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Neuroscientist Joseph LeDoux was set on his career after doing a Saturday job that involved running his fingers through cow brains to find the bullets that had killed them so that his butcher father could sell the meat. In Curious Minds (Vintage, £8.99), John Brockman has collected dozens of stories like this about how children became scientists. You’ll learn how Lynn Margulis escaped her fractious family to keep company with ants, how Murray Gell-Mann was diverted from writing his dissertation by The Tibetan Book of the Dead.