America has loved Mayim Bialik for a very long time. First as the title character on Blossom, and then as the fantastically weird and lovable Amy Farrah Fowler on The Big Bang Theory, Mayim has been a welcome guest in our living rooms for the better portion of her life. Mayim in her “secret life” on The Big Bang Theory And this past year Mayim received an Emmy nomination for her work on Big Bang (just like Secret Life, Mayim lost at the Emmys, but we think she probably got a nicer gift bag than we did – at least, we hope so). Yet even with this high level of celebrity, Mayim has absolutely none of the affectations of celebrity. In fact, she told Vanity Fair that on the morning the Emmy nominations were announced…

“…I was so certain I wasn’t being nominated that I had a phone interview about breastfeeding awareness scheduled at the time the announcements were being made. I was staying with my best friend in Atlanta. She has a newborn and a three-year-old, and I had my two boys with me. We were planning to take the kids to Legoland.”

Now how does this happen? We’re used to hearing about former child stars in the news when they rob convenience stores or enter rehab for the 512th time. How can the woman who was Blossom for all those years of her childhood be so completely grounded?

Well, we think it has a lot to do with how Mayim sees herself. And oh yeah, maybe it has something to do with science, too. Mayim explained to us:

“When I think about what my self-identity is, or what I identify as, I’m proud personally that I’m a mother. But in terms of societal standards of success or prestige, I’m super proud that I have a PhD in Neuroscience, especially because I come from an immigrant family. My grandparents went to night school when they immigrated from Eastern Europe. They never had a command of the English language. You know, to have a PhD in Neuroscience, especially from as fine a university as UCLA, I think that’s mostly what I’m proud of when I think of myself. I’m pretty shy about my acting world, I think, because I did it when I was a teenager, and I’m just kind of a shy person. So yeah, I think of my PhD as what I guess I put out there. And I feel like once you tell someone you’re a scientist, it tells them a lot about you in a positive way… meaning you may not want to talk to me about reality television, because I don’t watch any of it. However, if you want to talk about the universe, or if you’d like to know about your grandfather with Parkinson’s, we can talk about that. I get that a lot.”

So Mayim’s identity as a scientist continues to be a huge part of her life, even as she also lives the life of a Hollywood actress. But what does that identity really mean to her, not just in other people’s eyes, but in terms of how she experiences her own world everyday?

“To be a scientist is to be in love with the properties of the world. I can’t help but look at it like that. It’s like being in love with every aspect of the universe.”

It’s Valentine’s Day, folks. And we love Mayim.

It isn’t everyday that one of our subjects gets the National Medal of Science. So we were thrilled to hear that Sylvester “Jim” Gates was going to be so honored. And our friend Jim was good enough to provide us with a report on the ceremony.

The ceremony began with the President making remarks and the beginning of a call of names of the recipients. I was number four on the list. And once I was onstage, I was actually able to have a little fun with President Obama as you can see from this photo. “Two physicists walk into a bar and the first one says…” (Getty Images)

I had been thinking about joking with him for a month. I was still undecided as I approached him. But when he said, “Come on up to get your award, Sylvester,” I determined to go ahead, and he delighted by my effort. In fact, for a few seconds the President was still laughing as can be seen in video of the event.

So the ceremony was a lot of fun, especially because my wife Dianna and our twins were there in the room. In addition, having Chancellor Kirwan – University System of Maryland – and President Loh - CEO for the university’s College Park campus - join us on this day was extremely satisfying.

I had a friend seated in the back of the room right in front of the members of the press. After the ceremony, he said you could hear a buzz go up among them wondering, “Who was this guy that the President seemed so comfortable with and vice versa?”

But my fun resulted in a faux pas. I was so taken with the President’s reaction to the joke I told him that for the rest of the time I was onstage, I was “non compus mentis.” After he put the Medal of Science around my neck, I forgot to stand next to him for a picture I dearly would have loved. Oh well, no good deed goes unpunished.

