ABSTRACT

not long after becoming a u.s. citizen, I had an encounter in Champaign that would prove seminal for my future scientific research interests. Martha Baylor, a postdoctoral research biologist in charge of the Illinois chemistry department’s electron microscope, had invited me to a party she gave in honor of Sol Spiegelman, a visiting seminar speaker from Washington University Medical School in St. Louis. A 32-year-old assistant professor of microbiology, he fixated his interlocutors with a penetrating stare and spoke in staccato sentences, whose patronizing tone suggested that he was bringing enlightenment to us Illinois hayseeds. Provoked by his mannerisms, I got into an argument with him about the applicability of thermodynamics to living matter. He didn’t seem to have a firm grasp of thermodynamics, which was my specialty, and I didn’t know anything about living matter. But we argued fiercely all the same.