Avoid Boring People Part 1

Avoid Boring People.

Lessons from a Life in Science.

by James D. Watson.

Foreword.

Robert Maynard Hutchins once famously remarked that whenever he felt the urge to exercise, he immediately lay down. Despite the hyperbole (for he, like Jim Watson, was an ardent tennis player) he had made the point that his priority resided in one relentless form of exercise, that of the mind. In this, too, Jim Watson is a true follower of Hutchins, as his book and indeed his life demonstrate so engagingly.

Under the leaders.h.i.+p of Hutchins, the University of Chicago played a significant role not only in Jim's education, but as a permanent benchmark in his continuing thinking about education. If one of the princ.i.p.al goals of a liberal education is to leave students with an insistent lifelong preoccupation with the question of what education is for and what it is about, what qualities should characterize the truly educated person and what intellectual virtues should be sought and practiced-and why-then Jim is a triumphant example of its success. Hutchins was the great critic of and innovator in twentieth-century higher education. He made his university the home of perhaps the most pa.s.sionate debates over curriculum and intellectual purpose to take place in recent memory. And Hutchins, like Jim, was never satisfied: his university, he said, might not be very good, but it was the best there was. For undergraduates, "the best" had to do with a vision of general education that introduced students to the most profound questions of human life and civilization, and to the great writers and thinkers who had confronted and tried to make sense of them-an education that taught students to think with rigor and integrity and to go on doing so under whatever circ.u.mstances they might encounter.

The budding ornithologist who entered Chicago's college left as a man ready to embark on the study of the gene, focused on an ambitious specialization while always underlining the need to sustain the widest possible intellectual curiosity. The imperative that Jim Watson had learned to embrace was to pursue the most difficult, perhaps intractable, problems and to think scrupulously and express his views honestly, whatever might be the consequences in terms of what is now called "political correctness," other kinds of mere conformity and self-interest, or even politesse. politesse.

The austerity suggested by such an outlook does not, fortunately, preclude a fine sense for the enjoyment of the world, its pleasures and its foibles. Jim portrays himself as a very young and rather monastic undergraduate and as something of a late, and utterly enthusiastic, social bloomer. The freshness and candor of his observations on people and events, accomplishments and follies (including his own) may well derive from the novelty he found in every experience that, new to him, made life ever more interesting.

This combination of qualities shone through The Double Helix The Double Helix as it does here, and indeed Jim's account of the struggle to get the ma.n.u.script published more or less intact is almost as entertaining as the book itself. And just as as it does here, and indeed Jim's account of the struggle to get the ma.n.u.script published more or less intact is almost as entertaining as the book itself. And just as The Double Helix The Double Helix became a cla.s.sic in showing how science may really get done, so the present volume, in describing the whole trajectory of a unique career within a larger world of science and research, will join it and add to our understanding of Jim Watson's revolutionary achievements. became a cla.s.sic in showing how science may really get done, so the present volume, in describing the whole trajectory of a unique career within a larger world of science and research, will join it and add to our understanding of Jim Watson's revolutionary achievements.

The different sides of Jim Watson's persona emerge vividly also from the "remembered lessons" detailed at the end of each chapter. Some may prove more useful than others. The advice to "Expect to put on weight after Stockholm" is not, alas, relevant for most readers, but "Work on Sundays" does have larger application. So, too, the wisdom of "Don't back schemes that demand miracles."

The maxim "Don't use autobiography to justify past actions or motivations" defines the captivating tone of this autobiography and its direct self-revelation quite wonderfully. At the same time, the exhortation "Avoid boring people" is scarcely necessary, for if Jim Watson is incapable of anything, it is of boring people.

In consequence, we must all be grateful to Jim for so exuberantly following his own lesson: "Be the first to tell a good story."

-Hanna H. Gray, University of Chicago

Preface.

Most of my unpublished writerly output-handwritten ma.n.u.scripts and letters, lectures and lab notes, university and government doc.u.ments that I helped prepare-is deposited in the archives of Harvard University and of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. In time, it will all become available to the public, mostly through the Internet, for those preternaturally curious about how I have moved through life. Rather than let other commentators have the first crack at those writings, I opted to be the first to employ them extensively to prepare this look at my life before middle age became obvious-my childhood, university years, career as an active scientist and professor, and my first years as director of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory.

As this book's broad features came to cohere, I began to see Avoid Boring People Avoid Boring People as an object lesson, if not quite an exemplary history of the making of a scientist. It is my advice in the form of recollections of manners I deployed to navigate the worlds of science and of academia. The thought that this instructive value might be made explicit in the form of self-help led me to conclude each chapter with a set of "remembered lessons"-rules of conduct that in retrospect figured decisively in turning so many of my childhood dreams into reality. Suffice it to say, this is a book for those on their way up, as well as for those on the top who do not want their leaders.h.i.+p years to be an a.s.semblage of opportunities gone astray. as an object lesson, if not quite an exemplary history of the making of a scientist. It is my advice in the form of recollections of manners I deployed to navigate the worlds of science and of academia. The thought that this instructive value might be made explicit in the form of self-help led me to conclude each chapter with a set of "remembered lessons"-rules of conduct that in retrospect figured decisively in turning so many of my childhood dreams into reality. Suffice it to say, this is a book for those on their way up, as well as for those on the top who do not want their leaders.h.i.+p years to be an a.s.semblage of opportunities gone astray.

Skipping high school's last years led to my never learning how to type, and even today I generate left-hand-written versions of the first drafts of all my writings. Without my administrative a.s.sistant Maureen Berejka's ever-increasing skill in handling strings of seemingly indecipherable squiggles, this book could never have come into existence. In preparing successive early drafts of the ma.n.u.script, I much benefited from the able Barnard College chemistry graduate, Kiryn Haslinger, whose expert knowledge of the English language led to many improvements in my word use. New York University psychology graduate Marisa Macari ably provided help in inserting period photographs and doc.u.ments. Later, Stanford biology major Agnieszka Milczarek invaluably corrected the many errors of fact and spelling spotted by friends to whom I sent preliminary drafts. Finally, I much thank George Andreou of Knopf for masterly editing that has much improved this volume's clarity and intellectual thrust.

-Jim Watson, March 26, 2007

1. MANNERS ACQUIRED AS A CHILD.

With my mother in 1929.

