Marc Zimmer

Marc Zimmer (@lightupscience) was born in a small town in South Africa. He wanted to be a game warden when he grew-up, but his mother wanted him to be a medical doctor. Although his handwriting is worthy of prescription pads he went to university with the intent of becoming game ranger. However, his dreams of looking after herds of elephants were terminated by an introductory botany course, which he failed. Fortunately he discovered the joy and fascination of playing with molecules. This resulted in a change in majors from biology to chemistry. While at the University of Witwatersrand he somehow managed to pass chemistry and find his future wife, Dianne, or perhaps she found him. Partly out of interest and partly out of a need to avoid the South African (apartheid) military service he came to the United States, where he got his Ph.D. in chemistry from Worcester Polytechnic Institute and did his post-doc at Yale University. He has been at Connecticut College for the last 30 years where he teaches chemistry and studies the proteins involved in producing light in jellyfish and fireflies. He has given talks about his research in India, Cuba, South Africa, all over Europe and the United States of America. Marc is married, has two children, Matthew and Caitlin. His writing has appeared in Newsweek, USA Today and the Los Angeles Times, and he has been interviewed and quoted in The Economist, Science and Nature.