The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race

by Walter Isaacson

Like the organisms she studied, her need to adapt to new environments kept her innovative. “My instinct to keep moving can be destabilizing, but that can be good,” she says. “It assures that you never get stuck.” Going from one place to another was her way of repeatedly reconsidering her research and forcing herself to start fresh. “The more one moves, the more one learns to analyze as a new situation and see things that others who have been in the system a long time have not identified.” Moving also made her feel like a bit of a foreigner most of the time, the way the young Jennifer Doudna felt as a child in Hawaii. “It’s important to know how to be an outsider,” Charpentier says. “You’re never completely at home, and that can drive you. It can challenge you not to seek being comfortable.” As with so many other observant and creative people, she found that a sense of detachment or slight alienation made her better at figuring out the forces