I WAS BORN in 1928 in Chicago into a family that believed in books, birds, and the Democratic Party. I was the firstborn, followed two years later by my sister, Betty. My birth was at St. Luke's Hospital, not far by car from Hyde Park, where my parents lived after their marriage in 1925. Soon after Betty was born, my parents moved to South Sh.o.r.e, a middle-cla.s.s neighborhood populated by bungalows, vacant lots, and two-story apartment houses. We lived in an apartment on Merrill Avenue before relocating in 1933 to a small, four-room bungalow that my parents bought at 7922 Luella Avenue, two blocks away. That move allowed my by then financially stretched, seventy-two-year-old grandmother to live with us in the rear bedroom next to the kitchen. In newly created tiny attic rooms, Betty and I slept on bunk-like beds. WAS BORN in 1928 in Chicago into a family that believed in books, birds, and the Democratic Party. I was the firstborn, followed two years later by my sister, Betty. My birth was at St. Luke's Hospital, not far by car from Hyde Park, where my parents lived after their marriage in 1925. Soon after Betty was born, my parents moved to South Sh.o.r.e, a middle-cla.s.s neighborhood populated by bungalows, vacant lots, and two-story apartment houses. We lived in an apartment on Merrill Avenue before relocating in 1933 to a small, four-room bungalow that my parents bought at 7922 Luella Avenue, two blocks away. That move allowed my by then financially stretched, seventy-two-year-old grandmother to live with us in the rear bedroom next to the kitchen. In newly created tiny attic rooms, Betty and I slept on bunk-like beds.

Though I went to prekindergarten at the Laboratory School of the University of Chicago, the Depression quickly placed private education beyond my parents' means. I, however, was in no way disadvantaged by changing to public school. Our Luella Avenue home was only five blocks away from the academically rigorous Horace Mann Grammar School, which I attended from the ages of five through thirteen. It was then a relatively new brick building built in the early 1920s in Tudor style, possessing a large auditorium for a.s.semblies and a gymnasium where I was seldom able to do more than two or three push-ups.

While both of my father's parents were Episcopalians, only his father, Thomas Tolman Watson (born 1876), a stockbroker, was a Republican. His wife, constantly upset at being a speculator's wife, showed her displeasure by invariably voting for a Democrat. She was born Nellie Dewey Ford in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. Her mother was a descendant of the settler Thomas Dewey, who arrived in Boston in 1633. The Watson side of my family can be traced back to the New Jersey-born William Weldon Watson (born 1794), who would become minister of the first Baptist church established west of the Appalachians, in Nashville, Tennessee. When he returned from a Baptist convention at Philadelphia in a prairie schooner (before railroads), he brought with him the first soda water fountain ever seen in Tennessee. To counteract the local whisky demon, he set up the soda fountain on a street corner near the church and single-handedly made soda water all the rage. Reputedly he made enough money selling soda water to build a new church for his growing congregation, and it still stands today in the heart of Nashville.

His eldest son, William Weldon Watson II, moved north to Springfield, Illinois, where it is said he designed a house for Abraham Lincoln across the street from his own. With his wife and brother Ben, he later accompanied Lincoln on the inaugural train to Was.h.i.+ngton. Ben's son, William Weldon Watson III (born 1847), married in 1871 Augusta Crafts Tolman, the daughter of an Episcopalian banker from St. Charles, Illinois. Afterward he became a hotelkeeper, first north of Chicago and then in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, where he raised five sons including my grandfather, Thomas Tolman Watson. After my grandfather's marriage in 1895, he initially sought his fortune at the newly discovered Mesabi Range, the great iron-ore-bearing region located near Duluth on western Lake Superior. Then he joined his older brother, William, later to be one of Mesabi's senior management. My father, James D. Watson Sr., was born in 1897, followed over the next decade by his brothers, William Weldon IV, Thomas Tolman II, and Stanley Ford.

From northern Minnesota, my father's parents moved back to the Chicago region, where, with the help of his wife's money, my grandfather bought a large Colonial Revival-style home in Chicago's affluent western suburb of La Grange. My father went to the local schools there before attending Oberlin College in Ohio for a year. Dad's freshman year ended, however, with scarlet fever rather than academic laurels. The following year he would start commuting into Chicago's commercial banking center (the Loop, with its ring of elevated tracks) to work at the Harris Trust Company. Money was short, as usual.

My father, James D. Watson, Sr., in 1925 the year he married my mother

My mother, Margaret Jean Mitch.e.l.l Watson, models the MacKinnon kilt from Scotland.

But making money was never near my father's heart, and after World War I started, he enthusiastically joined the Illinois National Guard (Thirty-third Division), soon s.h.i.+pping off to France for more than a year. Upon coming home he began working at La Salle Extension University, a prosperous correspondence school that offered business courses. There he met, in 1920, his future wife, Margaret Jean Mitch.e.l.l (born 1899). She came to work in the personnel department after finis.h.i.+ng two years at the University of Chicago. Mother was the only child of Lauchlin Alexander Mitch.e.l.l, a Scottish-born tailor, and Elizabeth (Lizzie) Gleason, the daughter of an Irish immigrant couple (Michael Gleason and Mary Curtin) who had emigrated from Tipperary during the potato famine of the late 1840s. After farming ten years in Ohio, they moved on to land south of Michigan City, Indiana, and it was there, in 1860, that my grandmother, Nana to Betty and me, was born.

Early in her adolescence, Nana had left the Gleason farm to become a servant in the Barker mansion, the home of Michigan City's most prosperous family, owners of a large boxcar factory. Soon Nana rose to be Mrs. Barker's personal maid, accompanying her around the spas of the Midwest. Later, Mr. Barker took closer note and installed her in a Chicago flat together with funds that allowed her an independent life. Only more than a decade later, in her mid-thirties, did she marry Lauchlin Alexander Mitch.e.l.l, born in Glasgow (1855) to Robert Mitch.e.l.l and Flora MacKinnon.

As a youth, Lauchlin Mitch.e.l.l immigrated to Toronto and from there to Chicago, where his custom-made-suit business thrived by the time of the Columbian Exposition of 1893. Sadly, he died in an accident when my mother was just fourteen, struck by a runaway horse carriage while coming out of the Palmer House Hotel on New Year's Eve. My mother's only mementos of him were a tiny MacKinnon kilt sent to her from Scotland and the splendid pastel of him that was exhibited at the 1893 World's Fair, reportedly commissioned in exchange for a custom-made suit. Nana began to take in paying guests, in effect running an Irish boardinghouse on Chicago's South Side.

Marring my mother's adolescence was a lengthy bout of rheumatic fever that damaged her heart and made her short of breath if she exercised seriously. The illness ultimately cut her life short and she died of a heart attack at the age of fifty-seven. Like her mother, she followed the Catholic religion but was never a serious churchgoer. I remember her going to ma.s.s only on Christmas Eve and Easter, always saying that her heart needed to rest on weekends. On many days, particularly Sunday, Nana helped prepare our family's meals, having a skill at cooking not commonly found among the Chicago Irish. Her presence in our home early on gave Mother the freedom to work part time at the Housing Office of the University of Chicago, helping to supplement my father's barely adequate salary, which had been cut by half to $3,000 when the Depression took hold.

