Richard Ebright grew up in Pennsylvania where he developed a strong interest in science from a young age through collecting rocks, fossils, and butterflies with his mother's encouragement. He excelled in science fair competitions through his experiments with monarch butterflies, discovering the purpose of gold spots and how hormones affect cell development. His work won several prizes and helped establish that DNA is the genetic blueprint for life. Ebright's curiosity, dedication to experiments, and competitive spirit helped make him a successful scientist.

1. The Making of a Scientist
Richard Ebright

2. The Making of a Scientist
This is the story of a young and bright
scientist named Richard H. Ebright.
He grew up north of Reading, Pennsylvania.
At the age of 24 he excited the scientific
world with his theory of cells.
As a child he collected rocks fossils and
coins.

3.  A great driving force in making of him as a
scientist
 Always encouraged him & developed his
interest in learning
 Took him on trips
 Bought him telescope, microscopes, cameras,
mounting materials etc.
 Got him the book ‘The Travels of Monarch X’
which opened a new world for him

4. He was her –
(i) whole life after his father’s death,
(ii) only companion
She would find work for him that will
make him learn new things, if does not
have any some day.
He liked it and wanted to learn too.

5. By the time he was in second
grade , he had collected all the
twenty five species of the
butterflies found around his
home town in six weeks.

6.  The book is about how butterflies migrate to
Central America.
 It was written by Dr. Frederick Urquhart of
the University of Toronto, Canada.
 Readers were invited to help study butterfly
migration.
 He also asked readers to tag them for research.
 This book opened a world of science to this
young collector.

7.  But it was impossible to catch so many of
them in six weeks.
 So he started raising a flock of butterflies
in the basement of his house.
 He would catch a female monarch, take her
eggs and raise them. (Life Cycle)
 But as he didn’t get much feedback he
started losing interest in it.

8. When he was in the seventh grade, he
participated in a science fair and lost.
Here he gets a hint of what real science
is. He learns that science is not a neat
display of something but doing real
experiments.
He had just shown slides of frog tissues.

9.  He wrote to Dr. Urquhart for ideas and got
many suggestions for experiments.
 He kept on working on them throughout his
high school which led him to many prize projects
on national & international levels.
 In eighth class he found out the cause of a viral
disease that killed all monarch caterpillars. He
raised them in presence of beetles.

10.  They are the food of birds.
 Viceroys taste good whereas monarchs do not
taste good for birds.
 The viceroys look like monarchs because they
want to trick the birds and save themselves.
 This project was placed first in the zoology
division.

11.  He tried to find out the purpose of the twelve
tiny gold spots on a monarch pupa.
 Earlier it was assumed that they were just
ornamental.
 But later Ebright , along with his fellow
students, showed that the spots were producing
a hormone necessary for their full development.
 It gave him entry in the International Science &
Engineering Fair

12.  In his senior year, he grew cells from a
monarch’s wings in a culture and showed
that the cells would divide and develop
into normal butterfly wing scales only if
they were fed the hormones from the gold
spots.
 This project won him the first place for
zoology at the international fair.

13.  He studied the photos of the chemical structure
of a hormone in the X-ray.
 This photo solved his doubt on DNA.
 He determined that the DNA is the substance
in the nucleus that controls heredity.
 So DNA was established to be the blueprint
for life.

14.  Richard Ebright became a scientist because he
had a driving curiosity along with a bright
mind.
 He started his journey from collecting the
butterflies.
 This led him to discover the theory of life cells.
 He was not just interested in science.
 He took interest in other activities too.

15.  There art many qualities that go into making of
a scientist.
 He was curious, dedicative and hardworking.
 He was competitive but not in a bad sense.
 He had a will to win.
 He was intelligent and worked for the right
reasons.
 He didn’t run after prizes.

22. PRESENTED BY
N K F THAKUR
TGT ENGLISH
JNV HOSHANGABAD (MP)