In Chapter 1 of 19 in her 2011 Capture Your Flag interview with host Erik Michielsen, Stacie Grossman Bloom answers "When Did You First Become Interested in Science?" She shares how it began as a child, from capturing fireflies to choosing Trivia Pursuit green (or science) questions to naturally being inquisitive to reading an Encyclopedia Britannica set end to end.
Stacie Grossman Bloom is now the Executive Director at the NYU Neuroscience Institute at NYU Langone Medical Center. Previously, she was VP and Scientific Director at the New York Academy of Sciences (NYAS). She earned her PhD in Neurobiology and Cell Biology at Georgetown University and did a post-doctoral fellowship at Rockefeller University in New York City. She earned her BA in Chemistry and Psychology from the University of Delaware.
Transcript:
Erik Michielsen: When did you first become interested in science?
Stacie Grossman Bloom: So, I became interested in science as a little kid, I think. I was always sort of running around the yard and capturing fireflies and looking at insects and playing with things, playing trivial pursuit -- I always wanted to land on the green, I was always I think naturally inquisitive and always really interested in science. I can’t remember really a time that I wasn’t questioning things, my surroundings, myself, religion. And I just really can’t remember a time where that wasn’t something interesting to me.
Erik Michielsen: What about this encyclopedia set that you picked up when you were 6 or 7 years old?
Stacie Grossman Bloom: So, when I was a kid there was a traveling encyclopedia salesman who came through my town and my father bought, at our front door, bought a set of encyclopedia Britannica’s -- those really big leather bound expensive sets of books. And, either he bought it separately or it came with like a children’s encyclopedia set. And, I remember literally reading the entire encyclopedia set. Starting with A and going all the way to the end and it was all illustrated, it was perfect for kids. Literally read the whole encyclopedia.