In The Discoveries, Alan Lightman writes a forward to what he considers the twenty-two most consequential scientific discoveries of the 20th Century. From Max Planck’s discovery of the quantum to Linus Pauling’s theory of the chemical bond, Lightman walks his readers through the backgrounds of the scientists, the gritty details of the experiments, and the effect these papers had on the arc of scientific pursuit. Then, following every forward, he presents the actual paper in question, mostly in full. The format — what I call a science preface — is one of my favorite types of science writi ..read more

https://medium.com/media/50fb54bd6d9e52b4aab0fe7a5cb52636/hrefThink Like A Founder is produced by SNP Communications in San Francisco California. SNP’s founder Maureen Taylor talks to Cindy Wu, co-founder of Experiment and Jelly Labs. They talk about how Hawai’i has changed how she designs software, her belief in science equity, and her unusual love of caves. Maureen: So you climb into caves as a hobby? Cindy: Yes, we find holes in the ground and then we explore them and it kind of feels like maybe what you’ll Armstrong felt like when he first stepped foot on the moon. M: That’s Cindy Wu, the ..read more

Article originally published in Issue 2 of the iGEM Digest.The Pizza ConnectionFree pizza: Every university student’s weakness. An incentive that seems to instantaneously draw the attention of hungry college students everywhere. Pizza was how Cindy Wu first discovered the world of synthetic biology. Instead of walking away with free pizza, Cindy walked into a talk about reprogramming biology with an experience that changed the course of her career. It turned out that the professor giving the talk was encouraging the undergraduates to join a program called iGEM. At the time, Cindy had no idea w ..read more