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Ebright collected butterflies with the great determination.

He also collected rocks, fossils, and coins. He became an eager astronomer, too, sometimes star-gazing all night.

By the time he was in the second grade, Ebright had collected all twenty five species of butterflies found around his hometown

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His mother got him a children’s book called The Travels of Monarch X.

That book, which told how monarch butterflies migrate to Central America, opened the world of science to the eager young collector.

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He got a hint of what real science is when he entered a county science fair — and lost.

The competitive spirit that drives Richard Ebright started appearing.

Failure in Science fair: He didn’t take it in a negative way, it motivated him to explore why he failed.

He wrote to Dr Urquhart for ideas, and back came a stack of suggestions for experiments.

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Tried to find the cause of a viral disease that kills nearly all monarch caterpillars every few years.

He did not get real results.

He showed that he had tried the experiment. This time he won.

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His science fair project was testing the theory that viceroy butterflies copy monarchs.

This project was placed first in the zoology division and third overall in the county science fair.

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Began the research that led to his discovery of an insect hormone. Ebright and another science student built a device which showed that the spots were producing a hormone necessary for the butterfly’s full development.

This project won Ebright first place in the county fair and entry into the International Science and Engineering Fair.

There he won third place for zoology. He got a chance to work during the summer at the entomology laboratory of the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research.

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Continued his advanced experiments on the monarch pupa.

That year his project won first place at the International Science Fair and gave him another chance to work in the army laboratory during the summer.

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He grew cells from a monarch’s wing in a culture and showed that the cells would divide and develop into normal butterfly wing scales only if they were fed the hormone from the gold spots.

That project won first place for zoology at the International Fair. He spent the summer after graduation doing further work at the army laboratory and at the laboratory of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

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Richard Ebright graduated from Harvard with highest honours, second in his class of 1,510.

Ebright went on to become a graduate student researcher at Harvard Medical School. There he began doing experiments to test his theory.

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After freshman year in Harvard University...

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After freshman year in Harvard University...

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Ebright went back to the laboratory of the Department of Agriculture and using the laboratory’s sophisticated instruments, he was able to identify the hormone’s chemical structure.

During his junior year: Along with his findings about insect hormones, from the X ray photos, he discovered that DNA is the substance in the nucleus of a cell that controls heredity. It determines the form and function of the cell. Thus DNA is the blueprint for life.

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Ebright is an champion debater, public speaker, a good  canoeist and an expert photographer.

He turned a lot of energy towards the Debating and Model United Nations clubs.

He put in three or four hours at night doing debate research besides doing all his research with butterflies and his other interests.