Volume 18 Number 1 Winter/Spring 2001

back

Related stories:
Battling HIV with words
How you can help

From Oregon to Stanford to Africa

REUBEN GRANICH GREW UP IN A SMALL TOWN IN SOUTHERN OREGON. "When I was growing up, my family was very poor," he says. "We lived in the woods with wood fires for heat, an outhouse, no telephone and no electricity. I guess I got a firsthand look at what it feels like to be economically disadvantaged."

He is wary of sounding clichéd, but maintains that his background is a key to his current work and to the genesis of the book. "That has informed a lot of what I do," he says. "I didn't want to forget where I came from. I wanted to look back, and that's what this book is about."

Lack of money did not hold Granich back once he was at Stanford. "By the time I got to medical school, I was fabulously rich compared with where I came from," he says. Loans covered his living expenses and traveling scholarships allowed him to set his sights on more distant research projects. "There were all these great opportunities and all you needed was a proposal," he says. "There were not a lot of rules and regulations to stop you from doing projects."

"The great thing about Stanford was that there was a very nurturing environment," he says. "The faculty and staff really encouraged students to think big. Without that environment, the book probably wouldn't have happened." -- W.W.