Comparing with Young Abe Lincoln: a grandiose delusion of mine?

Lincoln’s mother died when he was 9-years-old and his step mother, Sarah Bush Johnston, raised him like her own (“She was all of a mother to him [Lincoln].  He was her boy more than any born to her.” She brought three of her own children when she married Thomas Lincoln.) She lived to see her step son became the greatest President in the country, and survived him four years.  Lincoln once said of her, “All I am, and all I hope to be, I owe to my darling mother!”

The most amazing characteristic of his life is the expansion of his mind through the written words, which lifted him out of the Indiana’s wilderness, where “books ain’t as plenty as wildcats in these parts o’ Indianny.” 
Carl Sandburg wrote,

“At age of 7 the young Abe would lie on the dry leaves [his soft bed] at night contemplating what ‘independent’ or ‘predestination’ means. . . . His father talks about the waste of time in ‘eddication’; . . . but the stanch [staunch], yearning stepmother, Sarah Bush Lincoln, comes between the boy and the father.  And the father listens to the stepmother and lets her have her way. . . . The farm boys talked about how Abe Lincoln was always reading, digging into books, stretching out flat on his stomach in front of the fire place, studying till midnight and past midnight . . .”

Lincoln told Dennis Hank (his cousin), “The things I want to know are in books; my best friend is the man who’ll git me a book I ain’t read.”

My family: June 1956 (lunar calendar) on the birthday of my maternal grandmother

My mother often said she never had to ask me to read the books because I was always reading.  The electric outage was common and routine in the village, Xia-tang (下潭) where I grew up; many times a week and often lasting for hours.  I recall my mother would discourage me reading with a candle light saying it would hurt my eyes.

While attending the Chia-yi Middle School and High School, for a while I lived with my second sister and biked to school and after school I often diverted to the city library or ‘People Service Station’ (民眾服務處, sponsored by KuoMing Party [國民黨], thus a propaganda site) where newspapers and magazines are provided.  I was never happy or satisfied as the books were so limited and scarce; I could hardly find books of poignant interest.  My second sister was my very first teacher (first grade—there was no kindergarten in our village) and she would say if I read I would go places.

Lincoln would read between the plow handles and would be reading while walking, and would stop in the middle of the road from time to time until he got it straight.  During my middle school days (grade 7 to 9) and part of high school years I rode a primitive small train (used to haul the sugar canes as well as passengers) from Po-tzu to Chia-yi where my school locates.  It took the train one hour to travel the distance of about 10-11 miles.  Then all the students walked 30 minutes from the train station to the school in files; we usually formed 3 rows and I always stood in the middle so that I could walk and read all the way to school without worrying being hit by the cars or bikes.

Lincoln’s family moved from Kentucky to Illinois when he was 18 years of age, Carl Sandburg wrote,

“Two of the wagons had two yoke of oxen each and one wagon had four horses.  On the wagons were Tom and Sarah Bush Lincoln [Lincoln’s step mother], her three children, . . . Abraham Lincoln on and off an ox wagon with a goad coaxing or prodding the animals and bawling at them to get along.  They stopped where night found them, cooked supper, slept, and started at daybreak.  What with the ground freezing at night and thawing in the day, the oxen and horses slipped and tugged, the wagon axles groaned, the wooden pegs and cleats squeaked—a journey, Lincoln said later, “slow and tiresome.” . . . After traveling over 200 miles to Macon County, Illinois. . . . ”

We moved from Xia-Tang (下潭) to Po-Tzu (朴子) when I was at my fifth grade and water buffalo was our U-Haul.  I vividly recall that once the water buffalo suddenly stopped and defecated exactly in front of me; then I realized why my sisters gave me the honor of sitting in the middle in charge of the water buffalo.  Lincoln said their journey was “slow and tiresome,” but, ours was “slow but exciting,” as I thought we’re moving into a big city (朴子).

Our ox-vehicle (牛車) is a 4-wheel “medium sized car”, fancier than the photo shown; the water buffalo is essentially the same.

You may have noticed that I used quotes excessively on purpose in my writings; I constantly write down something on a piece of paper, on the notebook or type into computer.  Abe Lincoln apparently also had this habit.  He might even write on the fire shovel by using a piece of charcoal, and later copied into a piece of paper or notebook.

