Over the course of her exceptional career, Amgen Professor of Biology Emerita Nancy Hopkins has overturned assumptions and defied expectations at the lab bench and beyond. After arriving at MIT in 1973, she set to work mapping RNA tumor virus genes, before switching her focus and pioneering zebrafish as a model system to probe vertebrate development and cancer. Her experiences in male-dominated fields and institutions led her to catalyze an investigation that evolved into the groundbreaking 1999 public report on the status of women at MIT. These findings spurred nine…