Weierstrass had no more idea than his sisters of Sophia’s age or mission. He told her afterwards that he had thought her some misguided governess who wanted to use his name, claiming mathematics among her credentials. He was thinking that he must scold the maid, and his sisters, for letting her break in on him. But he was a courteous and kindly man, so instead of sending her away at once, he explained that he took only advances students, with recognized degrees, and that he had at the moment as many of those as he could handle. Then, as she remained standing — and trembling — in front of him, with that ridiculous hat shading her face and her hands clutching her shawl, he remembered the method, or trick, he had used once or twice before, to discourage an inadequate student.
“What I am able to do in your case,” he said, “is to set you a series of problems, and ask you to solve them and bring them back to me one week from today. If they are done to my satisfaction, we will talk again.”
A week from that day he had forgotten all about her. He had expected, of course, never to see her again. When she came into his study he did not recognize her, perhaps because she had cast off the cloak that had disguised her slender figure. She must have felt bolder, or perhaps the weather had changed. He had not remembered the hat — his sisters had — but he had not much of an eye for female accessories. But when she pulled the papers out of her bag and set them down on his desk, he remembered, and sighed, and put on his spectacles.
Great was his surprise — he told her this too at a later time — to see that every one of the problems had been solved, and sometimes in an entirely original way. But he suspected her still, thinking now that she must be presenting the work of someone else, perhaps a brother or lover who was in hiding for political reasons.
“Sit down,” he said. “And now explain to me each of these solutions, every step taken.”
She began to talk, leaning forward, and the floppy hat fell over her eyes, so she pulled it off and let it lie on the floor. Her curls were revealed, her bright eyes, her youth, and her shivering excitement.
“Yes,” he said. “Yes. Yes. Yes.” He spoke with ponderous consideration, hiding as well as he could his astonishment, especially at the solutions whose method diverged most brilliantly from his own.
She was a shock to him in many ways. She was so slight and young and eager. He felt that he must soothe her, hold her carefully, let her learn how to manage the fireworks in her own brain.
All his life — he had difficulty saying this, as he admitted, being always wary of too much enthusiasm — all his life he had been waiting for such a student to come into this room. A student who would challenge him completely, who was not only capable of following the strivings of his own mind but perhaps of flying beyond them.
How long do they remember those who are known to no one during their lifetime? And what does it mean — “no one”?
A.M. Shkrob, Happy Days
What prompted me to look up his name after all these years, I can’t tell now. The top hit Mr Google brought me was an article in Russian Wikipedia from which I learned that the subject of my search, Alexander Moiseyevich Shkrob (Александр Моисеевич Шкроб), Ph.D., died almost 15 years ago, on 28 September 2007, under suspicious circumstances. At the same time, the article was marked for deletion. It was noted in the discussion that A.M. Shkrob does not satisfy Wikipedia’s notability criteria for scientists. What?
I felt compelled to fix this. One of such criteria is peer-reviewed publications in “leading research journals”, wherever they are supposed to “lead”. To compile a list of A.M.’s scientific papers was relatively straightforward. Far from being complete, it nevertheless gives an idea how broad his research interests were. I also included there the monograph «Мембрано-активные комплексоны» [3] which Shkrob coauthored with Yuri Ovchinnikov and Vadim Ivanov. (I used to have a physical copy of this book which I bought second-hand in the 1980s.) I’ve added the bibliography to the Wikipedia article; you can see it at the end of this post, just in case they mutilate or delete it.
While doing this, I found out something unexpected. In 1997, A.M. created the web site called Vivos voco!* that is still online. Which in itself is a miracle, considering that it is a free — in many senses of this word, including advertisement-free — library. (For how long now, considering what is happening with the Internet in my fatherland?) Browsing this refreshingly simple, very 1990s-style site, I discovered the papers that A.M. wrote for popular science journals such as «Знание — сила» (Scientia potentia est) and «Химия и жизнь» (Chemistry and Life) in the ’80s and ’90s. I didn’t know this side of him — well, turns out I didn’t know many sides of him.
* * *
I first met A.M. in 1986. We happened to share the same lab space. For me, a third-year student just starting my first research-y project, he was an oldster; also, kind of a mad scientist. One afternoon he walked in the lab swirling some yellowish liquid in a small round-bottom flask and asked, “What do you think it is?” He had this manner to address everybody and nobody in particular at once. At that moment, I was the only other person present, so I assumed the question was directed to me.
“I’ve no idea”, I confessed.
“It’s veratryl alcohol,” he beamed. “Isn’t it great?”
“If you say so”, I wanted to respond but chose a nod instead. I used to be a polite boy.
Perhaps he felt I didn’t share his enthusiasm, so he left the room; I heard him attacking somebody else in the corridor with the same question.
