Tipping science on its head
Shirley Tilghman vividly remembers the science experiment that changed her life. As a child, the distinguished molecular biologist and Princeton University president loved math and solving puzzles, but it was in college that she had her “aha” moment in a lab. For months, Tilghman, a second-year chemistry concentrator, had tried to convert a biologically inert molecule into penicillin. One morning she checked her experiment, expecting to see “happily growing E. coli,” as she had countless times before. Instead, she found she had successfully synthesized the famous antibiotic in her test tube. “Rockets went off in my head,” recalled Tilghman. “It would have been impossible for me not to be a scientist after that euphoric moment.” Undergraduates need those “aha” moments early in their college careers so that they become engaged with the sciences, Tilghman told a crowd of faculty, administrators, and students who gathered at Harvard’s Science Center for the Dudley Herschbach Lecture,...