“I count myself an ‘accidental’ researcher. That’s because my career would have turned out quite differently, no doubt, had I not stumbled into a college class that changed everything.”
“Maybe it’s a coincidence that I went on to become a botanist who studies the chemical, genetic and evolutionary science behind the tastes and scents that protect plants from animals and insects that would eat them. Maybe, but I doubt it. More likely, those early wildland explorations forged some deep, synaptic connection in my young brain between nature’s mysteries and a grandmother’s love. By the time I got to college, plant ecology was in my bones.”