InterViews from The National Academy of Sciences

Elizabeth Loftus: Psychology

interviews@nas.edu (National Academy of Sciences) — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 05:12:01 -0500

Recorded in 2006. In the mid-1960s, when she was a graduate student in Stanford University's psychology program, Elizabeth Loftus' classmates informally voted her the least likely among them to succeed. Forty years later, the Review of General Psychology named her the most influential female psychologist of the 20th century. The trajectory surprised even Loftus herself, who once thought she would teach math and never expected to become one of the most important and controversial figures in the study of memory. After graduating from the University of California, Los Angeles with majors in mathematics and psychology and obtaining her Ph.D. in psychology from Stanford, Loftus undertook extensive studies of what makes memories change. Her experiments revealed a phenomenon known as the "misinformation effect" given the right questions, insinuations or exposure to new information, a person's memories can lie. Applying her findings to the memories of real-life witnesses, Loftus became a sought-after legal consultant. She has advised or testified in the trials of Ted Bundy, Timothy McVeigh, Oliver North, Martha Stewart and Michael Jackson, among many others. Elizabeth Loftus was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2004. She is currently a distinguished professor in the Department of Psychology and Social Behavior and the Department of Criminology, Law, and Society at the University of California, Irvine.

Andrew Viterbi: Computer and Information Science

interviews@nas.edu (National Academy of Sciences) — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 07:12:01 -0500

Recorded in 2005. Born in Bergamo, Italy, Andrew Viterbi came to the United States when he was just a boy. His family settled in Boston, and he attended public schools there, including the renowned Boston Latin School. Developing an interest in engineering as a preteen, he studied electronics and electrical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). After graduation, he moved to California, where he earned a Ph.D. in digital communications from the University of Southern California, taught communications theory at the University of California, Los Angeles, and consulted at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory of the California Institute of Technology. A pioneer in the field of communications, Andrew Viterbi is the creator of the Viterbi algorithm, which is used by four international standards for digital cellular telephony. He is a cofounder of Linkabit Corporation and QUALCOMM Inc. In 2004, the University of Southern California's School of Engineering was renamed the Viterbi School of Engineering in his honor.

Jane Lubchenco: Environmental Science

interviews@nas.edu (National Academy of Sciences) — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 09:12:01 -0500

Recorded in 2004. Environmental scientist and ecologist Jane Lubchenco's interests range from searching for specimens in the Oregon coastline's tide pools to promoting the public's understanding of science. She also advocates responsibility toward care of the Earth, and her research interests include plant-herbivore interactions, biogeography and global change. She is currently the under secretary of commerce for oceans and atmosphere and Administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. She is the first woman to hold the post of Administrator of NOAA.

Lyman Page: Astrophysics

interviews@nas.edu (National Academy of Sciences) — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 06:12:01 -0500

Although Lyman Page once spent a year in Antarctica and two years sailing the Atlantic, his greatest adventure is no less than mapping the universe. As a key member of the WMAP (Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe) mission, Page helped measure the cosmic microwave background, a backdrop of cosmic static visible everywhere in the sky and thought by physicists to be the afterglow of the Big Bang. The data he and his team gathered with WMAP shed new light on the shape, composition, evolution and age of the universe a feat that led Science magazine to label the mission the 2003 "Breakthrough of the Year." For his achievements in cosmology, the study of the universe's structure and evolution, Page was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2006. He serves as the Henry DeWolf Smyth Professor of Physics at Princeton University.

Edward Miles: Environmental Science

interviews@nas.edu (National Academy of Sciences) — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 06:15:01 -0500

Growing up in Trinidad, Edward Miles wanted to move to the United States to be a fighter pilot. Instead, he enrolled at Howard University to study history and political science. He then went on to earn his Ph.D. at the University of Denver, studying international relations, sociological theory, and comparative politics. His work in integrating scientific knowledge and research with national and international law has helped researchers and regulators on issues of climate change and pollution.

Elliot Meyerowitz: Plant Biology and Genetics

interviews@nas.edu (National Academy of Sciences) — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 09:15:22 -0500

Elliot Meyerowitz doesn't remember what first drew him to science or why. His interest was always there, he says, and it led him to pioneer the study of Arabidopsis thaliana, a flowering plant related to mustard, as a model organism for plant development. By sequencing, cloning and studying Arabidopsis genes, Meyerowitz and his colleagues shed new light on cell and organ development and revolutionized the study of plant physiology and genetics. He currently chairs the Division of Biology at the California Institute of Technology and serves as George W. Beadle Professor of Biology there. He has been a member of the National Academy of Sciences since 1995.

