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Eric Olson of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center is best known for his pioneering research on the molecular and genetic mechanisms of cardiac and skeletal muscle development and regeneration. Olson (Figure 1) is also a musician and prize-winning mentor. The full interview (found on the JCI website at www.jci.org/videos/cgms) probes these multiple motivations and includes his replies to questions about whether his hair once had color and if he has ever liked being a department chair.
JCI: Where did you grow up?
Olson: I was born in Rochester, New York. My father grew up on a Norwegian farm in South Dakota without running water and without electricity, and he escaped as soon as he could to go to college and then became a chemist. My father worked at Kodak in Rochester, New York, and there he met my mother. My mother was a musician. She and her mother before her taught piano and music theory at the Eastman School of Music. I was raised in Rochester during my early life, and then my father had an adventurous spirit, so we moved to North Carolina when I was in grade school. I lived next to the campus of Wake Forest University. As I got to high school, we started a more nomadic existence. I went to 10 th grade in Richmond, Virginia, 11th grade in Fort Worth, Texas, and 12th grade in a small town in upstate New York called Norwich. By the end of my high school experience, I was ready to find some familiarity again, so I applied to Wake Forest to go back to a place I found familiar.
JCI: What were you like as a kid?
Olson: I was probably an average student. I was always interested in science, even from grade school I remember when the class would go to the library, I would gravitate to the books about science. I knew I would go into some sort of career in science, but coming from a musical family, music was always a part of my life growing up. I started out playing piano as a young child, and then I played trumpet all through high school in the symphony and jazz orchestra, then later picked up other instruments.
I...