Elizabeth Mitch.e.l.l in Michigan City in 1925 before she was my nana Behind our house was an alley that separated the homes on the west side of Luella Avenue from those on the east side of Paxton Avenue. The general absence of cars made it a safe place for games of kick-the-can or setting off firecrackers that could still be bought freely around the Fourth of July. When I finally began to grow past five feet, a backboard with a basketball hoop was put up above our garage doors, allowing me to practice my free throws after school. Scarce family funds also purchased a ping-pong table to liven up winter days.

My irreligious father only reluctantly had agreed to a Catholic baptism for my sister and me. It kept peace between him and my grandmother. He may have regretted the accommodation when my sister and I began going to church on Sundays with Nana. At first I didn't mind memorizing the catechism or going to the priest to confess my venial sins. But by the age often, I was aware of the Spanish Civil War and my father let me know that the Catholic Church was on the side of the fascism he despised. Though one priest at Our Lady of Peace gave sermons supporting the New Deal, many in the congregation bought Father Coughlin's vitriolic magazine opposing Roosevelt, England, and the Jews, which was on sale outside Our Lady of Peace following each Sunday ma.s.s.

Horace Mann Grammar School kindergarten cla.s.s photo, October 1933. I am seated on the floor, second from the left, proudly wearing a bow tie Just after my confirmation at age eleven, I completely stopped going to Sunday ma.s.ses in order to accompany my father on his Sunday morning bird walks. Even as a small boy I was fascinated by birds, and when I was only seven my uncle Tom and aunt Etta gave me a children's book on bird migration, Traveling with Birds, Traveling with Birds, by Rudyerd Boulton, curator of birds at Chicago's Field Museum of Natural History. My father's devotion to bird-watching went back to his high school days in La Grange. It continued equally strong after World War I when his family moved to an apartment in Hyde Park on Chicago's South Side, so his brother Bill could conveniently attend the University of Chicago. Dad would be up before sunrise most spring and fall days to go birding in nearby Jackson Park. Our first bird walks were also in Jackson Park. There I first learned to spot the common winterresident ducks, including the goldeneye, the old squaw, the bufflehead, and the American merganser. In the spring I quickly learned to differentiate the most common of warblers, vireos, and flycatchers that in springtime migrated north from their tropical winter homes. By the age of eleven, I already had enough book knowledge of birds to antic.i.p.ate the many new species we would encounter during a 1939 drive in a borrowed car to see the San Francisco International Exposition. On that trip I added more than fifty new species to my acquaintance. by Rudyerd Boulton, curator of birds at Chicago's Field Museum of Natural History. My father's devotion to bird-watching went back to his high school days in La Grange. It continued equally strong after World War I when his family moved to an apartment in Hyde Park on Chicago's South Side, so his brother Bill could conveniently attend the University of Chicago. Dad would be up before sunrise most spring and fall days to go birding in nearby Jackson Park. Our first bird walks were also in Jackson Park. There I first learned to spot the common winterresident ducks, including the goldeneye, the old squaw, the bufflehead, and the American merganser. In the spring I quickly learned to differentiate the most common of warblers, vireos, and flycatchers that in springtime migrated north from their tropical winter homes. By the age of eleven, I already had enough book knowledge of birds to antic.i.p.ate the many new species we would encounter during a 1939 drive in a borrowed car to see the San Francisco International Exposition. On that trip I added more than fifty new species to my acquaintance.

Early on I learned from my father to keep careful notes on birds.

My mother, by then a captain of our Seventh Ward precinct, enjoyed working for the Democratic Party. Our bas.e.m.e.nt became the local polling station, earning us ten dollars per election, and my mother made another ten manning the polls. At the 1940 Democratic National Convention, held in Chicago, we rooted, to no avail, for Paul Mc.n.u.tt, Indiana's handsome governor then bidding to be chosen as Roosevelt's running mate.

In the evenings, Dad often was consumed with work brought home from the office. His princ.i.p.al task as collection manager of the LaSalle correspondence school was to write letters dunning students for delinquent payments. He never believed in threatening them, instead cajoling them with reminders of how their studies of the law or accounting would help them advance to high-paying jobs. I now realize how difficult it must have been to keep the job, he being a socialist-leaning Democrat sympathetic to the students who couldn't pay. No one, however, could accuse him of not working hard or of undermining free enterprise or, for that matter, of frowning upon the plutocratic game of golf, which he first came to enjoy in youth but later could play only on company outings after the Depression had forced the sale of the family Hudson.

Ten years old and soon to abandon Sunday ma.s.s for Sunday morning bird-watching Our family always rooted for Franklin Roosevelt and his New Deal's promise to rescue the downtrodden from the heartless grasp of unregulated capitalism. We were naturally on the side of the strikers in their violent confrontations with U.S. Steel at the ma.s.sive South Side mill two miles east of our home along the sh.o.r.e of Lake Michigan. Matters of economics, however, began to concern our family less as the German menace grew. My father was a strong supporter of the English and French, the Allies on whose side he had fought in the First World War. He would have found the Germans a natural enemy even without Hitler.

I remember his anguish when Madrid fell to Franco. The local radio stations played up the defeat of the communist-backed republicans, but Father then saw fascism and n.a.z.ism as the real evils. By the time of Munich, the news from Europe was as much cause to be glued to the radio as was the Lone Ranger or the Chicago Cubs. Particularly crucial to us was the outcome of the 1940 presidential election, wherein Roosevelt sought his third term and was opposed by Wendell Willkie. Seemingly almost as awful as the n.a.z.is themselves were America's isolationists, who wanted to stay out of the problems of Europe. My father was among those who saw in Charles Lindbergh's visit to Germany a manifestation of anti-Semitism.

Occasionally my parents had nasty disagreements about misspending what little money they had. But these frustrations were never pa.s.sed on to my sister and me, and we each regularly received five cents for the Sat.u.r.day afternoon double features at the nearby Avalon Theatre. Our parents would join us for some movies, one such occasion being John Ford's adaptation of Steinbeck's epic chronicle The Grapes of Wrath. The Grapes of Wrath. The message that great decency by itself does not generate a happy ending never left me. A long drought that turned fertile farmlands into dust clouds should not cause a family to lose everything. How any responsible citizen could see this film and not see the good brought about by the New Deal boggled my imagination. The message that great decency by itself does not generate a happy ending never left me. A long drought that turned fertile farmlands into dust clouds should not cause a family to lose everything. How any responsible citizen could see this film and not see the good brought about by the New Deal boggled my imagination.