The award ceremony also gave me another occasion to briefly reflect on how fortunate I have been to be a part of the University of Maryland community. Similar to a line from a song, they - after my family - have truly been “the wind beneath my wings.”

To see more of the ceremony, check out this television report and the official White House video.

So usually a post with this title, on this blog, would be about something one of our scientists saw through a microscope.

Not today, my friends.

In her day job, Sabine Seymour tries to figure out how to stuff your clothes with one’s and zero’s so that they – your clothes – will do amazing things: change colors, tell you what’s happening inside your body so you can stay healthy, keep you warm, keep you cool, etc. etc. As Sabine says, her field of Fashionable Technology is located at the intersection of design, fashion, science and technology. And that’s a heady space – cutting-edge invention, looking fabulous in New York City. You might be tiny, but you still want to look fabulous.

Albert Einstein, say hello to Manolo Blahnik.

But what about the “small little molecule”?

Sabine’s also a snowboarder. And she doesn’t do just any kind of snowboarding – she does “out of bounds” snowboarding, the kind where you have to create your own path down the hill. Sabine explains:

“’Out of bounds’ means no slope. It means that it’s basically terrain that is fresh, that is in nature. So basically, when you go up the mountain, you take your snowboard up on your backpack. You hike up with your snow shoes. You have to know the terrain. You have to know where to go. There is no signage.”

And it can take 4-6 hours to get up the mountain for that one precious ride down the mountain.

In other words, you ain’t wearing Manolos when you snowboard out of bounds.

Why is our chic scientist involved in what could be considered a borderline insane activity? (Well “insane” is actually too strong a word, but you do have to bring along something called an “avalanche beep,” and frankly that scares me… a lot.)

Sabine:

“You only focus on you riding down. So the only thing that counts is you, the terrain and your own movement. So you have full control over your own movements, still being able to acknowledge the massive power nature has. In the context of nature, we are very small compared to the mountains, the other animals. I’m a human, in terms of the way I think. So you understand the snow conditions and you really can analyze that. However, in the context of nature, you’re just a small little molecule. And you know, we’re not there for that long. Time is very precious. Wasting time on things that don’t really make me happy or that just irritate me – I am trying to avoid that as much as I can.”

So while fashionable technology – with all of its sparkle – might make you feel larger than life, “out of bounds” snowboarding can make you feel incredibly small. And after hearing from Sabine, I grudgingly admit that even with the need for an “avalanche beep,” that sounds like a pretty great experience to have.

If you ask Sabine Seymour the right question, she might - I said MIGHT - install a computer in your clothes!

When Larry Rosenblum was a teenager, he was way into music, especially what was called “progressive rock” – Emerson, Lake and Palmer, Yes, Genesis – bands that brought classical structure, advanced technique and three-and-a-half-hour drum solos to enthralled masses around the world. And when Larry and his friends eventually formed bands, this was the kind of music they played. The young rocker/scientist… with truly fantastic hair.

Then it all changed for him:

“I went to visit one of my good friend’s brothers up at his university. He asked us what type of music we were into. We said, ‘Oh, we’re playing all this classical rock.’ He said, ‘Well, that’s all good and fine, but let’s see where music is going.’ And he put on this amazing song called ‘Marquee Moon’ by a band called Television. And it was different from anything I had ever heard. And I realized that these are musicians who might not have the classical technique of the sort of musicians I was listening to, but they were musicians who had a very novel and passionate perspective on what they were doing. And so the parts were simpler. But when they were put together, they formed something very complex, very magical, much more in the gut, much more kind of pure passion.”