Lincoln was born and raised in a log cabin; the house in which I was born was comparable.  Jo and Sean saw the house in which I grew up until my fifth grade when we moved to the ‘big city’—Po-tzu, 朴子 (We never had a running water inside that house.  I saw a similar water pump in Harvard Yard some years ago; I was an expert using it, even though my left thumb was once half crushed operating it.) 

Jo and Sean also met my playmate and without the benefit of communication with him when we visited Xia-tang (下潭); they marvelled at the skill of chewing and spitting 檳榔; they could appreciate the two sets of mind made all the more difference by readings only. 

Our large family all slept in the bed room—the one and only; I now may call it ‘master bed room.’  The youngest one had the privilege of sleeping next to my mother; when my younger sister was born, I asked to sleep at the feet of my mother near the edge of the bed.  (I do not recall this, but my elder sisters attest to it.)  A wrong turn, I would be on the hard, shinning dirt floor, which impressed and amazed Jo and Sean.  Carl Sandburg also described “the floor was packed-down dirt” in Lincoln's home.

The house in which I was born was in the even smaller village; the mud house was torn down and a new modern-looking house was built in the same site when Jo and Sean visited; they did see the chickens running around in the front yard of the house.  

I was born at the end of WWII, at which time Taiwan was still occupied by Japan, making us in the Axis camp.  Bombing by American airplanes became more often and intense, and that is why my mother retreated to the small village where I was delivered to this world by my father.  The mud house was literally built by the mud mixing with the shells of the rice, and no cement at all.  

Jo and Sean had visited the village and field where my father studied while having his water buffaloes grazing.  He knew the only way could lift him out of the desolate swamp was through education to expand his mind.  It was extremely difficult to enter the only medical school in Taiwan then—the one that became the now prestigious National Taiwan University College of Medicine after the Japanese surrendered at the end of WWII—as the Japanese, being the ‘occupier’, reserved most of the spots for Japanese living in Taiwan .   

My father (photo at his medical school days) managed to enter that medical school through his motivation and determination and Jenny and Jason Lin’s grandfather was his classmate.

Love in Space and in Shakespeare's Works

While in space in December 2006, Commander Oefelein received an email form Capt Colleen Shipman, “I will have to control myself when I see you.  First urge will be to rip your clothes off . . .”—now you know why the astronaut has to wear special protective clothes : )

The space suit is designed to be torn-resistant and fire-resistant as passion is ‘hot’ (heat-producing and fire hazard)

NASA has been criticized not doing a good job in monitoring the mental health of astronauts.  In my view, NASA knows their astronauts better and is very ‘considerate’ in allowing the astronauts to receive emails from their ‘loved’ ones when they are in space.  And the names of the ‘loved’ ones have to be pre-approved by NASA.

For those who are puzzled how this astronauts space love triangle could have happened, take hint from the Preface of Shakespeare’s Works that Samuel Johnson wrote in 1765:

Upon every other stage the universal agent is love, by whose power all good and evil is distributed and every action quickened or retarded.  To bring a lover, a lady, and a rival into the fable; to entangle them in contradictory obligations, perplex them with oppositions of interest, and harass them with violence of desires inconsistent with each other; to make them meet in rapture and part in agony, to fill their mouths with hyperbolical joy and outrageous sorrow, to distress them as nothing human ever was distressed, to deliver them as nothing human ever was delivered, is the business of a modern dramatist.  For this, probability is violated, life is misrepresented, and language is depraved.

From the evolutionary gene change to my childhood story

After reading the article about the genes regulating metabolism, Janice wrote, “Now that food is abundant, we’d have to override those formerly rational evolutionary impulses and tell ourselves not to eat all available food.  So restricting our diets is rational and irrational.”  I think she got my points.

We often lament how difficult it is to shed a pound or two, some, pointing to food, even said, “I put on 2 pounds just look at it!”  Each gene may have several alleles all with same function but some variation.  The process of burning glucose to yield energy (ATP) is quite complex with numerous steps, thereby involving many enzymes and genes.  Let me take you back to millions of years ago when cave was still our home.  Let assume there were 4 sets of alleles in the gene pools, each set of alleles (of genes) produces enzymes with different proficiency—judged by how many ATP produced upon burning of one molecule glucose.

