As I settled down for my first physics class in Pupin Hall (in the basement of which a team of scholars conducted the first nuclear fission experiment in the United States in 1939), I noticed at the front of the room a cannonball suspended from a long black chain, next to which the professor stood patiently until everyone was seated. He then grabbed the metal ball, walked it to the side of the room, climbed onto a chair, placed the ball a millimeter in front of his nose, and let it swing to the other side of the room. As the ball swung back toward him, we gasped, expecting it to smash into his face. It did not, of course. Professor Leon Lederman, having made his point, began talking with enthusiasm about the principles of physics. His dynamism and creativity entirely engaged us.
One day, however, the young professor’s fervor bordered on frenzy as he discussed his own work on an oddity, a subatomic particle he called a “neutrino.” The intellectual complexity of the material as well as the increasingly rapid pace of his speech caused a classmate and me to leave the lecture convinced that the professor had slipped his moorings. Many of us undergraduates were focused on the humanities and so were unaware of Lederman’s international eminence. Now widely known for the discovery of the muon neutrino and the bottom quark, he was to win a Nobel Prize for physics in 1988.
Although my high-school physics teacher, John Devlin, had primed me with a love for physics, as I started my college years, my unspoken motto was: give me Aeschylus, Euripides, and Aristophanes over Newton, Einstein, and Planck. But it was because of Lederman that I not only gained an appreciation for physics theory but was also able, to a degree, to understand how Enrico Fermi and Paul Dirac and their colleagues changed our conception of reality. Even better for my future was that Professor Lederman endowed me with an intellectual platform without which it is doubtful that I would have been able to engage in the technology-related efforts of my later career.
Then there was perhaps the most renowned Columbia scholar of the time. I was present at his last class, his farewell to teaching. The great scholar, poet, and author had graced Columbia’s campus for decades. On this special day, he walked without fanfare into a classroom overflowing with eager students dedicated to poetry but also to his persona. He read Milton, Dickinson, and Yeats, commenting on each of them, and then read some of his own poetry. Tall, slender, and bronze-faced, with a full head of white hair, he stood in front of us—Frostian in his demeanor—then slowly sat down on the edge of his desk.
We were charmed, as always, when he then pronounced Don Quixote as “Don Quicksote.” We carefully followed each of his movements, however slight. He read and spoke with an attitude of wistfulness. “When you are old and grey and full of sleep, and nodding by the fire, take down this book, and slowly read. And dream of the soft look your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep.” As he finished reciting Yeats, we knew that one day we would take down his own books and remember his aging, soulful eyes. Class ended. We arose as one and began applauding, the duration and intensity of which I have rarely experienced elsewhere. Mark Van Doren turned slowly and walked out the door.
These teachers, and the great thinkers whose work they carried forward, have been a presence for me ever since. But that bland “ever since” contains a world of significance. I could not know at the time, of course, that the impact they made on me was to be more than what we vaguely and so broadly refer to as “an education.” It was not only the education those teachers imparted but also a respect and admiration for them, for their amazing, infectious passion for work and ideas, that were among the truly priceless gifts I have received. They helped set my sights high, bolstered my self-esteem, and firmed up my determination to emulate them as much as I could. Their example would later help me out of a terrible slough of despond. Without those teachers and the substantial ideas to which they led me, I do not think I would be here. (If that statement strikes you as hyperbole, I urge you to hold off judgment for a while.)
5
My Shadow Education
Not all my learning came in the classroom, nor necessarily all the most important parts of my schooling.
I had been on the Columbia campus less than a month when I happened to meet a fellow freshman sporting a trendy crew cut, beige corduroys, an argyle sweater, and the suede dress shoe known as white bucks—the regulation uniform of Ivy League college boys of the era. He introduced himself as Arthur Garfunkel. Sometime later, walking back with me after one of our classes, he stopped and asked me to look at, really look at, a certain patch of grass.
“Sanford, let us consider for a moment this patch of grass on the walk. It’s of the utmost interest to me, this little grass square. Don’t you think it’s odd that it comes right up to the concrete, yet doesn’t go over it? And why do you think it’s green? Grass could be yellow, or even red—and yet it’s green. This I find interesting, Sanford.”
Then Arthur pointed to the sky, offering observations on the beauty and complexities of color in nature. I knew there were plenty of students who would have written him off on the spot as a weirdo, given him a wide berth ever after, and spread the word among their buddies.
