Leaving Home: Stories about the places we're from

The Story Collider

This week, we're presenting stories about leaving home in pursuit of science.

Part 1: After being raised as a creationist, Jennifer Colbourne falls in love with evolutionary science.

Jennifer Colbourne is a graduate student at York University where she is currently researching raccoon intelligence. She is interested in how animals are adapting to cities, and how to improve animal-human interactions in the urban environment.

Part 2: Herman B. White leaves his hometown of Tuskegee behind to pursue physics -- but his Alabama roots help him make a surprising connection later in his career.

Herman B. White, Jr. is a Senior Scientist having served Fermilab for over 43 years in leadership roles and research on nearly a dozen experiments covering, Neutrino, Muon, and Kaon physics and projects in accelerators and particle beams. For decades, he has worked to communicate important decisions about physical science research to the U. S. Congress, agencies in Washington and the world, including service on advisory panels for the Energy Department (HEPAP), National Science Foundation, NASA, the National Academies, the African School of Fundamental Physics and Applications, and APS. He was a Resident Research Associate in Nuclear Physics at Argonne National Laboratory for a period in 1971, a Sloan travel fellow at CERN during part of 1972, a University Fellow at Yale from 1976-78, and received his Ph.D. from Florida State University. Among his recognitions, for his contributions to Kaon Physics and the establishment of a new kind of interaction distinguishing matter from antimatter, he received the (APS), American Physical Society, Edward A. Bouchet Award in 2010. His life story recorded in 2006 by the HistoryMakers organization in Chicago, was made a part of the HistoryMakers Video Oral History Archives currently included in the USA Library of Congress permanent repository.

Find out more at storycollider.org.

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