Lab Girl - Couverture rigide

“It is a rare breed of scientist who is both a leader in her field and a great writer, but Hope Jahren is both. A tenured professor at the University of Hawaii, Jahren has built a career and a reputation in science by unearthing secrets hidden in fossilized plant life. Her work has resulted in at least 70 studies in dozens of journals, but it’s also given her a platform to talk about something else: widespread sexual harassment and discrimination in science. On her blog, in op-eds and in her new memoir, Lab Girl, Jahren wields her influence to call out a culture that has caused women to flee the field she so loves. That’s why she does it: she loves science. And whether she’s writing about lab funding, discrimination or deciduous trees, she has a way of making you love it too.” —Siobhan O’Connor, TIME, 100 Most Influential People

“Lab Girl made me look at trees differently. It compelled me to ponder the astonishing grace and gumption of a seed. Perhaps most importantly, it introduced me to a deeply inspiring woman—a scientist so passionate about her work I felt myself vividly with her on every page. This is a smart, enthralling, and winning debut.” —Cheryl Strayed

“Lab Girl surprised, delighted, and moved me. I was drawn in from the start by the clarity and beauty of Jahren’s prose, whether she was examining the inner world of a seed,  the ecosystem around the trunk of a tree, or recounting her own inspiring journey. With Lab Girl, Jahren joins those talented scientists who are able to reveal to us the miracle of this world in which we live.” —Abraham Verghese

“Jahren has dedicated her life’s work to the study of trees with extraordinary single-mindedness and insight. Lab Girl is both an engaging account of her maturity as a scientist and a heartfelt paean to plants. They emerge from her memoir as much more than a bundle of biological processes, but beings with strange, secret lives, supported by astonishingly elegant machinery . . . Lucid, brilliant.” —Harriet Baker, Times Literary Supplement

“Fascinating, engaging . . . immediately engrossing and extremely readable . . . Leaves, soil and seeds light a fire in the mind and heart of Hope Jahren. In her hands, you will never feel the same way about these words again . . . The main theme of her memoir is survival: in science, in life, in love. For humans and for plants. In these pages you’ll find a renewed interest in the natural world, and notice things that have been hidden in plain sight. Jahren marvels at the perfectly clean break of a leaf stem, the first leaves of a new plant—and you will find yourself marvelling too. She writes: ‘Love and learning are similar, in that they can never be wasted.’ And neither is time spent reading this book.” —Lucie Green, The Guardian (UK) 

“Magnificent, illuminating. Moving, resonant, relatable . . . On the journey she has taken since childhood, into the university world, and ultimately building three research labs that bear her name, earning multiple Fulbrights and one brand or another of genius awards, Jahren will never lose her deep affection for the wonders of the known and unknown world. A gorgeous book of life. Jahren contains multitudes. Her book is love as life. Trees as truth.” —Beth Kephart, Chicago Tribune
 
“Breathtakingly honest, affecting . . . Geobiologist Hope Jahren was not satisfied presenting only the pieces of her story that fit within the constraints of a scientific manuscript. In [this] behind-the-scenes tour of science, we join her for misadventures and triumphs as she sets up three labs and conducts research in the Canadian Arctic, Ireland, Hawaii, and across the continental United States. The purview of a geobiologist includes everything from soil science and geology to atmospheric science and botany. Jahren is game for all of it. She connects her own experiences to the works of Charles Dickens, E. E. Cummings, and Harper Lee—often humorously—with the same ease that she describes leaf venation. This mingling of the literary and the scientific highlights their connections, as well as the humanity underlying both disciplines. Fascinating plant facts do the double work of opening avenues for deeper reflection . . . At its core, Lab Girl is a book about seeing—with the eyes, but also the hands and the heart. Jahren spends the book teaching us that if we just look closely enough, we can see the opal lattice on a hackberry seed, the depths of loyalty in our closest friends, the wonder in a single leaf, and what we ourselves are supposed to become . . . Gorgeous.” —Carolyn Beans, American Scientist
 
