Category Archives: A Scientific American

The photograph of Melvin E. Swanberg in his navy uniform was likely taken in the late 1940s or early 1950s. To the right are photographs of my father and I and the cover of one of his beloved Scientific American magazines (photo illustration by Susan E. Swanberg).

Soon after he died, my mother presented me with a trove of my father’s magazines, saying, “He would have wanted you to have these.” I gasped as I thumbed through each dusty issue and recalled how my father had planted the seeds of a scientist’s curiosity in my young brain, seeds that would blossom years later when I returned to school to study for a Ph.D. in genetics. (Read more of A Scientific American by Susan E. Swanberg – 2012 & 2019)