Eric McRae, a six-foot-four electrical engineer with a trim goatee, an engaging smile, and a passion for playing the didgeridoo, was seeking companionship after his 12-year marriage ended two years ago. His needs were modest: After squandering time on half-baked relationships, he was just looking for friends who could discuss science with him. Still, he harbored a not-so-secret desire for someone special: "A smart woman with a sense of humor, wearing hiking boots, a backpack, and carrying a magnifying glass," he recalls. "I'd be hers!"
At first McRae tried hanging out in bars, "conspicuously reading science journals," but met no one that way. So, on the last night of July 2006, he signed up with Science Connection, a Nova Scotia–based dating service for scientists. He sent three messages to women on the Web site and fell "head over heels in love" with his first respondent, a woman with a Web site displaying her own beautiful bug drawings. Last Labor Day weekend, the two met for the first time and went walking on the beach in McRae's hometown of Port Townsend, Washington. At one point, McRae recalls, they simultaneously pulled out their loupes (a small magnifying lens) to examine the fine structure of a seaweed. "We were both incredulous when we realized what had just happened," he says. "A person carrying a loupe reveals a trait of deep curiosity. We were both more than a bit pleased."
FAMOUS SCIENTIST COUPLES:
MARIE AND PIERRE CURIE, who married in 1895 and shared the 1903 Nobel Prize in physics for their research on radiation. Sadly, Pierre was run over by a horse-drawn wagon in 1906 and killed.
