Dr. James Van Etten was born in Virginia but grew up Peoria, Illinois. Something in his youth must have sparked an interest in science because he earned his bachelor’s degree in biology from Carleton College in 1960. Carleton is a well-regarded liberal arts institution in Northfield, Minn., about 400 miles from Peoria. Next, Jim earned a master’s and doctorate at the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana, both in plant pathology. For his postdoctoral work in 1965 and 1966, he did postdoctoral work in the Department of Genetics at the University of Pavia in Italy. Immediately after the postdoc ended, he joined the University of Nebraska–Lincoln as an assistant professor of plant pathology. As we’ll learn, he has had remarkable research success as he rose through the ranks, so much so that he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in  ...