Rita Colwell: ‘Pseudoscience is almost like a disease’

I grew up in Beverly Cove, Massachusetts, a little town about 30 miles north of Boston, on the coast. My father and mother were immigrants from Italy. My dad was a labourer, then a foreman, and founded his own construction company. He was very supportive of women receiving a good education. I always wanted to be a scientist. I went to Purdue University, turning down Radcliffe College – in those days, women couldn’t go to Harvard.

I met my husband when he was a physical chemistry graduate student at Purdue. We later attended the University of Washington in Seattle, where we obtained our PhDs. To celebrate graduating in 1961, we bought a bright red Triumph TR3, a British sports car. We drove it until our first child was born, when we traded it for a more sensible station wagon.