Hope Jahren's memoir Lab Girl opens with a poignant sketch of her father's classroom lab, where she spent countless hours in her youth. The chapter hit a sentimental spot in my heart that romanticizes life at the bench. Picturing the curious young girl looking through lab drawers and imagining all the exciting experiments she could perform, I was reminded of the intense inquisitiveness that is at the heart of every scientist.

The poetic nature of the first chapter made it clear that Jahren is a superb writer (her personal website is aptly titled HopeJahrensurecanwrite.com). As a Scientific Editor, my working hours are spent reading research papers, which Jahren describes perfectly:

"...a rare species of prose capable of distilling ten years of work by five people into six published pages, written in a language that very few people can read and that no one ever speaks. This writing ... with the precision of a laser scalpel ... is a type of artifice, a size-zero mannequin designed to showcase the glory of the dress that would be much less perfect on any real person."

Thus, much like Jannell, I was surprised to find poetry in scientific writing.

To organize the book, Jahren utilizes the life history of a tree: as a seed, finding a place to germinate; as a sapling, finding the room to take root and grow; and as an adult, finding the resources to flower and bear fruit. This structure allows her to punctuate her personal stories about her development as a scientist with fascinating information about her research on trees and plants. Jahren's writing style balances the poetry and beauty of the natural world with the nuts and bolts of scientific research. As a result, the book made me start looking at the trees and plants around me in a different way.

Research in the Jahren lab focuses on stable carbon isotopes in the life and evolution of plants. Her work is considered "curiosity-driven" research, where the ultimate payoff is unclear, and the work is more about contributing to the pool of knowledge. She details the abysmally low budgets for funding this type of research. A major theme of the book is the pressure to secure funding, particularly when you have other people's jobs relying on you.

In addition to funding stress, she encounters her fair share of the usual problems of a research scientist: gender bias, mental illness, the two-body problem, and balancing motherhood with profession. Early in her career, Jahren is lucky enough to find a partner in crime in Bill, an undergrad in a class she teaches as a grad student. Bill helps drive her research forward and ultimately encourages her to share her story of science and discovery. Bill is that inexplicable and incongruous type that seems drawn to life as a scientist. Hope and Bill form a lifelong partnership, sharing a passion for science and an ability to forego sleep when there are experiments to be done.

Curiosity-driven science is not just a description of her work for funding agencies—it's also the way Jahren approaches science in the field. For example, she describes a trip to Ireland with Bill, where they take a long, meandering walk in search of a question. A random step on a boggy, mossy hillside leads them to unexpected observations that drive scientific inquiry. In this way, Jahren is still able to use her child-like curiosity to approach science, asking questions based on observations of the world around her. Luckily, she is also adept at sharing that wonder and excitement through her writing.

Reading Lab Girl will definitely remind any scientist of why they fell in love with science and, hopefully, convince non-scientists that all science is worth funding.