I always liked going to grammar school and twice skipped a half grade, graduating when I was just thirteen. Somewhat downcasting were the results of my two IQ tests, discovered by stealthy looks at teachers' desktops. In neither test did I rise much above 120.1 got more encouragement from my reading comprehension scores, which placed me at the top of my cla.s.s. I graduated from grammar school in June 1941, just after Germany invaded Russia. By then Churchill had joined Roosevelt as a hero of mine, and on most evenings we listened to Edward R. Murrow reporting from London on the CBS news. That summer was broken by my first time away from my family, going by train for two weeks in August to Owasippe Scout Reservation in Michigan above Muskegon on the White River. There I enjoyed working for nature-oriented merit badges that made me a Life Scout. Less fun were the overnight camping trips, in which I would invariably lag behind the other hikers, catching up only when they stopped to rest. Nonetheless, I came home content to have spotted thirty-seven different bird species.

Russell Hart (center) and I on the way to Boy Scout camp in 1941 I could not help realizing, however, that as a boy expert on birds I was far behind the much younger Gerard Darrow, who thanks to a prodigious memory became a Chicago celebrity when as a four-year-old ornithologist his story and talent were written up in the Chicago Daily News. Chicago Daily News. I would resent him even more when he became the first famous "Quiz Kid" of a Sunday afternoon radio program that first aired in June 1940. Groups of five children, each of whom received a $100 defense bond, were asked questions by the host, the third-grade-educated Jolly Joe Kelley Previously he had been emcee of the I would resent him even more when he became the first famous "Quiz Kid" of a Sunday afternoon radio program that first aired in June 1940. Groups of five children, each of whom received a $100 defense bond, were asked questions by the host, the third-grade-educated Jolly Joe Kelley Previously he had been emcee of the National Barn Dance, National Barn Dance, having first come to radio fame by reading the funnies on WLS. Almost instantaneously, having first come to radio fame by reading the funnies on WLS. Almost instantaneously, Quiz Kids Quiz Kids became a national sensation, with its weekly listeners.h.i.+p between ten million and twenty million-almost half the giant audiences that listened to Jack Benny, Bob Hope, and Red Skelton. became a national sensation, with its weekly listeners.h.i.+p between ten million and twenty million-almost half the giant audiences that listened to Jack Benny, Bob Hope, and Red Skelton.

Virtually every Sunday afternoon for over two years, I listened to Quiz Kids Quiz Kids hoping that somehow I might get on the program and win a war bond. Stoking this hope was the fact that one of the show's producers, Ed Simmons, lived in the apartment house next to our bungalow. Finally, because of a successful audition or because of Ed Simmons's influence, I became a fourteen-year-old Quiz Kid in the fall of 1942. My first two appearances went well, with lots of questions suited to my expertise. But my third time on, I was up against an eight-year-old called Ruth Duskin and a battery of questions on the Bible and Shakespeare dominating the thirty-minute horror. I had never been encouraged to know the plots of Shakespeare, and my early Catholic upbringing had furthermore s.h.i.+elded me from any knowledge of the Old Testament. So it was virtually preordained that I would not be one of the three contestants to come back for the next program. When we went home I bitterly felt the want of encyclopedic knowledge and quick wits needed for semipermanence as a Quiz Kid. But I was nevertheless three defense bonds richer. Later these were used to purchase a pair of 750 Bausch and Lomb binoculars to replace the ancient pair my father had used as a birder in his youth. hoping that somehow I might get on the program and win a war bond. Stoking this hope was the fact that one of the show's producers, Ed Simmons, lived in the apartment house next to our bungalow. Finally, because of a successful audition or because of Ed Simmons's influence, I became a fourteen-year-old Quiz Kid in the fall of 1942. My first two appearances went well, with lots of questions suited to my expertise. But my third time on, I was up against an eight-year-old called Ruth Duskin and a battery of questions on the Bible and Shakespeare dominating the thirty-minute horror. I had never been encouraged to know the plots of Shakespeare, and my early Catholic upbringing had furthermore s.h.i.+elded me from any knowledge of the Old Testament. So it was virtually preordained that I would not be one of the three contestants to come back for the next program. When we went home I bitterly felt the want of encyclopedic knowledge and quick wits needed for semipermanence as a Quiz Kid. But I was nevertheless three defense bonds richer. Later these were used to purchase a pair of 750 Bausch and Lomb binoculars to replace the ancient pair my father had used as a birder in his youth.

As a Quiz Kid in 1942, second from the left, doomed by my lack of familiarity with the Bible and Shakespeare By then I was a soph.o.m.ore at the newly built South Sh.o.r.e High School. I continued as a largely S (superior) student, though I encountered much more compet.i.tion than I had at Horace Mann. There was a great Latin teacher, Miss Kinney, who sent me off to the state Latin exams with the more stellar student Marilyn Weintraub, on whom I had a slight crush that no one ever knew about. I was then acutely conscious of my size, only five feet tall when entering high school, and shorter than my sister, who went through p.u.b.erty early and reached her final height of five feet three inches while I was still only five foot one.

Dad and I spotted the seldom-seen white-winged scoter off Jackson Park in Lake Michigan.

I worked on and off behind a neighborhood drugstore soda fountain making c.o.kes from syrup and carbonated water. The other conventional teenage job possibility was as a bicycle newspaper delivery boy. But that would have prevented my going on early bird walks with my father and was never seriously considered. Particularly in May, we would routinely get up while it was still dark so we could arrive in Jackson Park soon after sunrise. That way we would have almost two hours to go after the rarer warblers, princ.i.p.ally in the region of Wooded Island. Dad's ear for birdsongs was much better than mine- upon hearing, say, the rough sound of the scarlet tanager, he never mistook it for the more melodious Baltimore oriole, which also migrates into Chicago just after the leaves come out. Afterward, Dad would catch a northbound streetcar to his work, while I would get a trolley going in the opposite direction, which would let me off near school.

It was in Jackson Park in 1919 that Dad had met the extraordinarily talented but socially awkward sixteen-year-old University of Chicago student Nathan Leopold, who was equally obsessive about spotting rare birds. In June 1923, Leopold's wealthy father financed a birding expedition so Nathan and my dad could go to the jack pine barrens above Flint, Michigan, in search of the Kirkland warbler. In their pursuit of this rarest of all warblers, they were accompanied by their fellow Chicago ornithologists George Porter Lewis and Sidney Stein, as well as by Nathan's boyhood friend Richard Loeb, whose family helped form the growing Sears, Roebuck store empire.

