A decade ago, Dr. Alan Townsend’s family received two unthinkable catastrophic diagnoses: His four-year-old daughter and his wife developed unrelated life-threatening forms for brain cancer.
As he witnesses his young daughter fight during the courageous final months of her mother’s life, Townsend, a lifelong scientist, was indelibly altered. He began to see scientific inquiry as more than a source of answers to a given problem but also as a lifeboat — a lens on a world that could help him find peace with the painful realities he could not change.
Throughout his scientific wonder, he found ways to bring meaning to his darkest period. He writes of his experiences in the new book “This Ordinary Stardust: A Scientist's Path from Grief to Wonder.”