Those with alleles 1 will have to burn twice as much glucose to yield the same amount of energy as those with allele 4.  Natural selection is about the ‘survival of the fittest,’ when food was scarce; the allele 4 is the fittest; and they survive to reproduce.

During my talk at Bible Class, I used an example comparing mom and me with those living in the cave.  There are two persons and 4 refrigerators / freezers in this house, not counting the small refrigerator.  Provided there is a big storm, we can survive for months without leaving the house, those living in the cave wouldn’t be so lucky; and only those evolved efficient and proficient genes survived over the eons.

Millions of people are still starving around the world. So the genes we developed over the long evolutionary history to make the storage of energy expedient and efficient and the expenditure of it economical are still favorable to them or even to me.  Let me tell my childhood story.

I really do not have to go far to use the un-developed or war-torn countries as an example.  I can simply use my own childhood story (This is something Jo wanted me to write; this was when I grew up in that village that Jo and Sean once visited. Janice and Joy never had the good fortune to do so.)  I vividly recall that all children in every household were excited for a feast, which is defined as ‘having a chicken on the table' on certain religious days; anticipation was on the air.  In those days all meats (pork or poultry) were so scarce and expensive; having meats on the table often signifies special occasions.  On special religious days all these ‘sacrifices’ had to be dedicated to Buddha or many generations of ancestors before we could enjoy it.

The eldest son of my eldest sister is only 5-6 years my junior and we all lived in that village and my sister’s family might join us for the ‘feast.’  Unfortunately a chicken only has two legs, so my mother often had to hide at least one leg for me and one for my younger brother, lest my sister’s son, Ming Hong, grabbed it.  My sister told this story saying how much my mother loved me!  And she didn't have the luxury to show her affection to her own son!

You can never imagine that there was much more love than protein in that little chicken leg.  Chickens were also lean and mean without much food available in those days

Houston, we've had a problem!

Swigert: 'Okay, Houston, we've had a problem here.'
Duke: 'This is Houston. Say again please.' 

NASA would rather this is from astronaut Swigert of Apollo 13 moon flight.  They probably can handle it better.

The Space Shuttle lift off and landing has become such a routine that has attracted few TV viewers.  Hopefully this will spur the renewed interest to NASA.

Jo wanted to know more about this astronauts love triangle--just turn on TV or fire up your internet search engine, you can always find something that suits your taste.  People can never have enough of this stuff--shall we call it 'Right stuff'?  My imaginary People in Science would say space engineering as well.

Lisa Marie Nowak and Bill Oefelein were trained together; the heavy burden of love still can be felt in that weightless chamber.  This proves my theory that love defies gravity and all the logics and rationale that we come to know.  Nowak may be able to do two variable calculus, but she miscalculates this simple math.

Jay Leno showed a 'newly released' Astronaut Huggies diapers--I am afraid this may be what Ben will ask for.

People in Science--Who says science has to be boring?

After writing that molecular biology and quantum mechanics stuff, I know I need to be in a ‘damage control’ mode to write something to ‘soften’ the image of my blog, or to create a so-called ‘well balanced’ blog, so to speak.

I no longer need to look for People to keep track on what Lindsay (see photo), Paris, or Britney (add Nicole, if you will) are up to. They seem to be everywhere doing nothing.  Growing up I read the story of ‘Emperor wears no clothes’, growing old, I heard ‘Britney wears no underwear.’ a new fashion, I guess!  No wonder they say you learn something everyday.  If Ronald Reagan were around, he would tell me, “You ain’t seen nothing yet.”

These ‘Girls Gone Wild” graces the cover of the Feb. 12, 2007 issue of Newsweek.  Over the years, Newsweek has an educational program for ‘classroom subscription,’ hopefully this issue will spur its growth.

Janice once wrote, “What was Beethon thinking when he wrote his ‘Sonata Pathẻtique?”  With the same curiosity I read about scientists and their science; in a way to ‘humanize’ the science.  And this is why I say there is a niche market for a monthly magazine of People in Science, focusing on the human aspect of the science—covering the scientists or researchers in science of the past and present.

