Every now and then, I sit back in wonder: when I was born, DNA had only recently been confirmed as the ‘carrier’ of heredity (it is, as always with science, much more complicated than that), and we hadn’t yet isolated the bases or realised that it varied from one species to the next. We were clueless about the double helix, RNA, enzymes, ribosomes… I have been incredibly fortunate to live when I have, especially as it rather looks like the pursuit of knowledge is about to take a firm backseat to the exercise by money of absolute power. Thanks to all those people who gave a lifetime to slowly answering so many of an old woman’s questions.

Edit: Except Richard Feynman, who was a misogynistic, self-centred jerk. You got your rewards in life, bub: may you spend all eternity surrounded by grad students who have never heard of Feyman diagrams and hate the bongo drums.

@fossilesque
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-00764-2