A few years later, by then thoroughly forgotten (by me) veratryl alcohol would fall into place when A.M. gave a (brilliant) lecture on lignin and lignin peroxidase.
Pretty soon I moved to a different building. We kept overlapping now and then, for example, during the departmental seminars, but we never really worked together. I’ll never know if I missed much. I had an impression that A.M. was not the easiest person to work with. I can’t forget the hammering Shkrob, as a referee, gave to my former colleague during the latter’s Ph.D. pre-defence, to the degree that the poor guy had to completely rewrite his thesis and hold yet another pre-defence.
The things A.M. used to say could be illuminating, or funny, or irritating, or even arrogant, but never boring. His knowledge — of science, history, literature — was astounding. I wish I had listened more. I wish I asked him at least some questions. As it was, I didn’t.
I remember him mentioning an episode from his youth that he would include later in «Ничего особенного» (Nothing Special). At the end of the high school, in 1952, A.M. was advised† to continue his education in the Mendeleev University of Chemical Technology rather than, as he aspired, Moscow State University. He didn’t have to explain why he got that advice: at the height of the infamous anti-cosmopolitan campaign, it was next to impossible for Jews to enter the MSU. “Oh, I was walking home and crying”, he was reminiscing. “To my surprise, my mum was not upset at all. On the contrary. ‘What brilliant advice’, she said. ‘Do as you are told’. I did as I was told, and entered the Mendeleev’s without any trouble.”
A.M. was a self-confessed workaholic. Another thing is that he probably was not so sure about the direction of his work. Once he told me that he dedicated all his summer holidays to crack the internal language of Multi-Edit and wrote some sort of bibliographic database using that language. (Come on, give me a break, I thought to myself.) Back then, access to a personal computer was still a luxury. We had a number of XTs, ATs and even one i386 machine at the department but nobody had a PC at home. I was impressed, not with his software (which I never saw) but with the fact that he spent all summer at work. Not a small feat, considering that our department was situated just above a morgue. Alas, most likely the only user of that database was Shkrob himself.
In spite of, or maybe exactly thanks to, such workaholism, there was little recognition. I would imagine a scientist of his caliber leading a lab, or at the very least a research group, or being a professor at the university, or something. Reading his articles now, I understand that Shkrob, while being passionate about science, was indifferent to his career in science. Moreover, I think he was perfectly happy to be where he was, resisting promotions which would inevitably take away his freedom to actually do science. In the ’70s and ’80s, many Soviet research institutions provided safe harbours for intelligentsia’s “internal emigration”; the demise of the Soviet system heralded the end of these sanctuaries. From the ’90s on, it was not enough to work: the scientists were supposed to earn money. The era of state-sponsored curiosity was over. This could be one of the (many) reasons why A.M. did not appear to be ecstatic about catastroika‡.
* * *
If there was one thing that I took in from A.M., it was this one: “The model shouldn’t be as complex as the real object”. I probably have to explain that this comment was made 30+ years ago in the context of molecular modelling of proteins. A.M. expanded on it later in The science of the black box [40]. It matters not that the hardware and software we used then would make you smile condescendingly. All the (undeniable) progress notwithstanding, the protein folding problem remains unsolved. At the time, however, Shkrob’s maxim did strike me as a general rule to follow, in both science and life.
Неужели и после меня останутся только оттиски забытых статей да папки с программами для допотопных машин — странные тексты, в которых запрятаны уже мне самому непонятные озарения.
«Счастливые дни»
Could it be that all that remains after me are reprints of long-forgotten articles and folders with programmes for antediluvian computers — strange texts that hide epiphanies already incomprehensible even to myself.
Happy Days
I believe that the legacy of A.M. is bigger than that. However, right now, for me, it is confined to what can be found on the web and to my own memory. In his 1992—1994 memoir Happy Days Shkrob promised to write about his grandfather, his mother and his uncle “in detail and without haste, if there’s time left”. Did he? I hope he did, and they’ll see the light of day eventually. In the meanwhile, I keep on reading.
The phrase “Vivos voco” («Зову живых» in Russian) was the motto of «Колокол» (Kolokol), the first Russian censorship-free weekly newspaper in Russian and French languages, published by Alexander Herzen and Nikolay Ogarev between 1857 and 1867. The motto comes from the Latin epigraph to Schiller’s Das Lied von der Glocke (Song of the Bell): “Vivos voco. Mortuos plango. Fulgura frango”.
†
By Dr. Emilia Georgievna Perevalova (1922—2012), Soviet organometallic chemist, then head of chemical club at the Moscow State University.
‡
The word “catastroika” (катастройка), invented by Alexander Zinoviev in the 1980s, is a blend of “catastrophe” and “perestroika”.