Lots of teenagers hear new music. And they excited by it. And that’s the end of the story – no big deal. But there was something about “Marquee Moon” that hit Larry on a molecular level – changed the way he thought about himself and his world forever:

“I decided to go back and start a punk band. And at the same time, something very interesting happened. Because all these friends I had, the guys who were in the classical rock band, they were all budding scientists and brilliant guys. They all ended up being scientists, very successful scientists. But I frankly was very intimidated by how smart they were. They had very good technical skills, very good mathematics skills. And I wasn’t quite as easy in that world as they were. But then by being introduced to a different type of music, I realized if there are different ways of approaching music, there are different ways of approaching science. And I realized that I could be a scientist – and a successful scientist, possibly, by taking a different approach, a less technical approach, but a very thoughtful approach, where maybe the emphasis was on imagination and creativity. And it kind of made me feel a little bit more confident that I could do what I wanted to do, which was to do research on questions I really cared about. I tell people, if they think they don’t have a scientific mind, well, there’s no such thing as ‘a scientific mind.’ There are thousands of scientific minds. There are thousands of ways of becoming a scientist and there are thousands of different types or styles of science you can do.”

Watch Larry’s videos and we think you’ll like the kind of scientist he turned out to be.

Oh and here’s “Marquee Moon.” It might make you want to become a scientist.

If you ask Larry Rosenblum a question, he might pull a quarter out of your ear.

No guarantees, but what do you have to lose?

When I was a kid, I always cried and made scenes in my first-grade classroom. After many failed interventions, the school principal came up with a solution. I could stay home for the rest of that school year… but I had to spend from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. – what would have been my school hours – in my bedroom. I couldn’t go outside or interact with anyone. Now this was a long time ago. And it was madness. But something happened during those hours in my room. I started drawing. And I fell in love with making pictures move. I made my first flipbooks. I started watching TV and movies in a new way (only before 8 a.m. and after 2 p.m., of course). When I finally went back to first grade the next year, I was still “different.” But I had something else – my own world that was mine and that no one could take away – and that bolstered me whenever I felt afraid. Young Jim Gates…

I don’t usually get so personal in these posts, but I felt so moved today because of Jim Gates. I was thinking about our interview with Jim and some things he said that were especially powerful:

“So, when I was a child, I had a tragic part of my life. My mother died when I was 12. And because of that event, I developed a very rich fantasy life, because it was a way to get away from the pain. So I read science fiction, I read comic books, I even drew my own comic book characters. I composed stories for these characters. And so, in my teenage years, I was still supporting my imagination by these activities, because it was driven by my emotional needs at the time. And so, now in my 60s, I find that I still have this element of imagination that some people describe as being child-like. And yet that’s the thing that allows me to look at a sea of mathematics – or a forest of mathematics – and see things slightly differently from anybody else that I know. It’s exactly the element of imagination.”

Now mind you, I’m not comparing the magnitude of anything I lost as a boy to what Jim lost – the most horrible loss a child can experience. I’m only noticing the similarity in how children can cope with sadness and loss… and how something good can come of it, something we can even use in our lives as adults. Jim explains:

“When one works in theoretical physics, one of the strange things about the tie between mathematics and reality is that it seems as though the mathematics, in some sense, exists before you get to it. It’s a very weird feeling. People often ask do you create the math or do you discover the math? It feels like you discover it. Like it’s just out there, waiting for someone with a particular mental mindset or point of view to come upon it. And so, in some of the things that I’ve done which are my unique contributions to the field… I tell people it’s because of my slightly cracked viewpoint that I see things slightly differently. One of my heroes is Albert Einstein, and he said it perhaps more elegantly, and I’m paraphrasing, but he said the outsider – because of the very disconnectedness they have from the group – sometimes has an advantage in creating new ideas, because the group-think doesn’t influence that person. And I’ve tried to maintain that in my career.”

So we salute Jim, who recently added to his many accomplishments by winning the National Medal of Science. And we salute all the other outsiders.

And if you’re a young person reading this and you’ve suffered a loss – or if you just feel like an outsider – take heart. You’ll get through it. And some of what really hurts right now could make you special. Like Jim Gates.

You may have science. And you may have faith. But do you have string… theory?