I had just entered high school when Dad and Mother first told me of Nathan and how for a thrill he and Richard Loeb had brutally killed a younger acquaintance, Bobby Franks. After offering Bobby a ride home from school, they fatally struck him in the head, disposing of the body in a culvert adjacent to the Eggers Wood birding site to which Dad later often brought me. Some six months before Nathan's senseless though nearly perfect crime of May 24,1924, his father contacted mine expressing worry about his son's obsessive fascination with Loeb. Nathan by then was already at the University of Chicago Law School and Dad had no acquaintance with the rich college youths that Leopold and Loeb moved among. In July, Leopold and Loeb were defended in a Chicago courtroom filled with newspapermen by the celebrated Clarence Darrow, who asked Dad to appear as a character witness. But his family advised against this action, saying it would mark him for life in Chicago.

After Darrow had saved his clients' necks-they were sentenced to life imprisonment without possibility of parole-Nathan wrote Dad proposing a correspondence. But Dad never replied, still horrified by the crime that had gripped Chicago as none before. Many Leopolds and Loebs changed their names, and my father and Sidney Stein ceased all communication. Many years later, I came across Stein searching, as I was, for May warblers and flycatchers in the dunes near Waukegan above Chicago's North Sh.o.r.e. By then a very successful investment banker, later to be a trustee of the University of Chicago, Stein was acutely embarra.s.sed when I identified myself as Jim Watson's son.

There was constant talk at home about the University of Chicago, especially since my father knew its president, Robert Hutchins, whose own father had been a professor of divinity at Oberlin when my father was an undergraduate there. Hutchins had recently enacted an exciting plan for admitting students who had only finished two years of high school and whose brains had not already been rotted out by the ba.n.a.lity of high school life. Mother took the lead in seeing that I took the scholars.h.i.+p exam, administered one winter morning in 1943. Soon after, I was invited back to the campus for a personal interview, at which I talked about the books I had lately read, concentrating on Carlo Levi's antifascist statement, Christ Stopped at Eboli. Christ Stopped at Eboli. Afterward I was very nervous until the director of admissions, a friend of my mother's, rea.s.sured her that I had a decent chance at a full-tuition scholars.h.i.+p. When I got the good news officially, I was too happy to care that my good fortune might have been related to my mother's being well liked by the members of the scholars.h.i.+p committee. Moving on to a world where I might succeed using my head-not based on personal popularity or physical stature-was all that could have mattered to me. Afterward I was very nervous until the director of admissions, a friend of my mother's, rea.s.sured her that I had a decent chance at a full-tuition scholars.h.i.+p. When I got the good news officially, I was too happy to care that my good fortune might have been related to my mother's being well liked by the members of the scholars.h.i.+p committee. Moving on to a world where I might succeed using my head-not based on personal popularity or physical stature-was all that could have mattered to me.

Remembered Lessons 1. Avoid fighting bigger boys or dogs As a child I lived with being punier than other boys in cla.s.s. The only consolation was my parents' empathy-they encouraged constant trips to the local drugstore for chocolate milk shakes to fatten me up. The shakes made me happy, but still all through grammar school other kids shoved me around. At first I responded with my fists, but soon I realized that being called a sissy was a better fate than being beaten up. It was easier to cross to the other side of the street than come face-to-face with loitering menaces with a nose for my fear. Likewise, I was no match for barking dogs, particularly ones I had provoked by climbing over fences into their domains. Spotting a rare bird is never worth the bite of a cur. Once bitten by a German shepherd, I knew that I preferred cats, even if they are bird-killers. Life is long enough for more than one chance at a rare bird.

2. Put lots of spin on b.a.l.l.s I long wanted to be part of the softball games played on the big vacant lot across Seventy-ninth Street. At first my only way to join in was to field foul b.a.l.l.s. Then I learned how to put spin on underhanded pitches that kept even the better batters from routinely smacking line drives through holes in the outfield. From then on I felt much less an outsider on Sat.u.r.day mornings. The spins that came from similarly slicing ping-pong serves helped make me a good player well before my arms got long enough to reach near the net of our family's bas.e.m.e.nt table.

3. Never accept dares that put your life at risk Seeing cla.s.smates dash across a street to beat a coming car filled me with more horror than envy of their bravado. When I rode my bike three miles to the Museum of Science and Industry, I knew my constantly worrying mother would have preferred my taking the streetcar. But by being cautious-going down as many alleys as possible and never taking my hands off the handlebars when a car was pa.s.sing-I was never really putting my life at significant risk. Likewise, in climbing up and over the branches of neighborhood trees or hoisting myself up along gutters to the roofs of one-story garages, I may have been risking a broken leg but not a fatal fall. The possibility of plunging more than ten feet never seemed worth the thrill of being high up.

4. Accept only advice that comes from experience as opposed to revelation Listening to my elders just because they were older was not the way I grew up. Preadolescent exposure to my relatives' views that the New Deal would bankrupt the United States and that Hitler would cease being an aggressor after conquering England left me with no illusions that adults are less likely than children to utter nonsense. For the most part, my parents tried to provide rational explanations for why I should think a certain way or do a certain thing. So I was convinced by my mother's advice that I wear rubbers on rainy days so as not to ruin my leather soles. At the same time, I rejected her no less often heard argument that sodden feet led to colds.

By then I was conditioned to accept my father's disdain for any explanations that went beyond the laws of reason and science. Astrology had to be bunk until someone could demonstrate in a verifiable way that the arrangement of the stars and planets affected the course of individual lives. Equally improbable to Dad was the idea of a supreme being, the widespread belief in whose existence was in no way subject to observation or experimentation. It is no coincidence that so many religious beliefs date back to times when no science could possibly have accounted satisfactorily for many of the natural phenomena inspiring scripture and myths.

5. Hypocrisy in search of social acceptance erodes your self-respect My parents and most of their neighbors had nothing bonding them together but Horace Mann Grammar School. Mother, with an outgoing and generous personality, naturally rose to be president of the PTA. But except for a keen interest in baseball, Dad had nothing in common with his fellow fathers. That love, however, seldom drew him into the backyards of neighbors, where frequent blasts at the New Deal and occasional anti-Semitic jokes were insufferable for Dad, whose favorite radio personality besides Franklin Roosevelt was the Jewish intellectual Clifton Fadiman. He knew enough to avoid occasions where polite silence in response to repulsive remarks could be construed as acquiescence in their awfulness.

6. Never be flippant with teachers My parents made it clear that I should never display even the slightest disrespect to individuals who had the power to let me skip a half grade or move into more challenging cla.s.ses. While it was all right for me to know more about a topic than my sixth-grade teacher had ever learned, questioning her facts could only lead to trouble. Until one has cleared high school there is little to be gained by questioning what your teacher wants you to learn. Better to memorize obligingly their pet facts and get perfect grades. Save flights of rebellion for when authority does not have you by the throat.

