From science fairs to the cell

A loss that taught him. In seventh grade he entered a county science fair with slides of frog tissue under a microscope, and lost. 'It was really a sad feeling.' He saw that the winners had done real experiments, not just a neat display.

A real experiment, and a win. For eighth grade he tried to find the cause of a viral disease that kills nearly all monarch caterpillars every few years. He thought a beetle might carry it. 'I didn't get any real results… But I went ahead and showed that I had tried the experiment. This time I won.'

A result that surprised him. Next he tested the idea that viceroy butterflies copy monarchs, because birds don't like the taste of monarchs. He found that a starling would not eat ordinary bird food, but 'would eat all the monarchs it could get', against the theory. The project still won a prize. (Later research by others showed viceroys probably do copy monarchs.)

The twelve gold spots. 'Everyone assumed the spots [on a monarch pupa] were just ornamental.' Dr Urquhart didn't. Ebright and another student built a device and showed the spots make a hormone needed for the butterfly's full development. That won first place at the county fair, and third in zoology at the International Science and Engineering Fair. Next year: first place. Then he showed wing cells grow into scales only when fed this hormone.

Harvard and DNA. At Harvard he found the hormone's chemical structure. One night, looking at X-ray photos, he saw how a cell can 'read' the blueprint of its DNA. He and his room-mate James R. Wong worked all night building models and later wrote the paper. He graduated second in a class of 1,510.