The Frog Scientist

The critically acclaimed Scientist in the Field book about how one boy’s interest in backyard science inspired a career in scientific discovery. Growing up in South Carolina, Tyrone Hayes didn’t worry about pesticides. He just liked to collect frogs, and later found his calling in an amphibian research lab. While scientists around the globe discovered frogs were dying of habitat loss and disease, Tyrone learned the most commonly used pesticide in the United States, atrazine, might also play a role. When he tested it in his Berkeley lab, it caused some of the males to mutate into half-male, half-female frogs. He wanted to know what was happening and why, so he traveled America to do the research and find out.