public health + biology at palantir; previously gocardless (yc s11). nullius in verba. 
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Learning molecular biology has made me realize how *young* the field is compared to e.g. physics. For example - the Hayflick limit (# of times a normal human cell will divide before 'dying') was only discovered in 1961. Before that, we thought cells were immortal by default.pic.twitter.com/hN6Y1bzfpk
The way the body "keeps count of this" via telomeres was only discovered in 1992. The fact that cancer cells (in 85-90% of cases) "hack" this mechanism by maintaining their telomeres was also discovered in the 1990s. There's still so much to do.pic.twitter.com/xpsk2aUAQk
And the technology to do biology experiments at the molecular level (electron microscopes, etc) was probably only very recently developed.
Yeah this is exactly right I think, eg. cell lines were 1951 & then a spate of discoveries straight after (polio vaccine etc).
I suspect this might be because molecular biology doesn't have as much of a theoretical branch to it as physics/chemistry. My impression is that you mostly have to discover stuff through experiments and can't just derive it using pen and paper.
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