When a new species is discovered, there are a lot of options for naming it. As long as you don’t name it after yourself, you can basically do what you want. A significant physical characteristic. The place you discovered it. An important mentor. Or, well, we saw from fruit fly gene names that scientists are […]
Animals, of course, play a big role in many scientists’ lives. Sometimes they are research subjects. Sometimes they’re a source of inspiration. In my own work, large portions of my thesis were written with my laptop sitting delicately on top of my cat Schroedinger. At the other end of the spectrum, I frequently had to […]