The Organismic and Evolutionary Biology professor and Arboretum director took FM on a tour of the Arboretum, discussing botany, evolution, and his love of trees along the way. “Everything that is our reality has been shaped by plants,” he says.
As a pledge, the fraternity made Smoot lay down on the bridge over 300 times, painting ticks at each smoot. Almost 70 years later, the Smoot markings remain, allowing pedestrians to measure their journey in “smoots.” According to a sign on the bridge, Cambridge and Boston are exactly 364.4 smoots apart.
Smith’s enduring attachment to his time is representative of his broader artistic philosophy, one of introspection and intimacy. Part of that philosophy emerged from an encounter with the groundbreaking photojournalist Gordon Parks during his visit to the yearbook staff.
The historian of science sat down with Fifteen Minutes to talk about gender, science, and her ideal superpower. "Science is done by humans in context in cultural spaces, and is inflected by those contexts," she says.