2020 Broadway
Notes Going Underground: Joram Piatigorsky’s Book Launch
January 28, 2020
Shakespeare and Company
2020 Broadway
“Dying is very relaxing,” we learn in Notes Going Underground. This and other musings on life and death at the launch of Joram’s latest short story collection.
About Joram Piatigorsky:
Scientists develop hypotheses – stories – to bridge gaps in the narrative between the known and the unknown. We look at the specimens and data we collect and try to tease out meaning, examining what we have, questioning what we might be missing, and trying to reconcile the two. We do this in hopes that others will come behind us, building on the work we have done, and thereby changing the stories we tell.
As a molecular biologist and eye researcher, I spent close to 50 years engaged in this work, in the field and in the laboratory at the National Institutes of Health. Here, in 1981, I founded the Laboratory of Molecular and Developmental Biology at the National Eye Institute, serving as its chief until 2009 (and now Scientist Emeritus).
All along, as I produced more than 300 scientific articles and reviews, I knew I eventually wanted to be a storyteller in the more traditional sense – an author of books and short stories. Realizing I would need to sow the seeds for this vocation before I retired, I began to write short stories, letting my imagination roam free.
