John Bonner - Collecting mosquitoes puts me off applied biology for life (45/59)
52 views · Published 30 June 2017 · 1:30 · Indexed 8 November 2026
Channel: Web of Stories - Life Stories of Remarkable People · 2017 · Science & Technology
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: Charles Easterday Renn was my tutor. And he likes applied biology and he felt like that was my career, which he was wrong. And he had himself discovered the wasting disease of eel grass as a peculiar, interesting organism. And in his desire to make an applied biologist of me, he got me in touch with people in the Tennessee Valley Mosquito Control. And all it did was it absolutely convinced me that that's not what I wanted to do because it seemed to me there we spent all day long in swamps up to the waist, collecting mosquito larvae. And then, sometimes, we'd be in villages collecting adult mosquitoes. And that's about all there was to it, except it was my first exposure to the South which was not really very pleasant. There was some people I was very fond of, but on the whole, all the prejudices were out front everywhere.
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