Ask Jim Gates your sub-atomic question in the comments, people.

Having now interviewed over 300 million scientists for this series, I do find it interesting how many of them knew they were scientists from birth. We’ve all heard and love the stories of the three-year-old who took apart the toaster and the toddler with the extensive dead-bird collection. But Robert Lynch wasn’t one of those guys. In fact, he wasn’t even a little bit of scientist when he was young. His first job after college was teaching English in Slovakia. And when he returned to the United States, he traded options on the American Stock Exchange… for ten years! Was he really laughing… on Wall Street?

How in the world does someone trading options for a living become an Evolutionary Anthropologist? Well, it turns out that it was at least partly because he was trading options that Robert made his drastic career change:

“It had to do with Wall Street and crowd behavior. And I was there during the late ‘90s, when you’d see stocks go from $5 to $800 in three weeks. All the time. It was the Dot Com bubble. And it was just insane. And it just didn’t seem rational. People’s behavior was fascinating, and I didn’t understand it. So I started looking into different explanations for it. And it seemed like evolution might have something to say about it.”

Soon Robert began devouring books like “The Selfish Gene” by Richard Dawkins and “Consilience” by E.O. Wilson. And he started finding answers – or at least interesting new questions – about not only the behavior he saw on Wall Street, but about deeper issues like, you know, the meaning of life:

“And then it just kind of took on a life of its own, and I just became interested in it for its own sake… just about why I was here. And I had a son around that time, which also contributed to my interest in more important things that I hadn’t considered before.”

Now Robert studies a wide range of behaviors, including laughter, in the context of evolution. He asks questions like “What’s the evolutionary benefit of laughter?” (watch his videos to learn the answer). But his journey as a scientist began when he couldn’t make sense of the antics of some folks in a certain well-trod section of Lower Manhattan.

Now I’m sure there’s got to be an equation that explains all of this. Let’s see – 99% of the one-percenters are laughing at bubbles because they think it will help them find mates. Or something like that. Then again, I think I’ll leave the research to Robert.

Does laughter truly reveal hard-to-face truths? Or is funny just funny?

OK, now it’s your turn.

Ask Robert Lynch your questions in the comments for this post.

Unlike most of the people we profile, Bruce Jackson doesn’t teach at a high-powered four-year college/university, but instead at a community college – MassBay Community College in Wellesley, MA. Bruce works with one of his students at MassBay CC And it was there that Bruce created – and still runs – the school’s nationally renowned Biotechnology Department. Many of Bruce’s students are non-traditional students – students who had previously had fairly limited opportunities in their lives. But now, as Bruce likes to say, those same students are making him famous:

“The Barry Goldwater Scholarship is the highest science award for undergraduates in the United States. And our program has produced 18 winners of the Goldwater Scholarship. So we produce more Goldwater Scholars than all the same-tier colleges in the United States combined, and more than most four-year institutions. And I tell my colleagues at MIT, ‘Well, your students are supposed to win the Goldwater, mine aren’t.’ That’s because half of our Goldwater scholars were high school drop-outs and a third of them are single moms. But it isn’t like we confer any magical greatness on these students that they didn’t already have – they just didn’t know they had it.”

The great thing about Bruce’s secret life is that if he’s wearing goggles in the lab, he can just keep them on when he goes diving!

Ask Bruce your questions in the comments, people.

Food Technologist Tom Yang works for the U.S. Army and he makes amazing stuff – food that lasts up to three years, even in places where the temperature regularly climbs over 110° F. As Tom says, he wants the soldiers who eat his food to feel like it’s “mom-cooked.” And the fact of the matter is that it does taste pretty good. I’m not particularly a fan of beef jerky, but if I’m going to eat jerky (instead of just being jerky), I’ll eat Tom’s military ration jerky. It’s tasty and less salty than the kind you get at the Quik-E-Mart. By night, Tom Yang is a GANGSTER.

