One morning in October 2008, Douglas Prasher nearly dropped his fork in shock at the breakfast table.

He had just heard some stunning news on the radio.

The 57-year-old pressure listened to a lot of radio at work.

He drove a shuttle van for a Toyota dealership in Huntsville, Alabama,

although not by choice. He'd once been a molecular biologist, which

is why that morning's news shocked him.

The radio said a few scientists had just won the Nobel Prize using his ideas.

In fact, he had given them the DNA to start their research.

So how does a guy with a Nobel Prize-worthy idea end up driving a van for a living?

Therein lies a sad story about bad luck, bad timing, and the sad truth of what success requires in science.

From the Science History Institute, this is Sam Keene and the Disappearing Spoon, a topsy-turvy

sciency history podcast, where footnotes become the real story.

Douglas Pressure looks like a bear, heavy, hairy, bearded.

He was born to working class parents in Ohio.

After earning his PhD in biology in 1979, he moved down to the University of Georgia.

There he met a fellow scientist named Gina. The attraction was strong and mutual, but pressure was a little shy. To get him out of his shell,

Gina sent him a Gorilla Graham, where someone shows up in a

Gorilla costume and sings at you. It was an 80s thing. The Gorilla Graham embarrassed

pressure, but he and Gina did get married.

While in Georgia, Prasher began studying a sea creature, the Crystal Jellyfish.

It lives in Puget Sound near Seattle.

What's cool about the Crystal Jellyfish is that they have a band of tissue that glows underwater.

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