I am not alone when I said James Watson (see photo) would be a good contributor, in fact, I’ll let him write a monthly column on my imaginary magazine, title of which is still under consideration (imagination); “Straight talk from Honest Jim” is an vital option.

Salvador Luria (shared Nobel Prize with Max Delbruck and Alfred Hershey in 1969 for studying genetics, using bacteriophage as model organism) recruited Phillip Sharp (Nobel Prize 1993 for ‘split gene’) to MIT’s Center of Cancer Research in 1974.  Watson was Sharp’s mentor while at Cold Spring Harbor Lab.  Writing in tribute to Watson, Sharp once wrote,

“Talking with Jim was fun.  He would inject an interesting tidbit about the history of molecular biology and gossip about a colleague’s romantic interests or cultural pursuits, subjects that added color to the day-to-day conversations. . . Jim would suddenly appear at the door of my office at about 10PM, and asked me about the results, . . .”

I have said many times about Watson’s report of the affair between John Kendrew’s (Nobel Prize for myoglobin structure) wife and Hugh Huxley (sliding model of muscle contraction).  Watson has a way to describe the agony in and out of the Lab, including ‘the kiss in the garden’ scene.  Who says science has to be boring?

And this would be what the magazine (People in Science) is all about.  I would say enough real stuff (science) to persuade the more serious professors or high school science teachers to take the advantage of the  ‘classroom subscription.’  (You see I already have a ‘business plan.’) and the Newsweek cover will be an inspiration to me.

Another Nobel laureate I would recruit to contribute is Kary Mullis (see photo).  He was working at Cetus when he invented the polymerase chain reaction (PCR)—for which Cetus would get $300 million from Hoffmann-La Roche.  He had problems dealing with the company ‘safety officer’ (he called him ‘danger officer’); once the safety officer hired a beautiful young woman as his assistant, hoping she might be able to handle Mullis, who wrote, “Instead, I invited her home for dinner, and several months later she moved in with me.”  and “One afternoon a man who thought he was her boyfriend kicked open my door and started threatening me.  That was the only time in my life that I worried about my safety in a laboratory.”

Mullis was also involved in the O.J. Simpson trial; he described his encounter with O.J.

“The first thing O.J. asked me about was my refrigerator.  An article about me in Esquire had included a photograph of my kitchen.  On my refrigerator were pictures I had taken of several women who had passed through my life, some of them without clothes.  O.J. asked me about the woman who graced the upper right-hand corner. 'She's gotten married,' I told him.  He offered his condolences.”

Janice's molecular biology professor, Richard Losick, whose lecture note is the most intellectual of this sort.  Janice told me some years later that he received $1 million teaching grant.  And even Professor Losick gossiped about Kary Mullis in the classroom.  Based on Janice's hand written note about this, I took comfort in that Janice listened in classroom attentively and wrote note dilligently.

This 'playboy' Nobel laureate really earns his name and reputation.  I have honored him with my 'Flamboyant Flame', one of the best sellers among my intellectual colognes.  The profits of which will help launch People in Science.

Boring Scientists

I am going to be a victim of my own success; with the debut of ‘Irresistible Ben’ (my grandson, not the Big Ben) on my blog, it might attract more people to the site.  And that will be all they want to read ignoring the ‘real stuff’ on the blog.  I am more of a self-effacing guy than of a self-aggrandizing one, but, when talking about Ben, I can not but talk like a bragging blogger.

I plan to move the ‘Irresistible Ben’ to the bottom of the page, and Jo already warned me that will change nothing, as one can always fast scroll down to it.

I am fully aware that few people will be intrigued by the likes of Dirac, Feynman, or Glauber. I always bought those yearly The Best American Science Writing books in the bargain books section. Janice, I got another one at Harvard Square when we last visited you.