Овчинников, Ю.А., Шкроб, А.М., Родионов, А.В. (1980) Спектральный переход бактериородопсина как индикатор его состояния в пурпурных мембранах. Биоорганическая химия6, 1483—1504.
Шкроб, А.М., Левит, М.Н., Арчаков, А.И. (1989) Модельные подходы к изучению механизма действия лигниназы. Чем отличается лигниназа от других пероксидаз? Биоорганическая химия15, 53—69.
Shemyakin, M.M., Antonov, V.K., Shkrob, A.M., Sheinker, Yu.N. and Senyavina, L.B. (1962) Cyclol formation in peptide systems. Tautomerism of N-(α-hydroxyacyl)-amides. Tetrahedron Letters3, 701—707.
Antonov, V.K., Shkrob, A.M. and Shemyakin, M.M. (1963) Cyclol formation in peptide systems. III. Rearrangement of N-(β-hydroxypropionyl)-piperidone into a 10-membered cyclodepsipeptide. Tetrahedron Letters4, 439—443.
Antonov, V.K., Shkrob, A.M., Shchelokov, V.I. and Shemyakin, M.M. (1963) Cyclol formation in peptide systems. IV. Hydroxy acid incorporation into peptides. Tetrahedron Letters4, 1353—1360.
Shemyakin, M.M., Ovchinnikov, Yu.A., Antonov, V.K., Kiryushkin, A.A., Ivanov, V.T., Shchelokov, V.I. and Shkrob, A.M. (1964) Total synthesis of serratomolide. I. Synthesis of O,O′-diacetylserratamolide.
Tetrahedron Letters5, 47—54.
Shemyakin, M.M., Antonov, V.K., Shkrob, A.M., Shchelokov, V.I. and Agadzhanyan, Z.E. (1965) Activation of the amide group by acylation: Hydroxy- and aminoacyl incorporation in peptide systems. Tetrahedron21, 3537—3572.
Shkrob, A.M., Krylova, Yu.I., Antonov, V.K. and Shemyakin, M.M. (1967) A new approach to the synthesis of stable derivatives of azacyclols. Tetrahedron Letters8, 2701—2706.
Shemyakin, M.M., Ovchinnikov, Yu.A., Ivanov, V.T., Antonov, V.K., Shkrob, A.M., Mikhaleva, I.I., Evstratov, A.V. and Malenkov, G.G. (1967) The physicochemical basis of the functioning of biological membranes: Conformational specificity of the interaction of cyclodepsipeptides with membranes and of their complexation with alkali metal ions. Biochemical and Biophysical Research Communications29, 834—841.
Liberman, E.A., Topaly, V.P., Tsofina, L.M. and Shkrob, A.M. (1969) Transfer of iodine ions across artificial phospholipid membranes. Biophysics14, 55—61 [translation of2].
Shemyakin, M.M., Ovchinnikov, Yu.A., Ivanov, V.T., Antonov, V.K., Vinogradova, E.I., Shkrob, A.M., Malenkov, G.G., Evstratov, A.V., Laine, I.A., Melnik, E.I. and Ryabova, I.D. (1969) Cyclodepsipeptides as chemical tools for studying ionic transport through membranes. The Journal of Membrane Biology1, 402—430.
Ivanov, V.T. and Shkrob, A.M. (1970) The physicochemical basis of ion transport through biological membranes. Report of a Pre-symposium held in Riga, U.S.S.R. on June 19 and 20, 1970, within the scope of the VII. International Symposium on the Chemistry of Natural Products. FEBS Letters10, 285—291.
Shkrob, A.M. and Mel’nik, E.I. (1972) Transfer of protons across bilayer lipid membranes in the presence of dibasic phenol. Dependence of the mechanism of conductivity on the pH of aqueous solution. Biophysics17, 743—746.
Barsukov, L.I , Shkrob, A.M. and Bergel’son, L.D. (1972) Effect of anions on the permeability of the liposomes induced by valinomycin. Biophysics17, 1083—1088.
Shkrob, A.M., Mel’nik, E.I., Terekhov, O.P. and Ovchinnikov, Yu.A. (1973) Use of valinomycin as a probe for investigating the properties of the membranes. I. Non monotonic change in the properties of bilayer membranes of bovine brain lipids with increase in the ionic strength of the bathing solutions. Biophysics18, 691—697.
Demin, V.V., Babakov, A.V., Shkrob, A.M. and Ovchinnikov, Yu.A. (1974) Conductivity of bilayer lipid membranes in the presence of valinomycin and lipophilic anions. Biophysics19, 675—680.
Ovchinnikov, Yu.A., Shkrob, A.M., Rodionov, A.V. and Mitzner, B.I. (1979) An effective competitive inhibitor of bacterioopsin-retinal recombination. FEBS Letters97, 15—19.
