InterViews from The National Academy of Sciences

InterViews from The National Academy of Sciences

InterViews provides first-person accounts of the lives and work of National Academy of Sciences members. In this series of one-on-one conversations, scientists talk about what inspired them to pursue the careers they chose and describe some of the most fascinating aspects of their research.

Episodes

John Hildebrand

December 12, 2014 • 34 mins
As a young man, neurobiologist John Hildebrand was torn between his love of science and his passion for playing music. So he chose to live a dual life, working as a professional musician by night and leading innovative scientific studies of the insect nervous system by day. Using the moth Manduca sexta as a model, Hildebrand has explored the connection between olfaction--the sense of smell--and behavior. His work has revealed une...
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Jeremiah Ostriker

October 28, 2014 • 26 mins
When he was growing up on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, Jeremiah Ostriker seldom got to see the stars. But he still went on to become one of the world's most influential astronomers. Ostriker was among the first researchers in the field of cosmology-the study of the origin and fate of the universe-to propose a model of the universe that accounts for two unseen elements that are shaping it: gravitationally powerful dark matter,...
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Rowena Matthews

September 22, 2014 • 28 mins
As the daughter of a biochemist, Rowena Matthews met more than her share of scientists. But she never thought she could become one, because most of them were men. It wasn't until college that Matthews discovered her own passion for biochemistry, and the possibility of juggling cutting-edge research with motherhood and a rich family life. Throughout her career, Matthews has explored how enzymes work within the body. Her studies have...
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Donald Saari

June 16, 2014 • 28 mins
Donald Saari grew up exploring the woods of northern Michigan, where he developed a lasting curiosity about the natural world. He found a way to understand and use that curiosity in the field of mathematics. He has used math to unravel a number of different mysteries, including how planets move around their suns and whether voting accurately represents the will of the people. The analytical methods he helped develop have given scie...
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Susan Taylor

March 31, 2014 • 25 mins
Susan Taylor says she dreams about molecules, but she never planned to work on them. The Wisconsin-born biochemist intended to be a doctor, until love led her in a different direction-and she never looked back. Taylor is known for having unraveled the molecular structure of protein kinase, an enzyme that helps turn on and off some of the most important processes in the human body. Her work has given other scientists the tools they...
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Mina Bissell

November 21, 2013 • 23 mins
Why does your nose look like your nose? Why doesn't it look like your elbow, when the DNA in your nose and your elbow are the same? These seemingly simple questions have captivated Mina Bissell for the past 40 years. Bissell faced quite a bit of resistance when she set out to find the answers: it was the 1960s and she was female, foreign and had unconventional ideas. But she'd grown up surrounded by strong, educated women in Iran,...
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Thomas Jordan

February 12, 2013 • 26 mins
In the span of about four years, Tom Jordan went from flunking out of college to teaching at an Ivy League university. But that dramatic turnaround isn't the only drama in Jordan's life. The Panama-born geophysicist specializes in the drama of the deep. His research has revealed the deep structures underlying continents, the inner workings of plate tectonics and new insights into how earthquakes happen. Tom Jordan is the W. M. Kec...
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Diane Griffin

November 9, 2012 • 26 mins
Diane Griffin's science education started early. The daughter of a geologist, Griffin learned about the world from every hike or drive she shared with her father. But in the end, it wasn't rocks that won her heart,it was viruses. Griffin has spent her career studying how viruses make us sick, and how our bodies respond to them. Her work has shed light on how viruses impact the nervous system and the immune system, and on the surpri...
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Yu Xie

June 26, 2012 • 29 mins
Sociologist Yu Xie learned early that society can profoundly shape a person's life. Growing up during China's Cultural Revolution, he experienced his father's political imprisonment and his family's subsequent exile to a rural village. Their struggles left him with a deep-seated skepticism that would later fuel his scientific research. After abandoning his engineering studies and finding his way to the University of Wisconsin, Xie ...
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Ruth DeFries

April 5, 2012 • 29 mins
The loss of tropical forests worldwide is a big part of the climate change puzzle, and we wouldn't know it if it weren't for Ruth DeFries. Her innovative use of satellite images-or "remote sensing"-to study how humans are changing their planet has revealed some of science's big surprises, from the rate and extent of rainforest loss in the Amazon to the role urban areas play in deforestation. It has also revolutionized how govern...
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Larry R. Squire

March 19, 2012 • 29 mins
Larry Squire came this close to becoming a professional gambler. For one whirlwind year during graduate school in psychology, he terrorized the card tables of Palo Alto, doubling his stipend by playing poker, and prompting his department to ask him to leave.That risk-taking streak carried Squire into the fledgling field of brain-based memory research, and it helped him craft a series of experiments that dramatically changed our und...
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Mary Jane Osborn

February 16, 2012 • 20 mins
When a young Mary Jane Osborn announced she wanted to be a nurse when she grew up, her father wondered aloud why she shouldn't be a doctor instead. Fueled by his faith that she could succeed in what was then a man's profession, Osborn went on to study physiology and biochemistry. Her work as a graduate student revealed how methotrexate, now a major cancer drug, acts on the body. Osborn then turned her abilities to microbiology, and...
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Ralph J. Cicerone

January 23, 2012 • 68 mins
Ralph Cicerone, president of the National Academy of Sciences, is an atmospheric scientist whose research in atmospheric chemistry and climate change has involved him in shaping science and environmental policy at the highest levels nationally and internationally. His work with Richard Stolarski in 1973 led to the discovery of the C10X chain mechanism for depletion of stratospheric ozone, and Cicerone's research has continued since...
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J. ANthony Movshon

December 16, 2011 • 25 mins
For over three decades, experimental psychologist J. Anthony Movshon has mapped the mysterious borderland where vision and action intersect. But he almost never made it there. Coming of age in the tumultuous late 1960s made him question whether he should give up on his interests-music and science-and consider doing something more socially relevant. Then he discovered the burgeoning vision research underway at his university, and ch...
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Cynthia Beall

November 30, 2011 • 53 mins
anthropology
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