Now in our infinite “Secret Life” wisdom, we decided to premiere Tom right around Thanksgiving because we figured he uses science to make food… and what do people do on Thanksgiving? Eat ridiculous amounts of food! And what do people do after Thanksgiving? Eat ridiculous amounts of food! Nothing like a leftover turkey (or for that matter – jerky) sandwich after you get back from the carnage at the mall.

So there’s the food.

Are your M&M’s melting? Here’s your chance to ask Tom Yang all about it. Use the comments, folks.

Ian Lipkin describes himself as a “microbe hunter,” because he’s studied and worked on numerous infectious diseases over his many years in the lab (and not just the virus he created for “Contagion”). But while Ian always knew that he wanted to do research, in his younger days he also practiced medicine. Young Dr. Lipkin And in the early 1980’s, before one horrific disease even had the name that we know it by now, Ian worked with patients whose condition filled some other doctors with such fear that they wouldn’t even treat them:

“When I was a neurology resident at University of California, San Francisco, I was running a clinic that was devoted to taking care of people who had Gay-Related Immune Deficiency Disease (GRIDD), as it was then called, which we now know to be a precursor to HIV/AIDS. And I had this open clinic, people could come, there was no charge for doing so. And I received a message from a man in Dale, Colorado, who thought he had multiple sclerosis.”

When the man came to Ian’s clinic, it turned out that he didn’t have multiple sclerosis, but he was, in fact, deteriorating right before Ian’s eyes:

“What he had kept changing. So he would begin to lose sensation and then strength in the fingers and hands and one side of his face and another. I went off to go to the bathroom, and by the time I came back he was different again. He was changing so rapidly that he was at risk for respiratory failure or something of that nature.”

If you’re a microbe, he’ll hunt you down. And he’ll show no remorse.

But if you’ve got a question for Ian, ask in the comments and he’ll be glad to answer you.

Carl Sagan or Brad Pitt? And other urgent questions for our beloved Michelle Thaller.

Check it out in the player above and on Michelle’s Secret Life home page

Michelle Thaller is awake to the present. And you know this if you’ve seen any of her videos. Michelle is engaged - like all great scientists - in everything around her, in what’s happening right now.

But she’s also a time traveler. Time travelers need love too, right?

During our interview, Michelle explained:

“In so many ways, modern science makes you think differently about time. On a basic level, Einstein said that time and space are the same thing, which is not how we experience it. But somehow as a physicist, I feel very connected to events both in the past and in the future. We’re all sort of on this landscape of time that Einstein described.”

So sure Michelle’s connected to the past. How much more obvious could it be? She puts on 30 pounds of Elizabethan costuming so she can do Renaissance dances from hundreds of years ago. But when she’s doing her science, it has to be a different story, right? She’s an astronomer - it’s all about the brave new world of the future. The fact is, though, that Michelle often travels to the very same time period… in both her science and her secret life:

“So, I’m interested in the past, I’m interested in the far future. And somehow as a scientist, these things are very connected. And then there’s also something even more obvious that can be easy to overlook. When you look at things out in space, you see things as they were long ago. And some of the stars in the night’s sky that you’ll see tonight are on the order of 4- or 500 light years away.”

And what does that mean?

“Some of the light that you’re catching in your eye tonight left it’s point of origin - a star - when Queen Elizabeth I was still on the throne.”

Looking through a telescope.

Recreating dances from hundreds of years ago.

Our time traveler Michelle sees the same light when she does both of these things.

And it’s beautiful.

Are you a time traveler? A dancer? An explorer?

OK, so those are our questions for you.

Now you get to ask Michelle Thaller your questions. Use the comments, people.

Sue’s “10 Questions” video is live! We bombarded our favorite neurobiologist with some tough questions - from what it’s like to be married to an astronaut, to her favorite 3-D movie. Her answers did not disappoint.

Check it out in the player above and on Sue’s Secret Life homepage.