It started, as many writing tales do, with John McPhee. In late 2011, I was reading a piece by the legendary writer, in which he talked about penning a series of profiles that were linked by a central character. I started thinking about doing something similar with a scientific bent—a story that would start with a single important person and trace the line of their academic descendants. Science, after all, is full of legacies. People learn their trade in the labs of senior scientists and go on to train students of their own. I wanted to explore how attitudes, skills and ideas are passed down these familial lines.

Finding the right person was hard. I needed someone who had made