Anthony James: Microbiology and Molecular Genetics

interviews@nas.edu (National Academy of Sciences) — Thu, 21 May 2009 08:49:35 -0500

As the son of an African-American man and an Irish-American woman in 1950s America, Anthony James came up against considerable odds. But his family's commitment to education and his own conviction-born of witnessing the dramatic impact of Jonas Salk's polio vaccine-that science could help solve some of the world's problems buoyed him and ultimately led him to the University of California, Irvine and a doctorate in molecular biology. After straying from his first love, animal genetics, into DNA recombination research and then back to animals, James merged the disciplines to take on one very serious world problem: mosquito-borne diseases, which kill millions of people each year. He is now best known for his work to genetically engineer mosquitoes that can't transmit malaria, dengue, yellow fever and similar diseases. Drawing from their studies of the genetic makeup of mosquitoes in the lab and James' expertise in DNA manipulation, he and his colleagues created a gene that renders mosquitoes resistant to the pathogens that make humans sick. Although it has only been tested in the lab so far, James plans to eventually introduce the gene into mosquito populations in the wild, in hopes of slowing or stopping the spread of these deadly diseases. James is a professor of molecular biology and biochemistry at his alma mater, UC Irvine, and was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2006.

David Page: Medical Genetics

interviews@nas.edu (National Academy of Sciences) — Thu, 14 May 2009 07:59:35 -0500

When he left Pennsylvania Dutch country to attend Swarthmore College outside Philadelphia,David Page became the first person in his family to go to college. It was the first of many "firsts" for this MacArthur Fellow and pioneering researcher. He went on to make the first maps of the Y chromosome, discover the portion of the Y chromosome that determines whether a person is born male or female and explore the role the chromosome plays in disease and male infertility. Page began his relationship with the Y partly by chance. While on a leave of absence from medical school, he went to work on what would later become the Human Genome Project. There he was charged with analyzing bits of DNA, and his toothpick happened to land on a piece of the Y chromosome. Although the Y marks the difference between men and women - men have an X and a Y in each cell of their bodies, while women carry an XX pair - it was long dismissed as genetic junk. But Page's dedication to it over the next 20 years revealed a rich genetic world no one had seen before. Page is currently a professor of biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the director of the Whitehead Institute. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2005.

Bonnie Bassler: Molecular Biology

interviews@nas.edu (National Academy of Sciences) — Wed, 06 May 2009 08:55:30 -0500

For more than a decade, Bassler's work was dismissed as a bit of "fringe" research on a marine bacterium that no one cares about. But she persevered and eventually revealed a complex and crucial language. Using chemical signals similar to hormones, bacteria can count, communicate with and occasionally sabotage each other. For her groundbreaking contributions to molecular biology, biochemistry and medical technology, Bassler received a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship or "genius grant" in 2002. She is the Squibb Professor and Director of Graduate Studies in Princeton University's department of molecular biology, and was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2006.

Barbara Schaal: Evolutionary Biology

interviews@nas.edu (National Academy of Sciences) — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 07:58:20 -0500

Dr. Barbara Schaal's career as a leading evolutionary biologist began with a youthful fascination with plants. Currently the Mary-Dell Chilton Distinguished Professor at Washington University, she is recognized for her work on the genetics of plant species, particularly for her studies that use DNA sequences to understand evolutionary processes such as gene flow, geographical differentiation, and the domestication of crop species.

Richard Lifton: Medicine

interviews@nas.edu (National Academy of Sciences) — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 08:58:20 -0500

For 20 years, physician-scientist Richard Lifton has been hunting the genetic roots of high blood pressure: a common condition and major risk factor for heart disease, which is the leading cause of death worldwide. Lifton came from a medical family and knew early on he wanted to be both a doctor and a researcher, as his father was. After completing both an MD and a PhD at Stanford University and a medical residency at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Massachusetts, he cast about for a good use of his skills and curiosity, and decided to take on the hypertension he saw in so many of his patients. He focused on the extremes of high and low blood pressure, cases where patients measured well above or below the normal 120/80. Through studies of 5,000 families in 50 countries, Lifton found the unexpected culprit behind their disorder: a mutation in a gene that helps control how the kidneys regulate salt. His discovery explained the long-observed but poorly understood connection between blood pressure and salt, and why it was so difficult for hypertensive patients to control their salt consumption. His work has since changed how doctors treat hypertension. Lifton continues to work at the crossroads of medicine and research, and currently chairs the department of genetics at Yale University. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2001.