In Political Scientist (a profile of Harold Varmus in the June 7, 1999 issue of The New Yorker), the author lamented how Harvard Crimson was full of mockery abut this nobody who had been invited to give the Commencement Address (1996), Dr. Varmus began the Address by repeating some of the responses reported on the Crimson: “Who is he?” “Wow, that’s boring.  Everyone got someone exciting.” and he said “Editorials criticized the process by which 'Dr. Who' was selected.  I was featured in entertaining cartoons, something that hasn’t happened during three years in Washington [He was appointed as the Director of NIH by then President Clinton in 1993.  He is now the president of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center.]  I may never be this famous again.”

Harold Varmus was actually on the list of my Cultivated Renaissance Men in Science list (more to come about this Nobel laureate).  And if this could happen in the intellectual Harvard, then it is no surprise that my writing of those ‘boring’ scientists will interest few, if any.  Recruiting Irresistible Ben is my desperate attempt to keep the traffic flowing. 

Intellectual Colognes

Cologne is nonessential in my life; never feel any need of it.  I was never attracted to it until now.

Inspired by New York Yankees shortstop Derek Jeter’s cologne, Driven, Steve Mirsky wrote a humor column in the November 2006 issue of Scientific American with a title of Uncommon Scents.  He makes up 18 colognes, each honoring or ‘exploiting’ a scientist.  I’ll mention a few here and say a few things to make it more educational; so you would have fun while learning something.  The aim of my blogging is to educate, enlighten and entertain, after all.

I wonder how Avon would market Driven in the Red Sox Nation? Big Poppi and Manny Ramirez, lovable though they may be, probably not fit to sell cologne.  I think the best answer from Boston to the New York Yankees' Jeter would be Patriots’ Tom Brady.

Alessandro Volta’s Charge   (Charge is the name of the cologne to be marketed)

Ingredients:  Cat hair, amber, balloons.

Slogan:  Make sparks fly.

Volt (unit of electric potential) and voltage derives from him.  If your name became a unit of scientific measurement or a constant, you are a scientific great or a Nobel laureate.  But, Volta (1745-1827) was in pre-Nobel era.  His Voltaic pile is the forerunner of modern battery.  He used copper (or silver) and zinc (this is what we learn in high school chemistry—electrochemical cell) to produce electrons (of course, we have to wait another 100 years or so to learn that it was electrons flowing that does the trick)

My slogan to sell Alessandro Volta’s Charge  would be “When 陰 (Yin) and  陽 (Yang) meet, let it spark!”

陰 (Yin) is female or negatively charged, and  陽 (Yang) is male or positively charged.

Antoine Lavoisier’s Chemistry

Ingredients: Hydrogen, oxygen.

Slogan:  When the elements come together, you may lose your head.

Lavoisier’s Elements of Chemistry (included in the Britannica Great Books) is very modern; no wonder he is touted as the Father of Modern Chemistry.  Many concepts are credited to him:  hydrogen combines with oxygen yields water, Laws of Conservation of Mass, diamond is the crystalline form of carbon, and role of oxygen plays in combustion.  Lavoisier (1743-1794) was beheaded during the French Revolution.  When he was sentenced to death, he requested time to complete some scientific work, the presiding judge was said to have answered “The Republic has no need of scientists.”  This judge symbolizes the collective French National Disgrace and Shame.

The slogan of ‘you may lose your head’ was twisted into somewhat different meaning that is fitting for selling cologne.

J. Robert Oppenheimer’s Cataclysm

Ingredients:  Desert sand, enriched geranium.

Slogan:  Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds, but with a delicate floral hint.

I read Oppei’s biography: American Prometheus this past summer.  On his reflection of seeing the mushroom clouds rising from the first test explosion of atomic bomb (code name Trinity), he wrote, quoting from the Hindu sacred Scripture, the Bhagavad Gita: "If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the Mighty One." and “I am become Death, the shatterer of worlds."

My campaign slogan for Cataclysm  would be: Let this American Prometheus steal fire and passion to stir your static mind, so when the moment is right, you will be ready!  (I must have watched too much Cialis TV commercial)

The following colognes are my own invention.

Kary Mullis’ Flamboyant Flame

Mullis’ polymerase chain reaction (PCR) is simplistically beautiful, matching that of DNA structure—the best tool we ever had in propelling the genetic science to the one as we come to know today.  I am still trying to understand this flamboyant ‘playboy’ Nobel laureate (1993, Chemistry)

My slogan to sell Flamboyant Flame:  Get out of Lab, play the game, not necessarily by the rule, be uninhibited and outrageous, explore the world, get a life, be all you can be.

