By Carolyn Y. Johnson
Since 1998, neuroscientist Eve Marder at Brandeis University has been writing frank, thoughtful essays about the scientific life, reflecting about topics that range from the lack of female science faculty members to the advantages of using colored chalk, rather than PowerPoint, as a teaching tool.
Marder’s career began more than 40 years ago, at a time when her hopes of being a researcher involved meeting a husband in graduate school in whose laboratory she could one day work. In her essays, published in the journals Current Biology and eLife, she takes the long view and offers a rare peek at the pressures, joys, and frustrations of doing science.
Marder’s most recent essay, “ Grandmother elephants,” published in eLife in July, caught my eye because it poses a timely question for biologists who are now equipped with ever-more powerful tools to explore pressing questions about human disease and health. Marder takes a step back from breathless excitement about progress and the frontier on which human society is now poised to describe an occasional twinge of kinship she feels with “old lady elephants,” whose knowledge and expertise help guide and teach the young ones—maintaining knowledge and tradition in the herd.
