Priscilla Chan's grandfather died of cancer when she was in sixth grade; she found a cancer textbook and taught herself why he died

Priscilla Chan was in sixth grade when the death of her grandfather from cancer changed the direction of her life. One morning, he dropped her off at her sixth-grade classroom, but by the time she returned home, he had died. Chan was left trying to understand how someone who had taken her to school that morning could suddenly be gone. Science had always been her favourite subject, so she turned to it for answers. She bought an oncology textbook soon afterwards and began learning about cancer on her own. Years later, that childhood search for an explanation had evolved into a career in medicine and, eventually, a mission to accelerate biomedical research. As a paediatrician, Chan encountered children whose diseases medicine could not fully explain, reinforcing the same desire to understand disease that had first emerged after her grandfather's death.

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