One of my mentors was a cousin by marriage who was a biophysicist, prominent too - he was terraforming Mars with NASA when he died. He and his wife Jane were founding professors at York University. Jane had travelled by bus to Idi Amin’s Uganda to research her doctorate from the London School of Economics, proceeded to a law degree, and he ended his career as head of the Royal Society. God gave me my terrifying parents, but he also gave me Bob and Jane and I would fall on them periodically, sleep in his basement study, lined with tribal...