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Polly Matzinger is an iconoclastic scientist who proposed a novel explanation of the immune system's ability which does not involve the identification of self and non-self called the 'danger model'. The self-non-self model has a problem in its inabilty to fully explain how the immune system of mammal mothers do not identify their offspring in the embryonic state as a foreign-body.
Polly Matzinger is now a section head at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and her "danger model" suggests that the immune system is more concerned with damage detected on the basis of cell death rather than with foreign invaders.
In one of her first publications, she coauthored a paper with Galadriel Mirkwood for the Journal of Experimental Immunology. The journal barred Matzinger for 15 years "until the editor died" since it turned out that the coauthor was an Afghan Hound which according to her was as much involved in research as many other coauthors.
She took to science from an unusual background career path which included stints as a playboy model, jazz musician and bar waitress.
To many she stands as a symbol of the scientific spirit and its openness.
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