Today I get to meet John Dowling, a big figure in vision research at the retinal level. Oh Vision, in the remote memory, it was such a sacred and enchanted word! Dowling's name was of course in text book when I was an undergrad. So when I saw the flyer of his talk, I signed up for "lunch with the speaker". And I'm so glad that I did! The seminar was terrific. It was very clear, all key points laid out perfectly probably even for outsiders to understand.
But it was during the lunch that I began to like him more! I have this queer thing that I can't truly appreciate someone, whether an artist, a writer, an actor, or even a scientist, until I see or get a glimpse of their, shall I say, souls. To me talent is great, but heart is much more important. Believe it or not, there are not many out there who have the combination of both. Dr. Dowling is clearly amiable, kind and an excellent mentor to young students. When occasionally a somewhat naive questions was raised, he simply answered them with patience and clarity. When it was my turn to talk about "what my research is about", I let myself go and mentioned the unfortunate event with the monkey and my choice to stay way from animal research at least for now. I thought someone like him would be thinking "what a weak gal, clearly not cut out to be a scientist". Instead he showed genuine understanding of my feelings and perhaps even some sympathy. He was so poised and I felt calmed down inside. And it was not just me, he was so wonderfully nice to everyone. Later in fact, Stelios told me that back at the time when he was a student at Harvard, Dowling and his wife were, on top of everything, taking care of allocation management of student dormitory! Can you imagine that?!
Still active in academic research, Dr. Dowling started his career way early, during the golden, legendary time of neuroscience, so to speak. He told us stories about how Dr. Keffer Hartline chose the famous Horseshoe crab as a working model for vision. It turned out that in this species the optic nerves are not only easily accessible from the top, but also not sheathed so that different nerve fibers can be separated. Young horseshoe crabs, while smaller in size, have bigger ERGs than adult fellows (whose optic nerve fibers turn out to go through degeneration). It was due to this reason Hartline spent a whole summer trying to separate single nerve from young horseshoe crabs, without any luck. Toward the every end of that summer, however, one day he went to the animal facility and found that all the small crabs were gone. He struggled between calling the thing off, spending the rest of the two days on the beach and trying it out on a big crab. Of course we know what choice great scientist like him would make under the circumstance: he went with the crab. Within 15 min, Hartline isolated a single optic nerve fiber. In retrospect, that were probably still a bundle which contained only one fiber that was still alive. Nevertheless, the event opened the door to a new world. Later with more practice Hartline soon achieved true single fiber isolation!
Another story about the beginning of the zebra fish era. Initially Dowling was using white perch caught in the wild. But one winter on the east coast they just couldn't catch any at the usual spots. So they turned to some new breed which was a cross between perhaps white perch and brass fish. They soon noticed that individual variability of the new batch was substantially smaller than before and realized the importance to have model animals that were raised in controlled environment. Then they discovered the lovely zebra fish! And the rest of the science community of course learned the lesson too!
I consider myself a passionate person. In fact I don't think I can survive without enthusiasms or hopes for them. My awkward current situation is that I feel like a broken, leaking bag of zest. I suck up zeal, whether it's a note from a friend, a beautiful flower in the wind, or a truly magnificent human being. I think I'm still too weak and unbalanced to hold it without constant new supplies. Nevertheless, I'm very happy to catch the light whenever I can!
Speaking of light, another delightful note is that three years after my ceiling light was gone (the bulb burned out and I was never in the mood nor tall enough to replace it), I got it back this evening! Haha, my room is so bright at night! I can live without it, but it's definitely better to live with it!
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