As the son of a former governor of Massachusetts, I was primed early for a career in politics, but since boyhood I was far more interested in science than in traditional forms of public service. Nonetheless, at Harvard University I declared myself a government major – a plan that gave way the day I had lunch at Harvard’s Museum of Comparative Zoology, where huge plaster casts of dinosaur tracks and the smell of formaldehyde triggered my inborn love of nature. I immediately switched from government to biology, and so the adventure began.