Silvia said...

"When I come to the laboratory of my father, I usually see some plates lying on the tables. These plates contain colonies of bacteria. These colonies remind me of a city with many inhabitants. In each bacterium there is a king. He is very long, but skinny. The king has many servants. These are thick and short, almost like balls. My father calls the king DNA, and the servants-enzymes... My father has discovered a servant who serves as a pair of scissors. If a foreign king invades a bacterium, this servant can cut him in small fragments, but he does not do any harm to his own king."

- Silvia (when 10 years old), 

daughter of Werner Arber, a Nobel Laureate (who shared the honor with Daniel Nathans and Hamilton O. Smith for the discovery of restriction enzymes and their application to molecular genetics).

Silvia Arber is now a professor of neurobiology at the University of Basel, studying neuronal circuit formation in the developing spinal cord. She is a recipient of the prestigious Latsis prize in the year 2003. The prize, comes with a cheque of SFr100, 000 ($75,100), is awarded annually by Switzerland’s National Science Foundation, aimed at encouraging young researchers.