In 1949, when John Gurdon was a 16-year-old boarding school student at Eton College in England, his teacher described his biology studies as “disastrous” and his scientific ambitions as “ridiculous.”

“If he can’t learn simple biological facts,” his term report read, “he would have no chance of doing the work of a specialist, and it would be a sheer waste of time both on his part, and of those who have to teach him.”