Stone South Wind - VII
A Journey to the Beginning
6
On the Laboratories
The inner contours are circles (spheres in 3 dimensions) because the electrons having these energies have wavenumbers that are far removed from the critical values of (18). these electrons, therefore, have the same energy regardless of the direction in which they move within the crystal, not unlike the free-electron case discussed in the preceding chapter.
Electronic processes in materials
Azároff & Brophy
Far removed from it, a fast cosmic moment was coming to pass – though no one knew it at the time. Coming creeping into a vast laboratory, with a low ceiling – the 1st thing that I noticed was the black stone tables on oak sides. It had something like a presence, that was different from every room that I had been in. There was only one man in the room, and he was bent over something that I did not recognize – it was gray, light gray, and was cylindrical, and long. I had to interrupt him and introduce myself.
When I got 15 feet from him, without looking up, he remarked - without changing his focus on what he was looking at: “If you are not my graduate student, I do not want to hear about it.”
“Must be, came from Drury College.” At this point, he looked up at me, with only a tuft of hair on his sides, all gray – and a little bit shorter than I was, and definitely fatter - with the beginnings of “older” on his face. He was grown into his frame - unlike myself who was still gangly and about 6 feet tall. There was a flash of true intelligence about his gray eyes. He wore blue jeans and a white shirt, with the ubiquitous slide rule in his shirt pocket.
Offering his hand, he gripped it with warmth but with a tight grip. “So, you are the one who I heard all of these could things about. I studied under 2 of your professors.”
“Did not ask anyone to write anything for me.”
“You may not have asked, but several of your professors did it of their own accord. One even used the 'G' word about you. Which is high praise indeed.” By this, I think he meant “genius”, which is never a word that I would use to describe myself.
“Never heard anything like that from any of the professors – at least that I studied with.”
“Of course not, they would only tell other people about your gifts – but never to your own face. I suppose it is a long past gift – to tell other people but not oneself of your abilities.” I took note that because I wanted to be remembered the same way.
“So where do I start ?”
“In the same place, you will end up in – calculating skew rays. There is something in the world of physics that does not account for all of the electrons – and you will find when you were looking at for a small things, that this becomes important. Memorize these tables and then we will talk about where they should be going – and where they are going.”
“How will this help us with the electron microscope?”
“It will help us be the 1st electron microscope in North America because everyone afterwards will just use the equations that we set up. Being 1st is virtually the entire scope: being right and 1st. Everyone else will just copy.” I noted that as well, being 1st is everything in science. Not being wrong and first but being right and first. Then I set myself up on a stool and proceeded to memorize the entire list of the ways that electrons observed each other, thinking that there had to be some other way. There was, and the physicist at Cornell would publish a series of papers – his name would be Feynman, and he was definitely a theoretical genius.
When the results were tallied, it was judged that we were the 2nd on the North American continent, even though a number of designs in our microscope were not copied from anyone. So I got my MS from Washington University in St. Louis – and was proud of the status - but I could have had more if I had been a little bit more attentive. I would remember the shame of being part of the group which was 2nd and forgotten.