This is part 3 in an arc based on a news item, In The Courts, in Science magazine about a man of supposed superior intelligence who did an unwise thing; he molested a young girl. Now he'll spend 14 years in prison, most likely in solitary because he'll be at risk from the other inmates. He's seventy years old and a pioneer in gene-therapy research.
Part 1 shared a bit more about the news items and my memory of Dr. Edwin Teller, someone whom I once aspired to. Part 2 discussed my chagrin at learning that one of my idols wasn't so idyllic.
In every class and regardless of the size of the class, graduate or undergraduate, he would find one female and make her his favorite. I asked him about this once. Not confronted, asked. He knew. He admitted it. Nor did he offer excuses.His greatest lesson to me, I think, was one I stated to Susan (wife, partner, everything), "I want to be like him, but not all of him."
Many years later I was studying with another fellow who was an expert on several native american belief systems. There were about ten or twelve of us in the class. Close to the end of the class he had to go to Wisconsin for some family reason. When he returned he was so drunk he could barely stand.
The other students were incensed, near riotous. Everything he'd been teaching and sharing was now b?llsh?t.
"Really?" I asked. "This makes him an idiot and a faker, a charlatan? I hope to god my students never hold me up to such high ideals." In the end, I was the only student in the class. I think the students who either left or transferred lost out on much, and that's just an opinion, one I've shared when I run into them from time to time.
(more to follow)
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I'll be speaking at the Society for New Communications Research Annual Awards Gala Summit on 1-2 Nov 07 in Boston. Come on by and say hello.
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