“Hope Jahren is the voice that science has been waiting for. Lab Girl is a tell-all autobiography that demystifies a research career, even as it reveals its strangeness. She writes about the plight of women in research academia, but Lab Girl is much more. From childhood origins as a loner through a 20-year career, Jahren’s voice is clear, compelling and uncompromisingly honest . . . Plant development becomes a metaphor for her own progress in the challenging landscape of academia . . . She’s the type of scientist who cheerfully spends three seasons drilling through Arctic turf; between sessions of hard graft, her lab group takes road trips to see bizarre attractions, or attempts elaborate campfire cuisine.  Amid descriptions of the work, uncomfortable secrets of science are laid bare. Jahren pulls no punches on the stark realities of being a woman in science, which won’t come as a surprise to many. This is not a how-to manual, but young scientists of either gender could learn a lot simply from Jahren’s perseverance. Lab Girl is funny, full of joyous moments, and often sad. But despite all the hardship, there is clearly nowhere else that Jahren would rather be.” —Jennifer Rohn, Nature
 
“Remarkable . . . The ferocious curiosity that drives scientists to new discoveries is similar to the keen observation of compelling writers. Jahren’s new book is an exemplar of novel science and sharp writing. Lab Girl is the acutely personal account of the drive that propels people to the frontier of an academic discipline. The book speaks not only to aspiring botanist, but to anyone who has ever relentlessly pursued vocational excellence . . . Jahren’s journey is never sidetracked by her real passion for botany. Her eloquent rhapsodies about peerless soil samples, willow trees, and the tenacity of a cactus prompt a deeply inquisitive spirit in readers . . . A compelling read for anyone interested in an up-close account of a passionate woman. [A] pure, tenacious pursuit of excellence permeates Jahren’s career—and her book.” —Rachel Wilkerson, Verily
 
“Luminous . . . Peppered with literary references to Genet, Beckett, Dickens and Thoreau, Jahren’s honest prose is insightful, eloquent, and funny, and she has a gift for explaining hard science in the most bewitching way . . . The heart of the book is the story of her touching relationship with Bill, her brilliant lab partner. Lab Girl is a book about being a woman in science as much as it is a clarion call to follow your passion. In the end, it’s easy to see the book as a love note—not just to plants, to science, and to the sweetness of discovery, but also to friendship and loyalty, to journeys big and small, to belonging and becoming.” —Kathleen Yale, Orion

“Sparkling, unexpected . . . delightfully, wickedly funny . . . precise, detailed, engrossing. Any woman who opens her book with the line ‘There is nothing in the world more perfect than a slide rule’ already has my heart. Lab Girl is the story of a girl who becomes a scientist. It’s also the story of a career and the endless struggles over funding, recognition, and politics that get in the way. It’s the story of the plants and soil Hope Jahren studies. But—and this is the weirdest, coolest part about this book—it is really the story of two lab partners and their uncommon bond. Hope and Bill’s is not any ordinary friendship; she lets us into this peculiar, inscrutable, enduring association with both honesty and compassion. When two misfits meet, they tend to connect at a deep, unspoken, lizard-brain level that cannot be easily explained to anyone else. The fact that she even tried—much less succeeded so brilliantly—to put their lab-partners-for-life arrangement on paper is one of the most impressive feats in this extraordinary book . . .With Lab Girl, Jahren has taken the form of the memoir and done something remarkable with it. She swerves from observations about plant life to a report from the interior of her tortured brain to adventures on the road with Bill—and somehow, it all works . . . I love this book for its honesty, its hilarity and its brilliant sharp edges. Jahren has some serious literary chops to go along with all that science she gets up to. I can’t wait to see what comes next. Powerful and disarming.” —Amy Stewart, The Washington Post

