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John Bonner - Upstaged by slime molds (24/59)

143 views · Published 3 July 2017 · 2:31 · Indexed 1 November 2026

Channel: Web of Stories - Life Stories of Remarkable People · 2017 · Science & Technology

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To hear more of John Bonner’s stories, go to the playlist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GoKbjMVfBA0&list=PLVV0r6CmEsFzJx77ir9rbTxVC9EnCyfHD

Born in 1920, John Bonner is one of the world's leading experts on cellular slime molds. His prime interests are in evolution and developmental biology and he uses cellular slime molds as a tool to understand both disciplines. [Listener: Christopher Sykes; date recorded: 2007]

TRANSCRIPT: [CS] And what did you want to know, really?

The answer is a mechanism of development. How is it that this one cell becomes a mass of cells and what different ways can it happen among…? Of course, that wasn't Cap's interest, not Weston's interest. And there just seemed to be infinite possibilities. But I'll tell you a story about this, which comes from when I was a graduate student and I was working on them, and had already done that early film I did which was better than anything else I did. And I was asked as a graduate student to go to Yale to give a seminar so I assumed it would be a small group of cryptogamic botanists and I arrived there and I was absolutely terrified because it was in a big lecture room, with the whole botany department, and the whole zoology department. And so I gave my seminar and I was fascinated afterwards because people really didn't show any interest in my brilliant experiments - they were only interested in hearing about the life cycle of the organism and it was really quite amazing. And after it was all over, I was going up to get a cup of tea and suddenly there was this voice behind me saying, 'Bonner, if I had to start all over again, I'd work with those slime molds'. And this was Ross Harrison who was probably the greatest, I think, embryologist there ever was, and a very modest, kindly sort of person. And anyhow, that was a big moment.

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