Readers Respond: When Did You Get Hooked on Science?

Scientific inquiry has yielded novel cures for diseases, revealed distant planets and unearthed ancient civilizations. And behind these grand achievements are individual people with a burning question — one that, at some point, set their mind spinning and after that it never stopped. It's likely that there came a point when science placed you under its spell as well (after all, you are reading Discover right now). So we asked readers to share the moment that they became hooked on science, and their answers are proof that inspiration can occur anywhere. Some readers were inspired by events, which led to science-related careers: