Elizabeth Blackburn was born in Hobart, Australia in 1948. She was one of seven children. Both of her parents were physicians, and she was exposed to the science field at an early age. In an interview with Discover Magazine, she stated, “So many members of my extended family were doctors; there was this expectation that I would be a physician” (“Elizabeth Blackburn Biography”). However, she did not feel obligated to be a doctor because of her ancestry. In an interview with Readers Digest she stated that her parents “would sometimes talk about patients and their stories, but it was science that captivated me intellectually. It was a very natural thing for me. At one stage I thought I’d like to be a musician, but I didn’t play the piano well enough”. She did decide to follow in the footsteps of her parents and earned her bachelor 's and master 's degrees in biology from the University of Melbourne in Australia. She later decided to travel to England to study at Cambridge, where she completed her Ph.D. Dr. Blackburn joined the department of microbiology and immunology at the University of California, and she oversaw a laboratory of sixteen researchers. She pursued further educational endeavors and earned a post-doctoral research position in molecular and cellular biology at Yale University to increase her comprehension of biology. She was later employed by the faculty of the University of California at Berkeley to do
Elizabeth Blackburn was born in Hobart, Australia in 1948. She was one of seven children. Both of her parents were physicians, and she was exposed to the science field at an early age. In an interview with Discover Magazine, she stated, “So many members of my extended family were doctors; there was this expectation that I would be a physician” (“Elizabeth Blackburn Biography”). However, she did not feel obligated to be a doctor because of her ancestry. In an interview with Readers Digest she stated that her parents “would sometimes talk about patients and their stories, but it was science that captivated me intellectually. It was a very natural thing for me. At one stage I thought I’d like to be a musician, but I didn’t play the piano well enough”. She did decide to follow in the footsteps of her parents and earned her bachelor 's and master 's degrees in biology from the University of Melbourne in Australia. She later decided to travel to England to study at Cambridge, where she completed her Ph.D. Dr. Blackburn joined the department of microbiology and immunology at the University of California, and she oversaw a laboratory of sixteen researchers. She pursued further educational endeavors and earned a post-doctoral research position in molecular and cellular biology at Yale University to increase her comprehension of biology. She was later employed by the faculty of the University of California at Berkeley to do