Stanley N. Cohen

My dad and I were talking about how inventions are happening nowadays, whether at universities or not. For an example of the latter situation, I mentioned billion-dollar data centers being built by companies to run AI. For an example of the former situation, I told him about Cohen and Boyer figuring out in circa 1970 how to use enzymes to cut and reconnect to each other pieces of DNA, which spawned genetic engineering. Due to experience, observations, and age, my father has a wiser perspective of this dynamic topic. But I myself hoped that universities would at least continue to be environments for singular, broad-reaching discoveries made by people freely pursuing their curiosity. Then I recounted the following story about Stan Cohen.

The co-inventor of recombinant DNA technology is Stanley N. Cohen, born in 1935. When he and I had lunch in June and were talking about my impending new job as a K-12 teacher, he told me this memory:

As a first-grader, when he learned in school that the world is round, he asked his teacher, “If the earth is round, then why don’t the people at the bottom fall off?”

I was delighted at this brilliant question from a first-grader. I asked him what his teacher answered.

He said, “She said that was the most stupid question she had ever heard. That hurt me for years afterwards, but it didn’t stop me from asking questions.”