Vicki Chandler: Genetics

interviews@nas.edu (National Academy of Sciences) — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 07:53:20 -0500

Were it not for scuba diving, Vicki Chandler might never have become a scientist. She was a twenty-something secretary and single mother of two daughters when she took up the hobby and became fascinated by the complex world of plants and animals she glimpsed underwater. Inspired to study marine biology, she enrolled in a junior college and took her first biology class, where she discovered a passion for genes that sealed her fate. She stopped diving and became a geneticist instead. After attending the University of California at Berkeley on a full scholarship and completing a doctorate in biochemistry at the University of California, San Francisco, Chandler narrowed her interest to a specific process called paramutation. In paramutation, one form of a gene can silence its partner or alter how it behaves in an organism. The resulting trait can be passed down or inherited even though the organism's DNA is unchanged, in violation of Mendel's laws of genetic inheritance. Chandler's studies on paramutation in the corn plant have deepened science's understanding of the process and its implications for plant genetics and genetic modification and for animal and human disease. Chandler is the Chief Program Officer for Science at the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation.

Claude Canizares: Astrophysics

interviews@nas.edu (National Academy of Sciences) — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 06:49:55 -0500

Astrophysicist Claude Canizares likes to tell his students he's never taken an astronomy class. Born to two refugees, his father was a Cuban doctor, his mother a Jewish artist who fled Germany before World War II, Canizares grew up outside New York City with a passion for tinkering and building radios. In college and graduate school, he studied elementary particle physics, the science of matter's most basic building blocks. It was while writing his PhD thesis that Canizares turned his attention skyward. At the time, the fledgling field of x-ray astronomy was revealing a new picture of the cosmos, one dominated by what Canizares calls the "pathological" objects of the universe. Black holes and exploding stars were bright in x-rays, which are more energetic than visible light. Lured by the field's excitement, Canizares traded particles for x-ray spectroscopy and began working to spread out and analyze the spectrum of x-ray radiation as a prism "spreads" visible light into a rainbow. He spent over a decade developing a high-resolution spectroscope for the space-based Chandra X-ray Observatory, the Hubble of x-rays launched eight years ago and still in operation. Chandra spectroscopy has shed light on the chemical composition of exploding stars and other extreme objects, even some that are billions of light years away. Canizares is the Bruno Rossi Professor of Physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and serves as the university's Vice President for Research. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1993.

May Berenbaum: Entomology

interviews@nas.edu (National Academy of Sciences) — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 15:40:35 -0500

Originally afraid of insects, entomologist May Berenbaum became interested in insect and plant biology while an undergraduate at Yale. Her research explores plant-insect interactions and the role chemicals play in mediating that interaction. Currently a professor of entomology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, she has explored the role of insects in society and popular culture by founding that school's long-running Insect Fear Film Festival. Dr. Berenbaum was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1994.

Patrick Kirch: Archaeology

interviews@nas.edu (National Academy of Sciences) — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 15:32:35 -0500

Patrick Kirch's unique background laid the groundwork for an unusual career. Growing up in an orchid-growing business on the culturally and biologically diverse Hawaiian Islands, he developed an interest in how natural environments and human cultures can influence each other. That interest deepened in his teens, when a museum's summer program sent him off to do field research on remote Polynesian islands. He's been blurring the lines between anthropology, archaeology and environmental studies ever since.

Claude Steele: Social Psychology

interviews@nas.edu (National Academy of Sciences) — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 15:27:30 -0500

Steele's research has focused on the psychological need to maintain mental consistency, the role and origin of addiction, and the idea of self-image. His theory of "stereotype threat," which describes how negative images of certain groups can affect those groups' intellectual performance, has been widely publicized. Elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2003, Steele is the Lucy Stern Professor of Psychology at Stanford University. Dr. Steele was interviewed by Dorian Devins in 2004.

Joel Cohen: Population Biology

interviews@nas.edu (National Academy of Sciences) — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 15:21:01 -0500

Joel Cohen's fascination with biology and mathematics started in his teens. Since the field of mathematical biology did not exist in an organized fashion, he pursued interests in both areas independently at Harvard for his undergraduate and doctoral degrees. His studies in infectious diseases led him to focus on public health and to apply his mathematical background to scientific research that overlaps the public areas of law and policy.

Sylvia Ceyer: Chemistry

interviews@nas.edu (National Academy of Sciences) — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 14:52:30 -0500

In this 2007 interview with Gisela Telis, Sylvia Ceyer discusses her career in chemistry, her work and some of the challenges she has faced. Ceyer's work has focused on chemical reactions that happen on surfaces.