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I wish there had been more than one woman’s signature at the bottom of the letter I posted a link to earlier. At least there was you, Linda B. Buck. According to Wikipedia, “She was awarded the 2004 Nobel Prize in Medicine along with Richard Axel, for their work on olfactory receptors.” That’s Richard on the left.
Isn’t that interesting that her work has to do with the sense of smell. It’s a curious, and important sense, isn’t it? I read two books around the same time that opened my eyes (haha) about our sense of smell: A Natural History of the Senses, (the chapter about smell is just astounding) and the novel Perfume.
Since then I’ve had a healthy respect for the power of scent. Every day, before I leave the house, I spritz myself with a cologne that smells exactly like lemons. It’s not sweet, it really smells like lemons, and for whatever reason this makes me happy. The smell disappears in about a minute, but going off into my day with a whiff of lemons is like starting the day with an aromatic pep talk.
