Carl Zimmer

And they lasted there just long enough that they could run an experiment in some schools around Philadelphia.

And they put up ultraviolet lamps in the classrooms.

And those kids did not get hit by a huge measles outbreak that swept through Philadelphia not long afterwards.

Yes, they were incredibly difficult to work with.

And there's no biography of the Wellses.

So I had to go into archives and find letters and unpublished documents and memos.

And people would just say like, oh my goodness, these people are so unbearable.

They just were fighting all the time.

They were fighting with each other.

They were peculiar.

Particularly William was terrible with language.

And

People couldn't deal with them.

Because they were in these constant fights, they had very few friends.

When you have a big consensus against you and you don't have very many friends not even to help you keep a job, it's not going to turn out well, unfortunately.

They did themselves no favors, but it is still...

really remarkable and sad just how much they figured out, which was then dismissed and forgotten.

Sure.

So Lindsay Marr belongs to this new generation of scientists in the 21st century who start to individually rediscover the Wellses.

Now, in Lindsay Marr's case, she was studying air pollution.