The Synthesist
Count me as a fan of Damien Bérubé. To me, he’s exactly where a young person with a dynamic intellect ought to be during their undergraduate years—ambitious and idealistic; open to new directions and energetic in pursuing them; determined to build a career that makes the world a better place but not exactly certain what shape their life’s work will take just yet. In the long view, he’s just starting out, but the breadth of his scientific endeavors so far blows my mind.
Couldn’t fit this into the story, but Damien identified an interesting model for science making a difference in the world: Gilette and the disposable razor.
Before King C. Gilette channeled the underlying bit of engineering to combine metals into his invention, being clean-cut wasn’t necessarily so clean. Nondisposable razors would create cuts as they wore down, and more cuts meant more people exposed to blood-borne disease. So Gilette’s razor arrived as a significant boon to public health. Sometimes I think about this when I’m shaving, that the everyday instrument in my hand is an inspiring example of science applied to benefit society.
—Wayne