Hwang Woo Suk's Blind Ambition or Cheating Heart

When the South Korean scientist Hwang Woo Suk announced his creation of many new lines of embryonic stem cells last year, critics claimed the American counterparts had fallen behind because of President George Bush's stem cell policy.  Then the superstar scientist fell like a rock after his fraudulent scheme was exposed.

Shortly after the Blind Ambition or Cheating Heart was launched, it was discovered all the ingredients are fake, so the product was quickly pulled out of shelf and its marketing slogan was deleted from this page

Cultivated Renaissance Men in Science: Oppenheimer

Oppenheimer's greatest gift is his intellect, quick mind, and capacity to understand things esoteric; he spreaded the 'gospel' of quantum mechanics in the States after he returned from Europe.  Oppie was a “cultivated scholar, a linguist of eight tongues.”  He read Marcel Proust in French, Dante in Italian, and Karl Marx’s Das Kapital in German.  He studied Greek and Latin before going to Harvard in 1922, and where he read the entire 3000 pages of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon.  (The New York Times wrote in his obituary that he read it on a train trip from California to the East Coast.)  He gave a lecture in Dutch six weeks after arriving Netherlands to study with Ehrenfest.

On his reflection of seeing the mushroom clouds rising from the first test explosion of atomic bomb, he wrote, quoting from the Hindu sacred Scripture, "If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the Mighty One." and “I am become Death, the shatterer of worlds."

Cultivated Renaissance Men in Science: Roy Glauber

Richard Feynman, the ‘Genius’ (the title of his biography by James Gleick) was thrilled when he learned that the Descriptive Astronomy can be considered a required humanity course at MIT.  He couldn’t enjoy reading anything other than math or sciences.  “He tried to read Goethe’s Faust and felt he could make no sense of it.”

Not all scientists are alike; the following is from the Banquet Speech by Roy Glauber (see photo – one of the three Nobel laureates in Physics in 2005, still teaching at Harvard at age of 81) If there are two or three recipients, the Banquet Speech is usually presented by the elder, the more seasoned one.  He also mentioned A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

“These dark days in emphasize the importance of light in our lives. It is equally important in our literature. The word, 'light', has vastly many meanings. Shakespeare, in Love's Labours Lost, has one of his cleverer characters make fun of that by speaking the line, 'Light, seeking light, doth light of light beguile ...'  Loosely translated, that means: Intellect, seeking understanding, easily fools reason. - Or perhaps it's the other way around.”

The following is how he ended his Nobel Lecture:

Einstein at Princeton in 1951--by Roy Glauber

“I’d like, as a final note, to share with you an experience I had in 1951, while I was a postdoc at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. Possessed by the habit of working late at night – in fact on photon statistics13 at the time – I didn’t often appear at my Institute desk early in the day. Occasionally I walked out to the Institute around noon, and that was closer to the end of the work day for Professor Einstein. Our paths thus crossed quite a few times, and on one of those occasions I had ventured to bring my camera.  He seemed more than willing to let me take his picture as if acknowledging his role as a local landmark, and he stood for me just as rigidly still. Here, [Left Figure], is the hitherto unpublished result. I shall always treasure that image, and harbor the enduring wish I had been able to ask him just a few questions about that remarkable year, 1905.”

Glauber’s Nobel Lecture gives a good summary of the birth of quantum mechanics—during 1924-26 when Louis de Broglie, Heisenberg and Schrodinger were working on the atoms. But, Glauber makes it clear that it was Dec. 14, 1900 when Max Planck announced his revolutionary idea that energy emitted by a resonator could only take a discrete value (quanta, hence quantum mechanics) that separates the classical physics and quantum mechanics.  Based on Planck’s concept, Einstein proposed in 1905 that light is also quantized—his photoelectric effect earned him the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1921 (his more famous E = mc² never got him a Nobel), and Planck was so honored in 1918.

