Donald Paul Weeks grew up in a small farm south of Terre Haute, Indiana. In his youth, he participated in 4-H programs that must have sparked an interest in science because he earned his bachelor's degree from Purdue University in 1963. Purdue is about 90 miles north of Terre Haute. Don's doctoral work was at the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana for a project about protein synthesis during maize germination. Next, he did postdoctoral work at the Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia, where his research concerned the mechanisms by which protein synthesis was regulated in eukaryotic cells. And I should say “is regulated.” After the postdoc ended, he remained at Fox Chase as a researcher from 1970 to 1981. From there, he moved across the country to Sandoz Agro Research Institute in the Stanford University Industrial Park in Palo Alto. He ...