Geobiology professor recounts passion for plants, research in ‘Lab Girl’

Upon publication of her first book, “Lab Girl” (Knopf, $26.95), in April, Hope Jahren, a professor of geobiology at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, was praised by New York Times book reviewer Michiko Kakutani for delivering “a thrilling account of her discovery of her vocation and a gifted teacher’s road map to the secret lives of plants.”

Equally if not more exciting are the author’s descriptions of how a workaholic, who was happiest when cloistered in her lab, fell in love with fellow scientist Clint Conrad, became a mother and brought her equally obsessive lab partner, Bill Hagopian, into her new family. An older, nerdy bachelor who ignores social niceties, Hagopian’s scientific talent and personal warmth and wit had gone unrecognized until he met Jahren.

Recuperating from a difficult birth in Maryland, she writes, “the rainy April weather gives way to a dazzling bloom of May sunshine, and the new pattern of our lives starts to emerge. When Clint holds our son I edit a manuscript, or remotely log on to the mass spectrometer. … Bill surprises us by visiting the hospital and hugs me for the first and only time in 11 years, and I am amazed to see how easily and willingly he settles into the role of beloved uncle.”

Jahren’s radiant combination of literary memoir and nature writing recalls Aldo Leopold’s “Sand County Almanac,” tracking her development of environmental sensibilities as her love for plants and people deepens.

For local fans of literature and science, the discovery of this accomplished writer in our midst is dampened by the news that she will be leaving for a new academic post in Norway at the end of the month. Busy with her students and her son, 12, as the academic year drew to an end and her family prepared to move, Jahren, 46, made time to speak by phone about her book and life in Hawaii, her home for the past eight years.

Question: In less than 300 pages, your funny, illuminating book covers your life and career, and makes botany and chemistry comprehensible. How long did it take you to write?

Answer: You spend so much time writing a book and hoping every sentence you write will interest somebody, make them laugh, make them think. I mostly did it in the summers, in Minnesota, where my family lives. The summers of 2013-14 were really critical.

Q: Early in the book you say that anyone can think like a scientist. Is that really possible?

A: Yes. I look at science as a way everyone can approach the world.

It’s taking time to look at something and manipulate it, pick it up with your hands, ask a question, enjoy how it feels to ask a question and answer it. I think we do that very naturally when we’re kids, and then we get away from it somehow. I saw that (approach) in both my father, who was a scientist, and my mother, who worked in the home, who wanted to be a scientist but it didn’t work out.

My mother had a sharp scientist’s mind. She sewed — she could look at somebody’s outfit and know how many yards of cloth it would take and how to cut it. Her recipe book is full of experiments: “I didn’t have buttermilk, so I mixed milk and vinegar to make it.”

Q: In high school didn’t she win a science prize?

A: She didn’t win, she got a Westinghouse honorable mention — a near miss. It was a very special honor, but she wasn’t able to fulfill her dream.

Q: You say that as a child you felt safe with your father in his lab. Why was that?

A: I think as kids we all have this place where you can play any game you want, it’s fun, there’s nothing you have to not touch because you might break it — the place where it’s all good. That’s what I meant. And in that very harsh climate (the lab) was warm and well lit. Folks in Hawaii, you don’t understand that drive to go inside before night falls and be by the fire.

Q: How did your parents react to the book? It’s dedicated to your mother.

A: They’re in their 90s, and they still live in that same house. We have a different relationship now, it’s more about being together. We are very focused on enjoying the time we have together.

Q: Throughout “Lab Girl,” in alternating sections, your own growth parallels that of the trees you study. Do you identify with them?

A: So much of what being an animal is about is moving through the world. It gets cold and it rains, it gets dark; we get away by moving inside. And trees don’t. They stay and endure. They pay a real price to maintain that strength, and they fail and they succeed. They’re very different than we are. (Yet) they have lives just like we do, living through time the same way.

Being a scientist has allowed me to appreciate all that, and writing a book has allowed me to share it, the next logical stage of learning.

Q: The book’s funniest and most dramatic scenes involve you and Bill Hagopian, your lab and field research partner for 20 years. He’s really the hero, isn’t he?

A: It’s so wonderful that you said that. This book was never supposed to be about me. It was all supposed to be about Bill. There are a lot of heroes like him in science, people you would never know about, sacrificing everything and working so hard and being in a way unusual and strange and noble and heroic at the same time.

