In describing the small Scottish oil-shale and coal-mining village of Addiewell where he was raised, Tom Curran says, “Cancer was a fact of life and there was nothing anyone could do about it.” He has spent much of his career determined to change that perception. As a grad student he was unfazed by a lukewarm reception from a reviewer to his discovery of the fos oncogene: “While this manuscript lacks originality in its approach, it is probably acceptable for publication.” The gene has since been mentioned in over 22,000 papers. In his Thought Experiment, Curran, now a deputy scientific director of the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia Research Institute, offers ideas on how neuronal mutations during early development result in neurological, psychiatric, and perhaps even psychological dysfunctions.
As a child growing up in the mountains of northern England, Richard Bardgett was fascinated by the landscape—particularly the underlying soils. Now, he travels ...