Sweden's Crown Princess Victoria seated between the Nobel Laureates in Physics

While watching Glauber’s Nobel Lecture video, I lost him when he came to his work; my limited math (calculus) background deprives me of so much joy.  In summer reading_6/2004, I wrote I struggled for many years trying to better understand quantum mechanics and eventually gave it up when I couldn’t fully understand Schrodinger’s wave function equation.  I have come to realize that without higher level calculus, I can’t ever grasp the concept.  And Dirac’s equation of electrodynamics is the extension of Schrodinger’s and Feynman’s Dirac’s.  The point I try to make is that without a good foundation of math (calculus), one can not do physics.

 

Writing about Glauber’s Nobel Prize in fall reflection_10/8/2005, I wrote, “Let there be light: and there was light.”  I am pleased to note that on Dec. 8, 2005 when he gave the Nobel Lecture, he also began with something like this:  Our good Lord said, “Let there be quantum electrodynamics.” . . . that was the modern translation of the Hebrew.  We quote the same Scripture, but he said it in a more poetic, aesthetic, subtle and dynamic way, no doubt.
(photo comes from nobelprize.org site)

In Celebration of the Great Life of Dr. Daniel Paul Greenlee

(This was written on March 6, 2005 when Dr. Greenlee passed away. In a post of “Pittsburgh” by Dr. Cheng-Hung Lin, he showed the picture of Cathedral of Learning and mentioned the graduation today; a day like this I always think about Dr. Greenlee.

Dr. and Mrs. Greenlee are our “American parents”; Dr. Greenlee passed away at age of 102 five years ago and Mrs. Greenlee is now in her 90s. After graduating from the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, Dr. Greenlee went to Mayo Clinic for surgical training in early 1920s. He helped fund-raising to build the Cathedral of Learning. Their grandson, Dr. Adam Greenlee, graduated from University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine today. Congratulations!)

In searching for my final tribute to Dr. Greenlee, I came across what Homer Koch of Kansas spoke of Lincoln in the House of Representatives February 12, 1923. A towering figure Dr. Greenlee was, this fits him well.

 

 

“There is no new thing to be said about Dr. Greenlee. There is no new thing to be said of the mountains, or of the sea, or of the stars. The years go their way, but the same old mountains lift their granite shoulders above the drifting clouds; the same mysterious sea beats upon the shore; the same silent stars keep holy vigil above a tired world. But to the mountains and sea and stars men turn forever in unwearied homage. And thus with Dr. Greenlee. For he was a mountain in grandeur of soul, he was a sea in deep undervoice of mystic loneliness, he was a star in steadfast purity of purpose and service. And he abides.”

When I said of all the people that I came to personally know, Dr. Greenlee was the one I respected the most; Josephine said regardless how great or how respectable he was, he will always be her loving Grandpa Greenlee. Janice most remembers learning patience and steady work from working in the garden with him as well as the simple pleasures of watching baseball and football games on TV.

Every one he touched was blessed; everyone he cut (as far as his profession goes) was blessed. A surgeon trained at Mayo Clinic in 1920s at the time when the Mayo Brothers were still operating and when the great surgeons in the nation were produced at the legendary pioneering institution. And yet he practiced medicine following what Dr. William Osler said about the character of a good doctor: availability, affability, and ability, and in that order.

We learn his humility in his daily life, and his humanity from the trips to the farm we took with him. His love, devotion and tender care extended beyond his families and patients to all the ‘children’ in the farm.

When we first had the good fortune to be his neighbor in 1976, we visited the Agway store. Knowing we were the newcomers in town, the owner asked us where we lived. I replied that we live next to Dr. Greenlee. And much to my surprise that the owner said, “I know him, he is a good farmer!” That was the beginning that we learn medicine was not the only profession he had.

II Timothy 4:7

Apostle Paul said, “I have fought the good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith.”

No doubt we have heard our dear Paul said the same thing justifiably.

II Timothy 4:8

“In the future there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give me at that day, and not to me only, but also to all who have loved His appearing.”

We now know where Dr. Greenlee is, and we’re assured that he will continue to touch us, to bless us, and will ‘reserve’ a seat for us, and we shall meet again.

And above all, we all know he was and will always be the Number One of the Audrey [Mrs. Greenlee] Fan Club.