7. When intellectually panicking, get help quickly Occasionally I found myself nervously distraught, unable to repeat an algebraic trick I had learned the previous day. I never hesitated in such circ.u.mstances to turn to a cla.s.smate for help. Better for one of them to know my inadequacies than not to be able to go on to the next problem. "Do it yourself or you'll never learn" may have some validity, but fail to get it done and you'll go nowhere. Even more frequently I was unable to express myself in words and habitually procrastinated with writing a.s.signments. It was only with my mother's last-minute help that I punctually submitted a well-written eighth-grade paper on the history of Chicago. Of much greater importance was Mother's later insistence that she edit every word of my scholars.h.i.+p essay to the University of Chicago. I accepted her extensive editing with little guilt, then or since.

8. Find a young hero to emulate On one of our regular Friday night visits to the Seventy-third Street public library, my father encouraged me to borrow Paul de Kruif's eelebrated 1926 book, Microbe Hunters. Microbe Hunters. In it were fascinating stories of how infectious diseases were being conquered by scientists who went after bad germs with the same tenacity as Sherlock Holmes pursuing the evil Dr. Moriarty. Some months later I brought home In it were fascinating stories of how infectious diseases were being conquered by scientists who went after bad germs with the same tenacity as Sherlock Holmes pursuing the evil Dr. Moriarty. Some months later I brought home Arrowsmith, Arrowsmith, in which Sinclair Lewis, helped by Paul de Kruif as expert consultant, relates the never-realized hope of his hero to save victims from cholera by treating them with bacteria-killing viruses. The protagonist's youth gripped me and made me realize that science could be like baseball: a young man's game whose stars made their mark in their early twenties. in which Sinclair Lewis, helped by Paul de Kruif as expert consultant, relates the never-realized hope of his hero to save victims from cholera by treating them with bacteria-killing viruses. The protagonist's youth gripped me and made me realize that science could be like baseball: a young man's game whose stars made their mark in their early twenties.

Also encouraging me to aim high was my not-too-distant cousin Orson Welles, whose grandmother was a Watson. Though we never met, he also had an Illinois background and after being effectively orphaned was partly raised by my father's uncle, the celebrated Chicago artist Dudley Crafts Watson. Always turned out with much panache, including a pince-nez, Dudley relished telling his nephew's family of Orson's triumphs, which began when he was a child actor in the Todd School. Orson's daring was what appealed to me most, from his famous War of the Worlds War of the Worlds radio hoax to his groundbreaking feature radio hoax to his groundbreaking feature Citizen Kane. Citizen Kane. A scientist's hero need not be a microbiologist, let alone a baseball player. A scientist's hero need not be a microbiologist, let alone a baseball player.

2. MANNERS LEARNED WHILE AN UNDERGRADUATE.

I WENT to my first college cla.s.ses at the University of Chicago in the summer of 1943. By starting in the summer and continuing in residence during subsequent summers, I had a good chance of obtaining my degree before I could be called into military service when I turned eighteen. Initially I had no choice about the courses I took-one-year surveys in the physical sciences, the humanities, and the social sciences were the intellectual blue plate special for all freshmen. There were even more prosaic requirements in math and English (reading, writing, and criticism). The survey requisites were a reaction against the free elective curricula that had come to dominate American colleges in the early twentieth century, particularly following the popularization of this system at Harvard by its then president, Charles Eliot. WENT to my first college cla.s.ses at the University of Chicago in the summer of 1943. By starting in the summer and continuing in residence during subsequent summers, I had a good chance of obtaining my degree before I could be called into military service when I turned eighteen. Initially I had no choice about the courses I took-one-year surveys in the physical sciences, the humanities, and the social sciences were the intellectual blue plate special for all freshmen. There were even more prosaic requirements in math and English (reading, writing, and criticism). The survey requisites were a reaction against the free elective curricula that had come to dominate American colleges in the early twentieth century, particularly following the popularization of this system at Harvard by its then president, Charles Eliot.

At the time, the College of the University of Chicago saw as its clear purpose to perpetuate the common ideas and ideals that held together Western civilization. To do so President Robert Hutchins required the college to uphold before students "the habitual vision of greatness." When I matriculated, Hutchins was forty-four. He had become president fourteen years before in 1929 at the age of thirty. He had earlier served as secretary of the Yale Corporation at the age of twenty-four, under James Rowland Angeli, who had come from the University of Chicago to be Yale's president. Upon obtaining his law degree, Hutchins began teaching law and through his personal magnetism and confident intellect quickly dominated the Yale law faculty, soon becoming its youngest dean ever. He remained only a year in this prestigious position before being chosen as the sixth president of the University of Chicago.

An impulse to reform the chaotic state of American undergraduate education actually predated Hutchins's arrival in the form of a faculty report recommending that all students take a common set of introductory survey courses during their freshman and soph.o.m.ore years. Afterward they would take elective courses in their fields of concentration. When he launched this program in 1931, Hutchins grafted onto it two much more radical ideas. The first was the replacement of conventional textbooks with readings from the great books of Western civilization starting with Plato and going through Darwin, Marx, and Freud. Equally revolutionary was Hutchins's plan to accept students after only two years of high school. This idea was implemented experimentally beginning in 1937, largely with students in the University High School and taught mainly in the high school's cla.s.srooms. By 1942, however, a close vote of the war-depleted faculty realized Hutchins's bold alternative to the conventional bachelor's degree.

It was into this essentially untried educational environment that I entered each day via a roughly thirty-minute streetcar commute for a three-cent student fare. My best course was Social Science I (American Political Inst.i.tutions), then taught very ably by Robert Keohane. There was no deep metaphysics on which to get hung up, and I went with pleasure to the main reading room of Harper Library to find primary historical doc.u.ments such as the Federalist Papers or the Dred Scott Dred Scott decision. The book that influenced me most, however, was decision. The book that influenced me most, however, was Main Currents in American Thought Main Currents in American Thought by Vernon Parrington. It was the first to push me above the canned versions of American history, emphasizing names, dates, maps, and tables to reckon with economic and religious determinism. Much more clearly than before, I appreciated the ideological differences between the Democrats and Republicans and their respective alternatives for coping with the Great Depression, which now only a major war, it seemed, could bring to an end. by Vernon Parrington. It was the first to push me above the canned versions of American history, emphasizing names, dates, maps, and tables to reckon with economic and religious determinism. Much more clearly than before, I appreciated the ideological differences between the Democrats and Republicans and their respective alternatives for coping with the Great Depression, which now only a major war, it seemed, could bring to an end.

