Fame

 
"We did? Cool! I don't think I had anything to do with it, but if you say so. Good job, me." (Source)

It's a funny thing about science: Except for very specific circumstances, the world tends to steal victories as their own. It's never, "Hey, Dr. Bruce Carlisle, Dr. Karen Jennings, and Dr. Patricia Wright worked tirelessly for three years and halted what would have been a devastating measles outbreak!" Instead, the headline always seems to be something like, "We did it!"

Yes, my poor unknown epidemiologist, like Dr. Bruce and many, many others before you, people are unlikely to ever know who you are. Maybe that's because you were part of a team with far too many people to list in a single Tweet, or maybe it's because what you did worked so well that the rest of us never even knew the danger we were in.

No one ever took this gig to get their name in lights and, most likely, no one ever will. But don't worry. We know who you are, and we'll always remember what you did...as long as you do something like write us a letter, mail it to us with your name and a brief outline of what you did, making sure to include the line, "always remember." What? We're trying to be realistic, here.