Warned by a teacher that the University of Cambridge did not admit outspoken young women of “her sort,” she applied nonetheless and was granted an interview. “I

Warned by a teacher that the University of Cambridge did not admit outspoken young women of “her sort,” she applied nonetheless and was granted an interview. “I didn’t have the proper clothes, so I made myself a suit,” she recalls. Her interlocutor, Tim Hunt, a biochemist who would go on to win the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (and in 2015 became notorious for disparaging comments he made about women in science), didn’t seem to notice. “He kept his head down and asked me seven questions,” she says. When he told Greenhalgh she’d gotten every answer wrong, she asked him to explain, and together they reviewed the problems one by one, until she fully understood her errors. “I got my place at Cambridge because research isn’t knowing the right answers before you start,” she says. “It’s about how you ask the questions and how systematically you go about finding the answers.” Imagine if all interviews worked this way