Retrospective and perspective on the occasion of receiving the SSIBs Distinguished Research Award

Upon receiving this honor from the Society for the Study of Ingestive Behavior, I was asked to reflect on my life and science. The outcome is below.Last night I asked 2 of my kids who live in the Bay Area what I should do with this piece that I've been asked to write — I had already droned through 8 single spaced pages, and they had turned into an extraordinary and very happy memory lane for me, with vivid images of the people who were in the lab, their contributions to the direction(s) the lab took and their quirks. It was clear that this was going to stretch out to be a book (I'd only arrived at the early 80s in the lab in 8 pages), probably of vital interest only to me. They suggested that I cut the piece into 3 parts – each easy and breezy – that told of my beginnings, with the science as it was, the functional lab and what I thought was novel about it, with the science as it was then, and other parts of academia, as they were for me. ‘The big picture, Mom.’ Here's my attempt.