Spelke is currently studying how adults think with numbers. Her laboratory is looking at which parts of the brain are activated when humans do “fancy things” like solving problems that involve whole and irrational numbers, she said.
Knoll
Knoll said he does not take Time’s praise too seriously.
The winner of many major awards, including being elected to the National Academy of Sciences—an event that “for most scientists, tells you you’ve arrived,” he said—Knoll said he feels the awards from his peers are more important than honors from the media.
“It’s not why you wake up in the morning,” he said of media accolades. Like “any good scientist, I wake up in the morning hoping to learn about the earth, hoping that I might discover a new fossil,” he said.
Knoll’s research interests include the early evolution of life on earth, the early fossil record of plankton, and interrelationships between crustal, atmospheric, and biological evolution during the Precambrian period.
Although Knoll said he is grateful for the recognition, he added, “it’s not something that has any great or important long-term consequences.”
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