It took best-selling author and scientist Hope Jahren a few minutes to get to the back of the large meeting room at Austin Public Library Tuesday to start a reception and book signing as she stopped to talk to people she knew who’d come to see her.

Jahren, perhaps better known as Ann Jahren in Austin, was met with a warm hometown welcome during the reception at the library to talk about her book, “Lab Girl.”

She chatted with fans and community members, signed books, and read a few passages from the book, including one about her childhood in Austin.

“I learned how to value Austin,” she told the crowd before reading a few passages.

As she’s moved around the country, Jahren has met a lot of people who didn’t grow up going to school with the same children from kindergarten through high school.

She told to the crowd she feels lucky to have grown up in a town where if you fell off your bike, you could pretty much knock on any door for help.

“I started to realize how lucky I was because of that,” she said. “It’s really a great pleasure to come back to Austin and see so many familiar faces.”

Along with publishing “Lab Girl” in April, Jahren was also named Time Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People.

After most recently working as a professor at the University of Hawaii Manoa, she and her family are set to move to Norway as she takes a job at the University of Oslo.

Jahren originally set out to write a textbook about she learned about studying plants and biology, and she wound up writing “Lab Girl,” and she noted she loved the process of writing the book.

“It was a lot of fun,” she said. “I’m actually really sad that it’s over.”

She started writing stories about Bill, her lab partner and friend, but her editor urged her to write more about herself.

“I had to put in a few things about myself, but I’m Minnesotan enough to tell you that was very difficult,” she said.

The end of her reading focused on grandparents moving to Austin from Norway, and the fact that she and few others growing up in Austin actually knew the story of what brought her ancestors to Austin to work for Hormel.

But it didn’t occur to her to ask for the story of why her relatives came here.

Ending her talk, she turned to the crowd.

“So go home and ask for the story,” she said.