Janet Davison Rowley was a world-renowned human geneticist at the University of Chicago. The first to discover a link between cancer and genetics, she received many top prizes, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the National Medal of Science and the Japan Prize. While working part time and raising four sons, she identified subtle changes in the chromosomes of leukemia patients. The discovery of these \u201ctranslocations\u201d led to a drug called Gleevec\u2014one of the most successful cancer therapies to date. <\/i>Scientists now use translocations as roadmaps, with more than 70 identified and linked to different cancers since Janet\u2019s discovery in 1972. I was Janet\u2019s biographer.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

Janet Rowley<\/a><\/span>\u00a0died in December, and I still wake up some mornings hoping I can still call her and invite myself to breakfast, anticipating a hug at the door and a bowl of homemade granola on the table. This is how it had been for the past seven years as I wrote her biography.<\/p>\n

We would shuffle to the back of her house, to the solarium, which felt like a greenhouse even in the depths of winter. After catching up on where I was with the manuscript, I would ask about recent news\u2014government spying, wars in Africa, new cancer research. I wanted Janet\u2019s take on this complicated world, as she was a wildly intelligent, creative woman who could offer perspective. In more recent months, the conversation would wind back to her husband, the innovative pathologist and immunologist Donald Rowley<\/a>, who passed away in February 2013.<\/p>\n

With regard to some obstacle tackled in the kitchen or another mystery solved in the lab, she would say, \u201cThat\u2019s just how he was\u2014brilliant.\u201d Janet always took the seat at the table right below his photos\u2014two computer printouts taped to the wall. \u201cCheers,\u201d we would say.<\/p>\n

Janet was brilliant, too. Her CV stretches to nearly 60 pages and holds so many awards and honorary degrees that even after seven years as her biographer I can\u2019t recall all of them. When Donald first brought her from Chicago to Minnesota to meet his parents in 1947, he told his father that Janet had one of the best minds he had ever encountered.<\/p>\n

One day before their 65th wedding anniversary and 65 years to the day after graduating medical school, Janet passed away. She left behind hundreds of family members and friends, millions of people affected by her work, and a laboratory still fighting to answer questions she initiated 40 years ago.<\/p>\n

I knew Janet through most of my 20s, and my work as a biographer positioned me to ask extremely intimate questions and witness what life meant to her. Here are five lessons I learned, which will stay with me for the rest of my life:<\/p>\n

1). Don\u2019t let age define what you accomplish.<\/b><\/p>\n

Janet was undaunted by certain societal expectations. She relied on her intuition and personal experiences to make decisions, rather than pressure from outside influences. When Janet applied to medical school in 1943, the school had already filled its quota of three women per class. She waited nine months until the next available opening. Thirty years later, Janet made her first major discovery. Too often, she has lamented, people tend to fault themselves if they haven\u2019t accomplished anything major by age 30. While other researchers let their self-perceived failures define them, Janet searched for patterns in chromosomes, leading to a discovery that translated into life-saving cancer treatment. Then, she kept at it. Janet was 50 before the broader scientific community accepted her work, 73 when she won the National Medal of Science, and 87 when she received the Japan Prize.<\/p>\n

2). Be an informed participant in the world.<\/b><\/p>\n

Janet was rallying against sequestration\u2019s potentially \u201ccatastrophic effects\u201d long before I began hearing the buzzword. That diligence came through in her professional life, too. On George W. Bush\u2019s Bioethics Council in the early 2000s, Janet reviewed reports on everything from stem cell research to health insurance. But she would turn in her edits days after deadline. The first time it happened, Council Chairman Leon Kass said he was furious. However, he added, \u201cShe did her homework. She read everything line-by-line, page-by-page. The reports were made clearly better by her care.\u201d\u00a0<\/b>So listen to NPR. Read\u00a0The New York Times<\/i>\u00a0over breakfast. Keep the latest periodicals, from\u00a0Nature<\/i>\u00a0to\u00a0The New Yorker<\/i>, close at hand. And do your homework.<\/p>\n

3). Give the people closest to you enough space to make their own decisions.<\/b><\/p>\n

This includes you. Janet said she always valued time in her garden, where she had many epiphanies. With space away from work, she could let her thoughts wander. Giving loved ones space may be more difficult, because it means letting go of control. At 19,\u00a0 Janet\u2019s son Donnie moved across the country to Oregon, where he lived in a tree house, removed from society. She worried until she realized the worry might kill her. And what good was that? Janet knew she couldn\u2019t do anything except be available when he needed her. She understood fiercely independent spirits, being one herself, and also seemed to believe that she couldn\u2019t make someone do something they weren\u2019t ready to do.<\/p>\n

4). Have a glass of wine with dinner, but then get back to work.<\/b><\/p>\n

You have to find something in life that you feel passionately about\u2014enough to do it even after a long work day, even when you could zone out on the couch instead. Your passion itself might take immense effort, but doing it will energize you. Especially for people just starting out, Janet said, \u201cYou\u2019re going to need patience.\u201d\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n

5). If you find a partner in life, support that person. (But support yourself, too.)\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n

Janet did this for Donald, whether that meant taking care of their sons while he returned to the lab after dinner, or standing by him later in life when he mass-produced a table he had designed, or opening up when he commissioned me to write her biography. However, Donald brought Janet to tears while editing one of her papers after she discovered the second translocation in leukemia: She claimed the translocations were driving cancer; he wanted to know what was causing the translocations. But Janet believed in her theory. She pushed herself\u2014first in the face of Donald\u2019s challenge, and then in front of scientists worldwide. The way we think about and treat cancer today would be much different if she hadn\u2019t.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Janet Davison Rowley was a world-renowned human geneticist at the University of Chicago. The first to discover a link between cancer and genetics, she received many top prizes, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the National Medal of Science and the Japan Prize. While working part time and raising four sons, she identified subtle changes […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":645,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.positive365.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/644"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.positive365.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.positive365.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.positive365.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.positive365.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=644"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.positive365.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/644\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":646,"href":"http:\/\/www.positive365.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/644\/revisions\/646"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.positive365.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/645"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.positive365.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=644"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.positive365.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=644"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.positive365.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=644"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}