Class 10 NCERT Solutions English Chapter 6 - The Making Of A Scientist

Ebright loved collecting butterflies and by the time he was in the second grade, he had collected all twenty-five species found around his hometown.

This probably would have been the end of his butterfly collecting, but his mother got him a children’s book called “The Travels of Monarch X” which was about how monarch butterflies migrate to Central America.

The book invited readers to help study butterfly migrations and actively participate in tagging butterflies to help in the research being conducted by Dr Frederick A. Urquhart.

Ebright then went on to raise an entire flock of butterflies in the basement of his home. In this way the book managed to keep his enthusiasm in the study of butterflies alive for several years and  opened the world of science to the eager young collector who never lost his scientific curiosity.

His mother encouraged his interest in learning. She took him on trips, bought him telescopes, microscopes, cameras, mounting materials, and other equipment and helped him in many other ways. When he didn’t have things to do, she helped him by finding work for him not physical work, but learning things.

His mother also got him a children’s book called “The Travels of Monarch X” which was about how monarch butterflies migrate to Central America. This book opened the world of science to the eager young collector and became a turning point in his life.

For his eighth grade project, Ebright tried to find the cause of a viral disease that killed nearly all monarch caterpillars every few years. He thought the disease might be carried by a beetle and so tried to raise caterpillars in the presence of beetles but did not get any real results. The next year his science fair project was testing the theory that viceroy butterflies copy monarchs. The theory was that viceroys look like monarchs because monarchs don’t taste good to birds. Viceroys, do taste good to birds. So the more they look like monarchs, the less likely they are to become a bird’s dinner. Ebright’s project was to see whether, in fact, birds would eat monarchs. He found that a starling would not eat ordinary bird food. It would eat all the monarchs it could get.

In his second year in high school, Richard Ebright began the research that led to his discovery of an unknown insect hormone. lndirectly, it also led to his new theory on the life of cells.

To understand the purpose of the twelve tiny gold spots on a monarch pupa he built a device that showed that the spots were producing a hormone necessary for the butterfly’s full development.

In his senior year, he grew cells from a monarch’s wing in a culture and showed that the cells would divide and develop into normal butterfly wing scales only if they were fed the hormone from the gold spots.

After his freshman year at Harvard University, Ebright went back to the laboratory of the Department of Agriculture and using the laboratory’s sophisticated instruments, was able to identify the hormone’s chemical structure.

During his junior year, Ebright got the idea for his new theory about cell life.

The qualities that go into the making of a scientist are to start with a first-rate mind, add curiosity, and mix in the will to win for the right reasons. Besides a driving curiosity it also requires that one has a bright mind.One should be competitive, and not interested in winning for winning’s sake or winning to get a prize but because one wanted to do the best job one could.

For the right reasons, he or she must always want to be the best.