbred mouse strain (Strong A) that was particularly susceptible to the implantation of tumors ... He and K. G. Scott found that these leukemic mice concentrated more radiophosphorus in their s and s than did healthy mice after both groups received tracer doses. ... This finding stoked hopes that radioisotopes would be selectively absorbed and localized in cancer patients, where they could serve to irradiate tumors."

"There are many reasons to revisit the history of research on (TMV), beginning with the fact that it was the first virus to be identified and so marks the start of the field of . However, not every original example of a new biological category becomes a well-studied object in its own right ... As virology took off in the early twentieth century, TMV did become one of the best-studied viruses and remained at the forefront of the field. It was used to elucidate basic knowledge about the nature of viruses and served as a in as well as agriculture, where it had emerged. The fact that the first recognized virus came from plants—although es were rapidly identified—meant that virology was, from the outset, highly comparative ... Literature on the origins of often privileges and the contributions of the ... Yet early work with TMV inspired Max Delbrück and other early molecular biologists to take up the study of bacteriophages. Moreover, TMV itself became a prominent model system for understanding the molecular nature of heredity and the relationship between proteins and nucleic acids ... Notably, some of the main scientists involved in elucidating the double-helical structure of DNA were also studying TMV, which became a tool for cracking the ."

"The 1940s and 1950s were marked by intense debates over the origin of drug resistance in microbes. ... Antibiotic resistance became a key issue among those disputing physiological (usually termed ‘’) vs. genetic ( and ) explanations of variation in . Postwar developments connected with the gave this debate a new political valence. Proponents of the weighed in with support for the genetic theory. However, certain features of drug resistance seemed inexplicable by mutation and selection, particularly the phenomenon of ‘multiple resistance’—the emergence of resistance in a single strain against several unrelated antibiotics. In the late 1950s, and his collaborators solved this puzzle by determining that resistance could be conferred by rather than . These could carry resistance to many antibiotics and seemed able to promote their own dissemination in bacterial populations. In the end, the vindication of the genetic view of drug resistance was accompanied by a recasting of the ‘gene’ to include extrachromosomal hereditary units carried on viruses and s."

"By 1950 the nature of the virus was no longer a mystery. Viruses were known to be s, genetic units, parasites that depend on their hosts for and . But a funny thing happened on the road to this knowledge. The viruses that most shaped this emerging portrait were not the most dangerous s, but those examples, however innocuous to humans, that made good laboratory subjects. Researchers constructed general knowledge about viruses based on a few that, by reason of historical precedence or biological robustness, were intensively studied as representatives of the rest."

"Laboratory instructions and recipes are sometimes edited into books with a wide circulation. Even in the late twentieth century, publications of this nature remained influential. For example, s from a 1980 summer course on at provided the basis for a bestselling laboratory manual by , and . Not only did the Molecular Cloning: A Laboratory Manual become a standard reference for s (commonly called the ‘bible’), but also its recipes and clear instructions made gene cloning and technologies accessible to non-specialists. Consequently, this laboratory manual contributed to the rapid spread of genetic-engineering techniques throughout the , as well as in industry. As is often the case with how-to books, however, finding a way to update methods in this rapidly changing field posed a challenge, and various molecular-biology reference books had different ways of dealing with knowledge obsolescence. This paper explores the origins of this manual, its publication history, its reception and its rivals – as well as the more recent migration of such laboratory manuals to the Internet."

"Like ’’’’, is part of the biologist's . The best-known model systems—standardized organisms such as the and the —are investigated by an entire community of biologists. Model systems become prototypes within which key biological questions are defined and resolved, useful precisely because they have already been so well studied. was a model system in these respects, studied and discussed by a large contingent of s, s, and other agricultural and medical researchers ..."

"The chapters of this book present a sampling from his lifetime of behavior watching, the s liberally salted with philosophy and quotes from past and present nature watchers. Kilham strongly believes that great satisfaction can be derived from sitting in one place and learning about in depth. He always prefers to be unobtrustive in his watching and never, for example, has . He suggests that it is best to learn about a bird first hand and then read about it. ... ... Kilham writes well and is obviously a very experienced and keen observer of nature. If you are a behavior watcher you will love this book. If you are not, you probably ought to read it anyway. It may stimulate some new interests and in the long run increase the pleasure you get from birds."

