Photo: Patricia D. Duncan | Wikimedia
Rebecca Varney needed Twitter's help to find her bug man. Thirty years earlier, Varney, a four-year-old with a bug collection, wrote to a nearby university asking to see their collection and wondering if walking sticks had knees. While only addressed to University of California-Berkeley, an entomology professor invited her to visit the Essig Museum of Entomology and let her hold a hissing cockroach and a live scorpion. "And then he shook my hand and said, 'It's been a pleasure to meet another scientist.'" Varney now works with aquatic invertebrates as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her "bug man" was Vernard Richard Lewis, the first Black entomology professor at UC-Berkeley, whose grandfather instilled his love of nature. As nearly 13,000 tweeters tried to help Varney, many scientists shared similar stories about when an adult took the time to talk about the wonders of science and answer their questions.
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