The Making of a Scientist Summary, Explanation, Question Answers
Class 10
English Chapter 6
The Making Of A Scientist
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Click Here: Question Answers
Robert W. Peterson (1925 Warren, Pennsylvania - February 11, 2006) was an American newspaper writer who later became a freelance author of magazine articles and books, especially on the topics of sports and Scouting. His 1970 chronicle of Negro league baseball entitled Only the Ball Was White was hailed by The New York Times as having “recaptured a lost era in baseball history and a rich facet of black life in America”. He was raised in Warren, Pennsylvania: Peterson played baseball while attending Upsala College. He was a writer and editor with the old New York World-Telegram newspaper, which folded in 1966. Peterson died of lung cancer on February 11, 2006, in Salisbury, Pennsylvania, survived by his wife Peggy and a son and daughter. At the time of his death, he was on a committee selecting Negro league players for the Hall of Fame. Peterson's book, The Boy Scouts: An American Adventure, was written in 1984 on the eve of the 75th anniversary of the Boy Scouts of America (BSA). Peterson also wrote numerous articles for Scouting magazine in the 1970s-1990s, such as a tribute to William Hillcourt in 1985, acclaiming the influential BSA leader as “the foremost influence on development of the Boy Scouting program." Among the articles Peterson penned for the BSA's Scouting magazine was an account of Scouting activities in the Japanese-American internment camps during World War II.
SUMMARY
This article is an account of a curious child channelizing his curiosity to become a scientist. Ebright was a highly curious child since his childhood. His mother his only companion during childhood; helped in further deepening his curiosity. Ebright began his journey by collecting butterflies. After that, he worked on tagging the monarch butterflies so that the scientists' community could be benefited. Later on, he did research on utility of gold spots on pupae of monarch butterflies. He became famous when his paper on working of cell was published in a scientific journal. Ebright participated in many science exhibitions but winning an award for the sake of wining was never his goal. He participated in those exhibitions because he wanted to do a task as best as that could be done. Richard H. Ebright published theory of how cells work in an article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science at the age of twenty two. Richard H. Ebright grew up in Reading in Pennsylvania. There he was not able to do anything. He was not able to play football or baseball too. But he said that there he could do one thing - collect things. So he collected things. In Kindergarten, Ebright collected butterflies. He also collected rocks, fossils, and coins. He would observe sky at night too. He would live with his mother, who encouraged his interest in learning. She would take him on trips, bought him telescope, microscope, cameras, mounting materials, and other materials required for learning. He lost his father when he was in third grade. Her mother would call him Richie. His mother would discuss with him every night and give him mental exercise instead of physical exercise.
By the time he was in the second grade, Ebright had collected all twenty five species of butterflies found around his hometown. Richard said that this would have been end of his butterfly collection. But her mother gave him a children's book called “The Travels of Monarch X."'That book, which told how monarch butterflies migrate to Central America, opened the world of science to Richard. At the end of book readers were invited to help study butterfly migration They were asked to tag butterflies for research by Dr. Frederick A. Urquhart of the University of Toronto, Canada. Anyone who found a tagged butterfly was asked to send the tag to Dr Urquhart. If you tried to catch them one by one, you won't catch very much. So Richard rose a flock of butterflies. He would catch a female monarch, take her eggs, and raise them in his basement through their life cycle, from egg to caterpillar to pupa to adult butterfly. Then he would tag the butterflies' wings and let them go. For several years his basement was home to thousands of monarchs in different stages of development. He got a hint of what a real science is when he entered a county science fair, and lost. He said that, it was a sad feeling to sit there and not get anything while everybody else had won something,". His entry was slides of frog tissues, which he showed under a microscope. He realized that winners had tried to do real experiments. And he decided that for the next year, he had to do something extraordinary. So he asked to Dr Urquhart for suggestions and back came a stack of suggestions. For his eighth grade project, Ebright tried to find the cause of a viral disease that kills nearly all monarch caterpillars every few years. Ebright thought the disease might be carried by a beetle. So he kept caterpillars in the presence of beetles. But he didn't get any real result. But he went ahead and showed that he had tried the experiment. The next year his science fair project was testing the theory that viceroy butterflies copy monarchs. The theory was that viceroys look like monarchs because monarchs don't taste good to birds. Viceroys, on the other hand, do taste good to birds. So the more they look like monarchs, the less likely they are to become a bird's dinner. Ebright's project was to see whether, in fact, birds would eat monarchs. He found that a starling would not eat ordinary bird food. It would eat all the monarchs it could get. (Ebright said later research by other people showed that viceroys probably do copy the monarch.) This project was placed first in the zoology division and third overall in the county science fair. In his second year in high school, Richard Ebright began the research that led to his discovery of an unknown insect hormone. Indirectly, it also led to his new theory on the life of cells. The question he tried to answer was simple: What is the purpose of the twelve tiny gold spots on a monarch pupa? “Everyone assumed the spots were just ornamental,” Ebright said. “But Dr Urquhart didn't believe it." To find the answer, Ebright and another excellent science student first had to build a device that showed that the spots were producing a hormone necessary for the butterfly's full development. This project won Ebright first place in the county fair and entry into the International Science and Engineering Fair. There he won third place for zoology. He also got a chance to work during the summer at the entomology laboratory of the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research. As a high school junior, Richard Ebright continued his advanced experiments on the monarch pupa: that year his project won first place at the International Science Fair and gave him another chance to work in the laboratory during the summer.
Main POINTS
- Richard H. Ebright grew up in Reading in Pennsylvania.
- In Kindergarten, Ebright collected butterflies.
- His mother would take him on trips, bought him telescope, microscope, cameras, mounting materials, and other materials required for learning.
- By the time he was in the second grade, Ebright had collected all twentyfive species of butterflies found around his hometown.
- His mother gave him a children's book called “The Travels of Monarch X.”That book, which told how monarch butterflies migrate to Central America, opened the world of science to Richard.
- At the end of book readers were asked to tag butterflies for research by Dr. Frederick A. Urquhart of the University of Toronto, Canada.
- For several years his basement was home to thousands of monarchs in different stages of development.
- He would catch a female monarch, take her eggs, and raise them in his basement through their life cycle, from egg to caterpillar to pupa to adult butterfly.
- In county science fair his entry was slides of frog tissues, which he showed under a microscope.
- For his eighth grade project, Ebright tried to find the cause of a viral disease that kills nearly all monarch caterpillars every few years.
- The next year his science fair project was testing the theory that viceroy butterflies copy monarchs.
- This project was placed first in the zoology division and third overall in the county science fair. There he won third place for zoology. Indirectly, it also led to his new theory on the life of cells. This project won Ebright first place in the county fair and entry into the International Science and Engineering Fair.
- In his second year in high school, Richard Ebright began the research that led to his discovery of an unknown insect hormone.
THEME
The Making of a Scientist is the story of a scientist named Richard H Ebright. It is an interesting study of how Ebright became a scientist. After the early death of her husband, Ebright was everything for his mother. He used to get top grades in schools. At a very early age, when he was just in the second standard, he had already collected 25 species of butterflies found around his hometown. The book The Travels of Monarch X gave him a thorough knowledge about the monarch butterflies. In the second year of his high school, Ebright began to search an unknown hormone in the gold spots of butterflies. In later years, he discovered how a cell could read the blueprint of its DNA.
No comments:
Post a Comment