I have met some amazing people in the 13 years I spent working in labs. Without fail, they have been odd, unique, hyper-individual and challenging. Some of them have become my closest friends. Some of them have their faces on a dart board, but that’s another post. The people I care for have become spread all over the world, creating for me a sort of scientific diaspora. Wherever I go, no matter what city or country, I am sure to have a friend from my scientific life to rendezvous with. The scientific diaspora led to visit an American in Paris and a German in Seville.
My American friend in Paris is a post-doc at the Pasteur Institute. That’s Pasteur’s himself, looking like the sage microbe slayer that he was.
Pasteur built his eponymous Institute with money collected from private donations. He lived and worked in the Institute; the portions of the Institute he inhabited have since been turned into a museum. Due to French inflexibility and refusal to acknowledge the presence of a blogger (how do you say blogger in French?), I was not permitted to take photos inside the museum. Shame, since it was a geek’s paradise.
Pasteur developed the rabies vaccine (in collaboration with Emile Roux) by drying the spinal cord from rabid rabbits suspended in a jar with potash to completely dehydrate the tissue and attenuate the virus. The dried and pulverized spinal cord protected animals – and a 9-year old boy – from rabies. The jar, complete with a hanging 3-inch chunk of rabbit spinal cord still stands in the museum, along with a multitude of other flasks, tubes, boxes, and potions containing everything from horse blood and anthrax to well, dehydrated rabbit spinal cord.
Following Pasteur’s death, his family turned down the immense honor of having his body interred at Paris’s Pantheon, the home of a multitude of French luminaries, such as Emile Zola, Victor Hugo, and Voltaire. Perhaps you’ve heard of them. Instead, Pasteur and his wife are buried in a crypt in the basement of the Pasteur Institute in an over the top ornate mosaic-covered barrel-shaped vault with gilded gates, a massive sarcophagus, and death masks. The mosaics depict major themes and accomplishments in Pasteur’s life, such as a group of friendly sheep cured from anthrax, some wine and beer, saved from blights and funks, and “Joseph Meister”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Meister, the 9 year-old saved by Pasteur and Roux’s rabies vaccine. Very cool and a little surreal.
The labs at the Pasteur look like labs anywhere else, not surprisingly. The one I visited had odd white counter-tops but otherwise looked very familiar – cluttered, busy, and full of gadgets.
Look familiar? Yup, it’s a lab, but this one has a French accent.
Unfortunately, I did not get to visit my German friend’s lab at the University of Seville. I was too busy indulging in Seville’s other offerings.
I think I ate my body weight in pork products on this trip. Glorious pork products.
On my visit I leaned that in essence, all labs and all scientists are the same the world over. The labs, lab benches and equipment, and every day laboratory family feuds are universal. I am lucky to have my people, my friends in every corner of the world, friends who understand that I am precisely the sort of dork who would like to see a lab while on vacation in the City of Lights.
Cooool =)
I also always try to see people’s labs when I visit somewhere. I don’t know any scientists in Paris, though.
But I now have “An American in Paris” stuck in my head…
True !
in essence, all labs and all scientists are the same the world over.
Check that.
And Anna, Eva, and others: you do know a(nother) scientist in Paris. For the time being.
Eva – Thanks for the link! Shamefully, I hadn’t heard that piece before.
Erika – True indeed! It was so nice seeing you in Boston last year.
Heather – Also true. I would have liked more time in Paris to 1) eat, and 2) get in touch with more people. Maybe next year!
You mean you omitted Southampton – the jewel of the UK’s south coast (splutter!) – from your itinerary?! Fair dooze.
The funny thing is that I can recognize our German friend’s green t-shirt (and his hairy hand).
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Lee – It was an oversight on my part. I will aim to rectify it on my next trip abroad. The jewel of the south coast, you say…
Alex – Ha! Yes indeed. It was all quite familiar, in a very odd way, as if nothing had changed except the language (and the weather).
Oh, Heather, I forgot you moved! In my head you still live in Toulouse. (Yes, there is an entire city of Toulouse in my head.)
(Anna, take it from me, don’t bother.)
Yea, I gathered from your tone that Southampton is not, in fact, a destination. I am sorry for that. Next time you are in Washington, the jewel of the US South-East coast, let me know.