The Code Breaker

You’re never completely at home, and that can drive you. It can challenge you not to seek being comfortable

It was a task that required mixing three disciplines that had emerged in the twentieth century: genetics, biochemistry, and structural biology.

nucleic acids, that are the workhorses of heredity. These molecules are composed of a sugar, phosphates, and four substances called bases that are strung together in chains.

Under these circumstances, favorable variations would tend to be preserved, and unfavorable ones to be destroyed,” he wrote. “The results of this would be the formation of a new species.”

The beaks of Darwin’s finches and the traits of Mendel’s peas gave birth to the idea of the gene, an entity inside of living organisms that carries the code of heredity.1

“The book made me realize you could also hunt for the reasons why nature worked the way it did.”

“I’ve looked for opportunities where I can fill a niche where there aren’t too many other people with the same skill sets.”

“I’ve looked for opportunities where I can fill a niche where there aren’t too many other people with the same skill sets.”

The key to true curiosity is pausing to ponder the causes.

Many creative people—including most of those I have chronicled, such as Leonardo da Vinci, Albert Einstein, Henry Kissinger, and Steve Jobs—grew up feeling alienated from their surroundings. That was the case for Doudna as a young blond girl among the Polynesians in Hilo. “I was really, really alone and isolated at school,” she says.