Shortly after this talk at NASA Ames yesterday, Nobel Laureate Dr. Baruch Blumberg died of a heart attack.
I have the peculiar sense that I may have taken the very last photo of this great man’s life.
For those unfamiliar with him, he discovered the hepatitis B virus and developed the vaccine, saving millions of lives. The NYT eulogy today “compared his discoveries to those of Jonas Salk, developer of the polio vaccine.”
But his connection to NASA comes from another activity, one that I have found fascinating over the years. In his second career, he was the founding director of NASA’s Astrobiology Institute, “to address three profound questions: How does life begin and evolve? Does life exist elsewhere in the universe? And what is life’s future on Earth and beyond?”
“To these seemingly disparate endeavors — investigating disease-causing organisms and postulating alien or primordial life forms — Dr. Blumberg contributed a broadened understanding of the evolutionary phenomenon called polymorphism, in which a species can adapt to an environment through changes in appearances and functions.”
Speaking yesterday at NASA’s International Lunar Research Park Exploratory Workshop (brainstorming how to establish a permanent moon base):
“This sounds like a classic NASA mission. One: it sounds impossible. Two: it has no funding. [laughter] That’s a guarantee for success.”
“When we went to the moon, we discovered Earth.”
Life is precious.
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