Inserting the great books into the science surveys was from the start a controversial idea totally opposed by the science faculty, who considered teaching the history before the facts of science a lunacy of mad medievalists. My introduction to physical science survey, taught by the biologist Tom Hall, was a hodgepodge of these two approaches. Much of the time I couldn't tell what was required of me, and my self-esteem fell when I received a B on my exam at the end of the summer term. Fortunately, only the results of the comprehensive exam taken at the end of the full year's work would appear on my official record. But I got a B on that too.

The evaluation system at the college was then unique. Hutchins had nothing but contempt for the custom of courses being continually punctuated by exams requiring modest recall of textbook readings or lecture notes. At Chicago a special board of examiners, not the individual course instructors, was responsible for the exams. No advantage could come of b.u.t.tering up the instructor or religious note taking in lectures. Your attention could focus on intellectual arguments while you were in cla.s.s, not afterward in preparation for an exam. Unfortunately, some of the exams felt more like rarefied IQ tests than honest attempts at evaluating knowledge of the syllabus.

As a commuting student, I entered only marginally into the social life of Hutchins's college, about half of whose students lived in dorm rooms set aside for them. Ida Noyes Hall, originally the social and athletic center for women, became the meeting point for my younger cohort, many of whom, despite relative youth, relaxed by playing endless hands of bridge there. Our athletics also centered on Noyes Hall, where the gymnasium was used for intramural games as well as academic compet.i.tions with teams from the private high schools, such as Chicago Latin, the University High School's traditional compet.i.tors. I routinely went to all its home court games but more obsessively followed the college team, which in 1943-44 played its last season in the Big Ten. Chicago's compulsory survey courses were ultimately unmanageable for Big Ten-quality athletes, and allowances were not going to be made for students recruited solely for their athletic ability. Our final year was a humiliation until the Chicago Five were vastly strengthened by the arrival on campus of several men from the navy for war-related learning. I became transfixed during our last game of the season, against the perennial powerhouse Ohio State. Chicago kept it tied until almost the end, allowing a tiny crowd of fans to head off to bed knowing they had almost witnessed a miracle.

On the west side of Stagg Field were the original football stands, underneath which handball and squash courts had been placed. I naturally gravitated to handball, in which sheer strength counted for little. Several courts north of where I usually played, there was a locked door with a No Trespa.s.sing sign, from which one inferred that war research was being conducted on the other side. I wondered whether it was an extension of the top-secret physics project that had recently brought to Chicago my physicist uncle, William Weldon Watson, who had come with his family from New Haven, where he was a professor at Yale. Though Bill was very discreet, I got the impression that they were trying to develop a superweapon ahead of the Germans.

A real plus of the college's evaluation system was that you could take your comprehensive exams as soon as you felt prepared. No requirements existed for attending cla.s.ses or writing term papers. And the tuition was the same even if you registered for more than the normal course load. Because of the war, all the second years of physical sciences courses were crammed into the spring 1944 quarter. Once again I eked out a B on the final exam. I used the following summer quarter to cram down the one-year-long Biological Science Survey, which, happily, was not weighted down by the great-books historical approach. With my interest in birds drawing me toward a career in biology, I was disappointed when I got yet another B on the comprehensive exam that August.

My progress toward a concentration in science did not reflect any dislike of the second-year surveys in the humanities or social sciences. In fact, both these cla.s.ses left lasting memories of inspired teaching. Of all my instructors, the Trinity College-trained Irish cla.s.sicist David Greene would bring me closest to Hutchins's idea of great teaching. Particularly moving was Greene's Humanities II lecture on the grand inquisitor of Dostoevsky's Brothers Karamazov Brothers Karamazov and the choice between freedom and the security offered by adherence to religious authority. I was also captivated by my Social Science II lectures, interspersed with discussion sessions led by the German-born refugee from n.a.z.ism Christian Mackauer. With his Continental background he was much at home pitting Max Weber's and the choice between freedom and the security offered by adherence to religious authority. I was also captivated by my Social Science II lectures, interspersed with discussion sessions led by the German-born refugee from n.a.z.ism Christian Mackauer. With his Continental background he was much at home pitting Max Weber's The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism against R. H. Tawney's against R. H. Tawney's Religion and the Rise of Capitalism. Religion and the Rise of Capitalism. It was a compelling new outlook on my father's Protestant heritage. It was a compelling new outlook on my father's Protestant heritage.

In my first departmental science cla.s.s, Botany 101, I was several years younger than the other students. The basics of plant anatomy and physiology were little more than an exercise in short-term memory. But the laboratory sessions were a horror since they demanded sketching what I saw under the microscope. My inability to draw, much less do so neatly, depressingly ensured that my final grade would be another B. Zoology 101, taught by the termite specialist Alfred Emerson, went much better: less drawing, and many trips to the Field Museum to look at its extensive collection of reptiles, birds, and mammals.

I remained all through my college years a fervent ornithologist, especially during the spring and fall migrations, when I frequently went by myself, sometimes extending the reach of public transportation by hitchhiking, to prime birding areas. The birds that fascinated me the most were the sh.o.r.ebirds, ranging from the tiny sandpipers to the much larger curlews. I was always on the lookout for the very rare red Wilson and northern phalaropes that Dad had seen when he was a boy. So I was tremendously thrilled when one day in early May, in a marsh on the west sh.o.r.e of Lake Calumet, I spotted three northern phalaropes spinning in the shallow water.

In the spring of 1945, I took the intellectually challenging physiology course taught by the clever Ralph Gerard, whose recent book, Unresting Cells, Unresting Cells, was one of our texts. The cla.s.s was given in Abbott Hall, which was next to Billings Hospital and was the headquarters of the biochemistry and physiology departments. No longer did lab work depend on drawing. Instead we did actual experiments on frogs whose consciousness had been destroyed by the quick insertion of a sharpened metal rod into their brains. On other afternoons, teaching a.s.sistants did demonstrations on anesthetized dogs that had been brought down from the animal room on the top floor of Abbott. In summer months when the windows were open, the sounds of barking dogs reached the walks below, upsetting those who believed experimenting on animals to be morally irresponsible. In contrast I, like almost everyone I knew, saw no alternative to animal experimentation if we were to advance science and medicine. was one of our texts. The cla.s.s was given in Abbott Hall, which was next to Billings Hospital and was the headquarters of the biochemistry and physiology departments. No longer did lab work depend on drawing. Instead we did actual experiments on frogs whose consciousness had been destroyed by the quick insertion of a sharpened metal rod into their brains. On other afternoons, teaching a.s.sistants did demonstrations on anesthetized dogs that had been brought down from the animal room on the top floor of Abbott. In summer months when the windows were open, the sounds of barking dogs reached the walks below, upsetting those who believed experimenting on animals to be morally irresponsible. In contrast I, like almost everyone I knew, saw no alternative to animal experimentation if we were to advance science and medicine.