For me that’s the most important message in the book, because I had worked for so long with this person that was almost completely in the shadows and always one paycheck away from the street, and that’s not right. Somebody who is that dedicated and is such a great teacher should be supported, shouldn’t have to live in a car.

Q: You mention the lack of female scientists as models and mentors. And you write of being barred from your lab in Maryland when you were pregnant. Were sexual discrimination and harassment prevalent in your career?

A: Yeah, I mean, I’ve had some pretty bad things happen in the workplace and in the field. And those things have led me to believe that part of my job is to question whether women are safe when they’re doing science; whether our labs and our field excursions are safe. I want science to be safer for women who come after me.

Q: How would you advise them?

A: Educate yourself. Know what the policies at your business or university are, know how Title IX protects you. Because those rules and regulations exist for a reason, and we need to hold our schools accountable. Our schools are obligated to provide a fair and safe environment for us to work in.

Q: You write that in your father’s lab you “transformed from a girl into a scientist.” Do you feel like a pioneer?

A: When people tell me I’m a leader or influenced them, I’m grateful, but I do it because I love it, it’s like a type of play. I still very much feel like I did in my father’s lab. I feel like a kid; that’s why it’s called “Lab Girl.”

Q: It was funny and intriguing to read you wanted to be a father to your son.

A: (Laughs) I meant it in the same way that we have to give ourselves freedom to be all kinds of different scientists: people like Bill who aren’t friendly, but who are solid and loyal; people like me who don’t look like a guy in a lab coat, but know how to do things. We need to give ourselves permission to parent with love, without using the patterns and rules we had with our parents. To act out of curiosity, love, joy. That’s how we shape our identities, not through our role models.

Q: And your son hits his favorite tree, a foxtail palm, over and over with his baseball bat.

A: That thing is fine, don’t worry about it. My son is very active in the Little League community here in Hawaii. It’s an extremely big commitment on the part of the whole family, and we enjoy the time we spend at it so much and the people we’ve met, the other boys and families. My husband and I never played baseball, and in Hawaii baseball life has a special flavor because it’s beautiful here year-round. And now we’re leaving.

Q: Where are you going?

A: To the University of Oslo in Norway. Hopefully we’ll get some financial stability before we retire.

Q: You have tenure at UH.

A: Bill doesn’t. If there’s no job for him, there’s no job for me. We’re a package deal.

Q: Did your husband get a job in Norway?

A: Yes, at the same university; he’s a geophysicist, and he’s going to be a professor there as well. He was at UH, too.

Q: What will you miss about Hawaii most?

A: We’ll miss friends. And baseball and church. Hawaii is like no place else, a great, great place to be a family. I know it probably sounds cheesy, but I’ve learned so much from people here about aloha and what it really is and how people live it. I can see how it has enriched my life. Our son has had such a wonderful childhood here; Hawaii is the best place in the world for little kids. And Hawaii is the best place in the world to make a plant grow.

Q: Did you do any fieldwork here?

A: We did a lot of lab work, and worked in greenhouses and in the Manoa botanical garden, but I’m still in the process of learning tropical species. They’re incredibly complicated, such huge diversity. The wonderful thing about vegetation in Hawaii is that everything’s blooming all the time. The size of the flowers — it’s like every plant is trying to make a bigger flower than the one next to it and more of them. And the leaves are so big. Like those elephant ear trees. I hate to see people take that for granted.

Q: You write about invasive species, particularly vines. What have you observed here?

A: Most of what I do is biochemistry, not conservation, but I see strawberry guava everywhere, every time I go hiking, and it’s just tough as nails. It’s interesting to just close your eyes and try to imagine what the Manoa hills would be like without all that strawberry guava.

Q: You urge every one of us to plant a tree. Any suggestions?

A: We have a lime tree in our yard in Manoa, and one thing in Hawaii I’ve had is the joy of getting fruit, which I never knew before. Nothing makes you appreciate the give and take of a tree like your own fruit tree.

Q: You say you’ve always written authors of books. Are you now hearing from readers of your own?

A: I get a lot of mail. And it’s a great joy. When you write a book you’re always thinking about the reader, and after it’s published they come alive. I’m so proud that people are finding something good in the story of what their taxes paid for, after all. It’s the best way I know of giving back.