Abstract
I am honored to be the E. B. Wilson Award recipient for 2015. As we know, it was E. B. Wilson who popularized the concept of a "stem cell" in his book The Cell in Development and Inheritance (1896, London: Macmillan & Co.). Given that stem cell research is my field and that E. B. Wilson is so revered within the cell biology community, I am a bit humbled by how long it took me to truly grasp his vision and imaginative thinking. I appreciate it deeply now, and on this meaningful occasion, I will sketch my rather circuitous road to cell biology.