The spring term was emotionally overshadowed by the death of Franklin Roosevelt on April 12 and the end of the war in Europe less than a month later. Hutchins saw V-E Day, the end of the war in Europe, as an occasion for a major statement and a.s.sembled the student body on the morning of May 8 in Rockefeller Chapel. Like many of my friends, my thoughts were of dismantling forever the German military machine that had inflicted on humanity two catastrophic world wars. Hutchins, however, majestically warned against lawless revenge that would go against the ideals for the sake of which we had entered the war. Given the day, the speech was an extraordinarily brave gesture that made me ashamed of my having espoused Henry Morganthau's proposal to reduce Germany to a nonindustrialized, pastoral country.

Academically this was my best term, the first one in which I received two As-one in physiology, the other in my first advanced divisional course, Botany 234, Physiographic Ecology. This latter course, taught by Charles Olmstead, was a walkover devoted to elucidating differences in plant life as a function of the environment. I spent that summer on a tiny island just off Door County, the long thin peninsula that separates Wisconsin's Green Bay from northern Lake Michigan. With j.a.panese power in full retreat and the war likely to end soon, there was no longer reason to hurry my education with summer schooling. I opted for a camp counselor position that would bring me into real northern wilderness, away from the oppressively humid heat of most Chicago summers. Though I was underqualified, being neither a strong swimmer nor an experienced boatman, the proprietor was sorely in need of staff, and I became the camp's first "nature" counselor.

Despite being so out of place, I enjoyed most days, slipping away whenever possible into the dense tangle of spruce and fir trees that surrounded the campgrounds. I could walk the perimeter of the island in less than a half hour, ever hopeful that a rare sh.o.r.ebird would fly by. One day this wish was royally granted when three majestic Hudsonian curlews flew within twenty feet of my observation spot. In mid-August the radio brought news of the first atom bombs having been dropped on j.a.pan and the immediate end of the war; it was proof of the superweapon concept, which had brought my uncle Bill to the University of Chicago and its Ryerson Physical Laboratory. Later I eagerly read the Chicago Tribune's Chicago Tribune's detailed account of the University of Chicago's key contribution, the first sustained nuclear reaction produced by man; it had been accomplished in the atomic pile constructed by physicists Enrico Fermi and Leo Szilard, underneath the west football stands where I played handball. detailed account of the University of Chicago's key contribution, the first sustained nuclear reaction produced by man; it had been accomplished in the atomic pile constructed by physicists Enrico Fermi and Leo Szilard, underneath the west football stands where I played handball.

Upon returning to school for the fall 1945 quarter, I decided to risk losing my scholars.h.i.+p aid by taking more difficult courses. Almost all my choices were quant.i.tative, as I simultaneously took calculus, chemistry, and physics. Balancing chemical equations was only mildly painful, and I received two As and a B. But I was much less at home with calculus, getting a B in differential calculus and then a C in the next quarter's integral calculus. So I took no further math to give more attention to my physics course. Though the instructor, Mario Iona, took a seemingly perverse pleasure in penalizing us for wrong guesses on his multiple-choice physics quizzes, I hit my stride by the spring term and pulled my grade up to an A.

All through the year I was taking Oil (Observation, Interpretation, and Integration), the most philosophically oriented of all the surveys and the last required course I needed for my degree. Again I had good fortune regarding the instructor: Joseph Schwab, whose languorous southern tone could never hide his disdain for c.r.a.p answers to precise Socratic questioning in my Humanities I cla.s.s. Now that I had learned to antic.i.p.ate his line of interrogation, I quite often enjoyed and even looked forward to his Swift Hall cla.s.ses, particularly after getting past medieval thought and on to that of the Renaissance and Francis Bacon's distinction between deductive and inductive reasoning. Even more appealing were the masterfully clear writings of the late-nineteenth-century Harvard logician C. S. Peirce. In the end, however, I was brought back to reality by my B on the final comprehensive. The message was clear that I should avoid further philosophical inquiry.

By dropping the last quarter of math, I had time to audit lectures on physiological genetics by Sewall Wright, the university's best-known biologist. Besides being one of the world's most accomplished population geneticists and a leader in evolutionary thought, Wright also did much to advance biology toward understanding what genes do at the biochemical level. I had by then independently become focused on the gene through a reading that winter of Erwin Schrodinger's thin book What Is Life? What Is Life? Because Schrodinger, the inventor of quantum wave mechanics and a 1933 n.o.bel Prize-winning physicist, had seen the importance of writing about biology, Because Schrodinger, the inventor of quantum wave mechanics and a 1933 n.o.bel Prize-winning physicist, had seen the importance of writing about biology, What Is Life? was What Is Life? was featured in the Sunday book section of the featured in the Sunday book section of the Chicago Sun-Times. Chicago Sun-Times. The next morning I checked it out of the biology library. Schrodinger elegantly laid out how genes were the most important feature of life, since they maintained its continuity by carrying hereditary information from one generation to the next. As birds had bound me to life sciences, Schrodinger's exaltation of the gene would lead me to a life of studying genetics. The next morning I checked it out of the biology library. Schrodinger elegantly laid out how genes were the most important feature of life, since they maintained its continuity by carrying hereditary information from one generation to the next. As birds had bound me to life sciences, Schrodinger's exaltation of the gene would lead me to a life of studying genetics.

At the June 1946 commencement, Robert Hutchins elegantly warned of the doom of Western civilization unless university graduates led the world toward a moral, intellectual, and spiritual revolution that contrasted with today's postwar "get all you can" ethos. I was struck by our president's tone that morning-not that of the metaphysician but that of the preacher's son-as he fervidly admonished us that only by coming to see our fellows as the children of G.o.d would we stop seeing them as rivals. He further warned us that unless we esteem ourselves as more than animals we are doomed to act like them, and the laws of the jungle will prevail. Most unexpected were his statements that we can practice Aristotelian ethics only with the support and inspiration of religious faith, that the brotherhood of men must rest on the fatherhood of G.o.d, and that cats and dogs are more attractive than most humans.

Excited by his forceful rhetoric but uneasy about its sentiments, my parents and my sister, who had just completed her first year at the college, walked across Woodlawn Avenue to the reception at Ida Noyes Hall. There Hutchins recognized Dad as we pa.s.sed through the receiving line, and briefly chatted with him about their student days at Oberlin. Afterward Dad recounted how Bob had then been a rebel and had been part of a group that secretly smoked cigare