The Minute Experiment and the Large Picture: A Lifelong Commitment

THE MINUTE EXPERIMENT AND THE LARGE PICTURE: A LIFELONG COMMITMENT* R. W. GERARDO In the Beginning My scientific career surely must have had its beginnings with my father, who made me the beneficiary of his pent-up passionate devotion to matters of the intellect. Coming to this country from Central Europe after a stop in England to obtain a degree in engineering, he made a career in industry, though father clearly should have been a university don. A brilliant man with great intellectual curiosity, he was a born but frustrated teacher. As his young and only son, I apparently was bright enough to ignite his hopes and ambitions that I would become what had been denied him, and with skill he communicated to me some of the golden understanding reverberating in his own mind. Father was a great admirer of Ralph Waldo Emerson, for whom I am named, and of Thomas Huxley, whose lay lectures in science were a model for his own teaching. Sunday morning walks with father always were the opportunity for a Socratic examination of some phenomenon of nature; I recall vividly his picking up a rounded pebble on the beach and leading me to formulate the action ofwaves and other natural forces in producing that rounded shape. He loved mathematics and taught me some rudiments of algebra. Thus, in my first year at high school the first day's lesson was entirely familiar to me and I told the teacher this. Wisely she said, "There will be an examination in 3 weeks. Why don't you see if you can pass it and go on to geometry?" I soon realized that my knowledge of algebra corresponded to about half of the first chapter, but her challenge was not to be shrugged off. With some help from father, I mastered the book; I ?Excerpts from this autobiographical sketch were selected and edited by Mrs. Mildred Hoerr Lysle, 27843 Detroit Road, Westlake, Ohio 44145, and approved by Mrs. Ralph Gerard, 534!4 East 15th Avenue, Eugene. Oregon 97401. Perspectives is grateful to Mrs Lysle for volunteering her editorial expertise as a contribution to the Alumni Association of the University of Chicago, her alma mater. tR. W. Gerard died February 18, 1974.©1980 by The University of Chicago. 0031-5982/80/2304-01 14$01.00 Perspectives in Biology and Medicine ¦ Summer 1980 | 527 passed the examination and moved up to geometry. This was heady stuff, and again I learned the subject in a few weeks of intensive study at home. By the time I launched into solid geometry I discovered that I had a good space visualization and sometimes had to convince my father of the correctness of the solution to a theorem. Partly because of the accelerated progress through high school, I entered the University of Chicago very young but still with parental guidance. I have grave doubts about the wisdom ofthis rapid progress, both on a psychosocial basis and in terms of my learning of mathematics. Trigonometry and calculus (at that time regarded as entirely adequate preparation for chemistry or medicine, to which I was inclined) I whipped through in great shape, but all my life I have regretted the lack of a really firm foundation in this universal tool to thinking. At the university, certainly guided by my father's attitudes as well as my own tastes, I managed to take at least one course in every science offered and in a great many of the nonsciences as well. Surely my continued movement into a generalist role, my interest in teaching and use of the Socratic method, and my devotion to reason as a way of life stem from these very early experiences with a gifted teacher. As the opening of my sophomore year approached, I walked over to the campus and, in a somewhat maudlin outburst of sentiment, kissed the cornerstone of the great library. University Study My "game plan" was to obtain a thorough grounding in chemistry, then to study medicine, and finally to do biological research. I took many chemistry courses as an undergraduate and in early graduate work, and was greatly influenced by Julius Stieglitz who taught organic chemistry. His lectures...