Hasnain says:

This was an inspirational read. Goes into a lot of scientific tidbits, with a sprinkling of various human interest nuggets.

“What was your first encounter with scientific reasoning?

When I was in second grade we lived in Calcutta, India, and would go shopping for vegetables on the weekend. We would pass these booksellers with stalls built into the walls of buildings. I treasured the books I was able to get my hands on. My dad made a little bookshelf out of packing crates from local shops, and I would line up my handful of books and count them. My ambition in life was to someday own 100 books.

One day I picked up a book called The How and Why Wonder Book of Famous Scientists. In particular I remember Antonie van Leeuwenhoek. He didn’t have a degree. He didn’t work in a fancy place. He was a lens grinder. But he was an intelligent and curious guy, and so he used his lenses to assemble the first microscope and discovered the entire world of microscopic life. I remember reading this and realizing that science was a thing you could do. It wasn’t received wisdom from ages past. From then on, I knew what I was going to do in life.”

Posted on 2022-04-25T03:40:08+0000