MIT’s Technology Review looks at The Enthusiast, Harvard University professor of pathology David Sinclair, who “discovered that resveratrol, a chemical found in red wine, extends life span in mice by up to 24 percent and in other animals, including flies and worms, by as much as 59 percent”:
Sinclair says his bravado and drive come from his grandmother Vera, who fled to Australia in the wake of the failed 1956 revolution in her native Hungary. Her son, David’s father, changed the family name from Szigeti. “My grandmother is the black-sheep rebel of the family,” he says. “She gave birth to my dad at age 15 in 1939–imagine the scandal then–and has lived with natives in New Guinea and eaten human flesh, among other things. She once got in trouble with the police for being the first person to wear a bikini on a Sydney beach. She’s a ’60s bohemian who helped raise me and taught me how to think differently and to question dogma.”A slight man with a mischievous smile, Sinclair grew up in St. Ives, near Sydney, where as a boy he liked to make bombs from chlorine or gunpowder to blow things up. “It was rebellious and dangerous,” he says. “That was the thrill. I think I was bored.” When he was seven years old, he came up with a list of 10 ways to change the world, and one was to create inventions to make money. Later, he took up windsurfing and racing around in cars. He got so many speeding tickets that he once had his license confiscated. “He was always quite cheeky and could get under your skin if he knew you well enough,” says Mark Sumich, his best friend growing up.
“I think the day I got most scared in my life was when he showed me his brother’s new compound bow,” recalls Sumich, who now owns a market-research company in Australia. “We went up to the park, and he would shoot it straight up in the air, and having lost sight of it, we would scatter for cover. That, to this day, is still the most stupid thing I have ever done.”