Linda Thienpont

[摘要] Linda Thienpont lives in an old converted farmhouse in the Flemish Ardennes, surrounded by lush green fields and rich family memories. Her parents bought the farm over 45 years ago, in part for Linda. She and her brother had become passionate horseback riders and longed for horses of their own. But horses need space so the Thienponts bought the small farm to go along with the two animals.During the summers, they would pack up the family camper and drive south—to Italy, France, or Spain—for a long holiday. One summer, when Thienpont was 16 and infatuated with Latin and Greek, they spent weeks exploring Greece—Athens, the islands, and the sun-bleached ruins of Peloponnesus. “That is something I have in my memory and it will never be possible to take that away,” said Thienpont, who is director of the laboratory for analytical chemistry in the faculty of pharmaceutical sciences at the University of Ghent in Belgium.One of her most memorable trips occurred much earlier, when Thienpont was a young child. Modest by nature, and almost painfully shy, she found even casual interactions stressful. “I did not dare go to the bakery and buy bread. I was afraid to do that,” she said. Her mother gave her money and insisted she go. “She forced me to do that,” Thienpont said. “I thought as a child my mother is challenging me—I don't like that. Maybe she does not love me. But as an adult, then, I really discovered there was a need to do so, and it was very good that she did.”Thienpont's life might have unfolded very differently if not for those little odysseys. Years later, as a young scientist, she would embark on a quest that would take her, and the whole field of clinical chemistry, out of its …

[学科分类] 过敏症与临床免疫学