“Jahren writes with such flair that a reviewer is tempted to just move out of the way and quote her; from the prologue on, a reader itches to call out fun facts to innocents nearby. Deft and flecked with humor, Lab Girl is also a hybrid—a scientist’s memoir of a quirky, gritty, fascinating life, punctuated by mesmerizing dispatches on botany . . . The mixing of C.P. Snow’s two cultures [the sciences and the humanities] gives the book a bright spark, like playing tennis with an intriguing, ambidextrous friend. Jahren’s improvised path as a woman scientist forms the spine of Lab Girl. Her lab partner Bill, a sort of fraternal twin, carries the weight of emotional confederacy in the book . . . Like Robert Sapolsky’s A Primate’s Memoir or Helen Macdonald’s H is for Hawk, Lab Girl delivers the zing of a beautiful mind in nature.”  —Karen R. Long, Seattle Times

* “Sublime, entertaining . . . With good humor, plenty of science, scattered literary allusions and the occasional sarcastic zinger, Lab Girl is a memoir of a plant research scientist [that] illuminates both the science of the plant world and the ebb and flow of her personal life—her struggles to find professional success, love and family. Jahren emerges as a smart, practical, good-hearted woman who loves her work and also finds joy in her husband, young son and best friend, Bill.”—Bruce Jacobs, Shelf Awareness (starred)

“Revelatory . . . a veritable jungle of ideas and sensations. Chapters on the life cycle of plants, Jahren’s specialty, alternate with episodes from her life as she copes with early obstacles or produces her first original experimental result . . . Lab Girl celebrates the unanticipated rewards of her idiosyncrasies. Not least of these is Jahren’s friendship with Bill, her scientific partner of over 20 years. A pronounced oddball, a seeker of knowledge, and a trader of sardonic wisecracks, Bill is Jahren’s unfailing, unfussy sidekick; [he’s] never happier than when on the job, savoring the complexities of soil layers or scavenging secondhand equipment for the laboratories the two of them have built together . . . Jahren captures the ramshackle poetry of this friendship, whose loyalty is so deep and abiding that it forges a great love story, in spite of the utter absence of erotic interest in either party. Its strength springs from the partners’ shared passion for their vocation—with all its tedium and frustration and uncertainty and wonder . . . Winning.” —Laura Miller, Slate

“As a young girl growing up in Minnesota, Jahren spent her formative years in the labs of her father, a science teacher at the local community college. But while her time in the lab with her father may have steered Jahren toward science, her mother’s quest to earn a Bachelor’s degree later in life meant that as a young girl, Jahren read the classics alongside her mother. It is this literary upbringing fueled by science that heralds Jahren’s memoir as the beginning of a career along the lines of Annie Dillard or Diane Ackerman. In Lab Girl, she constructs her own life story— her struggling years as an undergraduate, the persistent sexist attitude of the scientific community, the constant lack of funds, her growing awareness of her bipolar disorder—with the attention to detail and respect for organic growth that has earned her increased recognition and funding in the later years of her career. The strongest story running through the memoir is a love story: that between Jahren and her colleague, Bill—not her husband but work partner, travel companion, surrogate brother and best friend. Jahren considers us all scientists, operating within our own sphere of study, and she writes this book as ‘one scientist to another.’” —Meganne Febrega, Minneapolis StarTribune

“A scientific memoir that’s beautifully human. Jahren, a geochemist, botanist and geobiologist, has spent the better part of the past two decades studying the secret lives of plants. Part memoir, part biology text, part criticism of the status quo of the scientific community, Lab Girl reminds us that, in ways, we are strikingly like our blossoming brethren. Lab Girl is anything but technical. It is full of pleasing turns of phrase, references to literary figures like Genet and Dickens, and a running botany allusion that punctuates the book’s biographical story. Most of all, it’s deeply personal, following Jahren’s battle with manic depression; a harrowing pregnancy; her unending struggle to secure funding in a quickly drying financial desert; and the loving platonic relationship she shares with her protégé and lab manager, Bill. Jahren’s work has taken her around the world, from the ancient forests of Norway and Denmark to the remote and treeless Arctic, and most recently to the lush gardens of Hawaii. Throughout, she inserts short essays about the life cycles of plants—the unwavering obstinacy of the cactus, or the careful budgeting of resources of a deciduous tree—juxtaposed with the traumas and triumphs of her own academic and personal life. It is not the book a scientist usually writes; in its depth and rawness, Lab Girl steps into uncharted territory. It is a book, Jahren [says], intended to break down the wall between scientists and the rest of the world.” —Melissa Cronin, Popular Science
 
