How two letters on a page led to a PhD and a career in research
I was a curious child growing up. My parents had to put up with a seemingly unending barrage of “why” questions, but thankfully they encouraged this curiosity and passion for learning (they were teachers, after all). But my curiosity, especially for science, took off when I was in high school and we had to do a project on the periodic table.
The whole class took turns picking what element we wanted to research, and our teacher wrote them down using their chemical symbols (fun fact: J is the only letter that doesn’t appear on the periodic table). I was fascinated by the idea…