If it weren't for hurricanes, Les Kaufman might be studying something completely different today.
By Karen Hopkin
Les Kaufman claims his interest in science might have begun in utero. "I remember at age 3, I got a book about the moon," he says. "At about 4, my father started bringing home herpetiles: frogs and turtles and things from vacant lots that actually used to exist in Brooklyn. At 5, I got my first microscope." But it was the move to Queens at age 8 that turned Kaufman, now a professor of biology at Boston University (BU), into a naturalist. It was 1960, and Kaufman says "southeast Queens was being reclaimed from the extensive marshes in Jamaica Bay. So my colleagues and I would wander off into the marshes and find things out there. Wonderful things. When we didn't find things, things would find us" - garter snakes, rails, bitterns. "Basically ...
