As a college student, Amy Bower dreamed of becoming an oceanographer, combining her love of physics and the natural world. A devastating diagnosis almost derailed her. Amy Bower was an undergraduate, studying physics at Tufts University, when she noticed that her vision was getting blurry. Later, as a graduate student at University of Rhode Island, she got the official diagnosis: she was going blind. Macular degeneration and retinitis pigmentosa would gradually take away her sight. The news hit