This scarf is a handmade gift to my mother from her late advisor, the Nobel Laureate David Hubel. As the story goes, my mother was finishing her PhD in Spain in 1996, when she met David Hubel at a conference. My mother was too shy to introduce herself, but on the last day of the conference she got the courage to speak to him, and after a short conversation he offered her to join his lab at Harvard Medical School. Eventually my mother got her green card and about twelve years ago she became a naturalized citizen of these United States. In fact, she had never voted in an election until she became an American citizen. 

This scarf is important to my mother because it symbolizes David Hubel's mentorship. My mother had nobody when she came over and was not entirely comfortable speaking the language. She couldn’t even call cabs in Boston because they wouldn’t show up to pick up a passenger with the last name “Martínez-Conde.” David Hubel and my father (who was also a trainee in the Hubel lab) were her first friends in this country. Like their friendship, the scarf is and was a source of comfort to my mother. The scarf is also fascinating because David Hubel weaved it himself, and, given that he was making it for another scientist, he weaved the Fibonacci sequence into the scarf, a pattern found often in nature. My parents began dating some years later, and they were married in my mother's hometown. David Hubel also handwove a beautiful blanket for my parents as a wedding present.

– IM-C

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