"I wanted to be able to take care of so many kinds of people, so many kinds of issues, and to know a lot about many different things."

"We had such a rich environment because we had each other’s support. So we started thinking, how many women are actually going into orthopaedics? Why aren’t we going into academic surgery? And when we are in academics, are we actually growing within the field."

"We walked lonely es and s, and we delighted in and s, but we made no great lists. Books that I like at the time were books written by observers, people doing the kind of that I wanted to do; books such as Henry Beston's and 's Beach Grass. They exemplified an idea type of natural history: you lived within walking distance of a beach, marsh, woods, or mountain and started observing."

"Professionally Lawrence Kilham is a who teaches at , but he is widely known for his papers on bird behavior, particularly those dealing with s. Never Enough of Nature is a personal account of the experiences with wild and captive animals that provided data for many of the scientific papers. The book was illustrated by the author's relatives, primarily his wife, Jane. The early chapters of the book deal with field experiences in South Carolina and Georgia, but others take the reader to Africa, Panama, and New England."

"I chose intentionally to work for Cook County Health because their motto is to give everyone the care and respect they need, regardless of their ability to pay."

"This was completely unheard of, because women represent such a small population of orthopaedic residents in the country. The fact that 50 percent of our class were women that’s beyond unusual."

"During my first year at Harvard, in 1928, I became fascinated with the university's Museum of Comparative Zoology. How exciting for a mere freshman to meet and talk to such famous ornithologists as . ... In succeeding years Griscom, aided by , who was just bringing out his first bird guide, became the great figure who built up the type of —pretty much limited to finding rarities, listing species seen, and census taking—that has now become a national pastime. I remember arguments about this new approach to birding back then. The clincher for the Grissom-Peterson type of birding was that it was competitive. ... By the time I was a junior at Harvard I found my interest in this type of birding wearing thin."

"The huge, forward-projecting of the male is his chief sexual characteristic and white skin aournd the eye is a peculiarity of the female. Many African s have brightly colored patches of skin and wattles about the head and neck."

"... in the north are as wary as . They make a low pecking, the blows coming slowly, when excavating in rotting logs and trunks. It is these sounds that I follow in trying for a view of their activities. They someties work on large s and s, digging into the where have their galleries."

"When I began studying birds at age fourteen, I was fortunate in having 's Handbook of Birds of Eastern North America and 's Birds of Massachusetts and other New England States, the three volumes of which were then just coming out. I remember carrying Chapman's handbook with me into the woods and sitting on a stump to identify a beautiful bird I had seen—yellow on the belly with a black bib, and bright red on throat and crown—a ! I had made a discovery by myself. If I have carried my boyhood enthusiasm for learning about birds into old age, it is in part because by interest has never been dulled by too many classes, lectures, workshops, meetings, or other experiences that can kill initiative. It is better to learn ten birds on one's own than several hundred following a leader. Learning on one's own is especially important if you want to make discoveries. ... Watching birds and other animals for enjoyment should be something that makes us think."

"The data was initially really dishearteningWe always talk about how it seems like there’s not enough women in orthopaedic surgery, but this study really put it into perspective."

"We were able to see the daily environment and how inclusive it was, and I think that’s why we had so many women want to match here that year. When you interviewed at most other orthopaedic programs you had a sense that it was a boy’s club. I can’t tell you the number of programs that asked me Why aren’t you going into pediatrics or OB/GYN?’ Northwestern never asked me that. They asked me and the other women in my class, What do you hope to accomplish in orthopaedic surgery?’ So we had a sense of belonging from the beginning."

"I reach out to female medical students to come shadow me in clinic and in my operating room. The job description of hip and knee replacement surgery can be pretty physical, which is why I think women can be discouraged from going into it. But I’m 5’8’’. I’m not a large individual. And I want female medical students to see that if I can do the surgery, they can do the surgery, too."