Shirley O. Corriher (b. 1935) worked a lot of different jobs before she became the chemical consultant to the world's great chefs. She got her bad knee while working as a water-skiing acrobat at Callaway Gardens in her home state of Georgia. Later she became a biochemist and worked in a lab at Vanderbilt University Medical School in Nashville, Tennessee. After that, she and her then-husband opened a boarding school for boys. She had to cook for 140 boys every day, and this was her first taste of cooking for a living. She ultimately trained as a gourmet chef and made a name for herself by using her knowledge of chemistry to get better results in the kitchen. She now lives in Atlanta but travels across North America teaching both great chefs and amateurs what a little chemistry can do for th