Elizabeth Jonas grew up in a family that revolved around medicine. "My dad is a neurologist and I started to learn to read EEGs when I was 4," she says. "My parents wanted me to become a neurologist or some other type of physician." But Jonas had other plans. "Seeing my dad going to work in the morning and coming home at 11 o'clock at night, I started to think that medicine was not for me. Things came to a head in high school when I realized that I didn't like science. I really, really didn't like it."
Although her parents continued to push her toward medical school, in the late 1970s Jonas enrolled at Yale University as a history major. Then, in a last-ditch effort to turn Jonas on to the beauty of science and medicine, her father took her to Woods Hole and dropped her off at the ...
