ANDRZEJ KRAUZE
As a postdoc in the late 1970s, Charles Wysocki visited a lab in New York City, where he helped put together olfactory test kits to be used in determining the genetics of smelling certain odors. One of the compounds in the battery was androstenone, a pig pheromone that for about half the human population evokes either woody muskiness or stale urine. The other half—Wysocki included—can’t smell it at all. “Little did I know I’d be getting it all over my clothing,” he says, which probably made for a few wrinkled noses on the subway ride home.
His stint putting together the kits lasted just a week, and Wysocki didn’t have the need to test androstenone again until 1980, when he launched his own research group ...