“A recollection of a life in botanical science; lessons in plant life; a story of Jahren’s relationship with an eccentric co-worker. The three elements combine to form one fascinating memoir.” —Entertainment Weekly, “10 Books You Have to Read in April”
 
“A powerful new memoir . . . Jahren is a remarkable scientist who turns out to be a remarkable writer as well. A geobiologist who can take you into the deepest secrets of plants and earth, then turn around and stun you with her own deeply human story. Think Stephen Jay Gould or Oliver Sacks. But Jahren is a woman in science, who speaks plainly to just how rugged that can be. And to the incredible machinery of life around us.” —Tom Ashbrook, On Point, National Public Radio

“Gratifying, ...

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A seed knows how to wait. Most seeds wait for at least a year before starting to grow; a cherry seed can wait for a hundred years with no problem. What exactly each seed is waiting for is known only to that seed. Some unique trigger-combination of temperature-moisture-light and many other things is required to convince a seed to jump off the deep end and take its chance—to take its one and only chance to grow.

A seed is alive while it waits. Every acorn on the ground is just as alive as the three-hundred-year-old oak tree that towers over it. Neither the seed nor the old oak is growing; they are both just waiting. Their waiting differs, however, in that the seed is waiting to flourish while the tree is only waiting to die. When you go into a forest you probably tend to look up at the plants that have grown so much taller than you ever could. You probably don’t look down, where just beneath your single footprint sit hundreds of seeds, each one alive and waiting. They hope against hope for an opportunity that will probably never come. More than half of these seeds will die before they feel the trigger that they are waiting for, and during awful years every single one of them will die. All this death hardly matters, because the single birch tree towering over you produces at least a quarter of a million new seeds every single year. When you are in the forest, for every tree that you see, there are at least a hundred more trees waiting in the soil, alive and fervently wishing to be.

A coconut is a seed that’s as big as your head. It can float from the coast of Africa across the entire Atlantic Ocean and then take root and grow on a Caribbean island. In contrast, orchid seeds are tiny: one million of them put together add up to the weight of a single paper clip. Big or small, most of every seed is actually just food to sustain a waiting embryo. The embryo is a collection of only a few hundred cells, but it is a working blueprint for a real plant with root and shoot already formed.

When the embryo within a seed starts to grow, it basically just stretches out of its doubled-over waiting posture, elongating into official ownership of the form that it assumed years ago. The hard coat that surrounds a peach pit, a sesame or mustard seed, or a walnut’s shell mostly exists to prevent this expansion. In the laboratory, we simply scratch the hard coat and add a little water and it’s enough to make almost any seed grow. I must have cracked thousands of seeds over the years, and yet the next day’s green never fails to amaze me. Something so hard can be so easy if you just have a little help. In the right place, under the right conditions, you can finally stretch out into what you’re supposed to be.

After scientists broke open the coat of a lotus seed (Nelumbo nucifera) and coddled the embryo into growth, they kept the empty husk. When they radiocarbon-dated this discarded outer shell, they discovered that their seedling had been waiting for them within a peat bog in China for no less than two thousand years. This tiny seed had stubbornly kept up the hope of its own future while entire human civilizations rose and fell. And then one day this little plant’s yearning finally burst forth within a laboratory. I wonder where it is right now.

Each beginning is the end of a waiting. We are each given exactly one chance to be. Each of us is both impossible and inevitable. Every replete tree was first a seed that waited.