Voznesensky, A.I., Galanova, J.V., Shkrob, A.M., Mathanov, I.E. and Archakov, A.I. (1990) Conjugation of bleomycin with concanavalin A or immunoglobulin G increases its ability to destroy cell membranes. Archives of Biochemistry and Biophysics283, 519—522.
In high school (1981—1983) I was taught that (physical) matter (материя) (1) consists of substance (вещество) and energy (энергия). However, in the English-speaking world matter(2) is usually understood as something that has mass (more precisely, rest mass) and occupies space. It does not include photons or waves. So, matter (2) is the same as substance. I find the concept of matter (1) useful for it allows us to talk about conservation of matter even when there is no conservation of mass as, for example, in nuclear reactions.
Материя есть философская категория для обозначения объективной реальности, которая дана человеку в ощущениях его, которая копируется, фотографируется, отображается нашими ощущениями, существуя независимо от них.
Matter is a philosophical category denoting the objective reality which is given to man by his sensations, and which is copied, photographed and reflected by our sensations, while existing independently of them.
Now Lenin’s concept of matter does not include dark matter and dark energy whose existence is postulated to explain certain cosmological hypotheses. Quite apart from the fact that Lenin did not know about them, neither dark matter nor dark energy can be observed (that’s why they are “dark”) and thus are not given us in our sensations. Of course, that could change in future. But, for the time being and for most practical applications, matter (1) is pretty much equivalent to Lenin’s matter (3).
Here’s an anecdote that my mum told me on a few occasions. Back in her student days, she also had to take an oral exam on “diamat” (диамат; short for dialectical materialism). The standard practice was, upon entering the examination room, to draw a “ticket” (билет), i.e. a slip of paper with the questions. So she took her “ticket” and sat down at a desk.
A student being examined at that very moment was finding himself in hot water. Not just any student: one of the top students of her class.
“Well, my friend, maybe you should come again another time, when you are better prepared”, the professor eventually suggested.
The student did not object. He got up and headed towards the exit. To the professor’s surprise, my mum also got up and began to pack.
“And where do you think you’re going?” he asked.
“Home.”
“What’s the matter?”
“I don’t know anything. Will come back when I am better prepared.”
“Nonsense!” cried the professor. “You must know something if you came to this exam.”
“But I know that I don’t.”
“Are you Socrates or something?”
“No, but...”
“Are you telling me you don’t even know Lenin’s definition of matter?”
“Why, of course I do know that.”
“Kindly tell us.”
And so she did. “Matter is a philosophical category denoting the objective reality” and so on and so forth.
“See?” said the professor. “Everybody look at her. She says she doesn’t know anything but she knows when I ask the question. Where’s your grade book?”
A grade book (зачётная книжка, or «зачётка») contained the record of exams and scores throughout the student’s university life.
“Here, your five.” (“Five”, or “excellent”, was the top score.) “And you”, he turned to the first student who, by some reason, was still hanging around, “you’re coming back another time.”
A new day dawned.
It had hardly finished doing so before Ridcully hurried through the dewy grass of the University gardens and hammered on the door of the High Energy Magic Building.
The door opened.
‘Oh, it’s you, Archchancellor.’
Ridcully pushed the door open further.
‘Morning, Stibbons. Glad to see you’re up and about early.’ Ponder Stibbons, the faculty’s youngest member, blinked at the sky.
‘Is it morning already?’ he said.
‘You ain’t been out lately?’ said Ridcully.
‘No, sir. Er. Should I have been? I’ve been busy working on my Make‑It‑Bigger device. You know, I showed you—’
‘Right, right,’ said Ridcully, looking around. ‘Anyone else been working in here?’
‘Well . . . there’s me, and Tez the Terrible and Skazz and Big Mad Drongo, I think . . .’
Ridcully blinked.
‘What are they?’ he said. And then, from the depths of memory, a horrible answer suggested itself. Only a very specific species had names like that.
‘Students?’
‘Er. Yes?’ said Ponder, backing away. ‘That’s all right, isn’t it? I mean, this is a university . . .’
Ridcully scratched his ear. The man was right, of course. You had to have some of the buggers around, there was no getting away from it. Personally, he avoided them whenever possible, as did the rest of the faculty, occasionally running the other way or hiding behind doors whenever they saw them. The Lecturer in Recent Runes had been known to lock himself in his wardrobe rather than take a tutorial.
He stared at the students. It was a worrying sight, and not just because of the natural look of students. Here were some people who, while this damn music was making everyone tap their feet, had stayed indoors all night — working.
What, lol my thesis blog wasn’t updated for a month? That sucks. According to its creator, Angela Frankel,
Initially intended as a means of procrastination from my own thesis, this blog has documented some of the stress, hilarity, and chaos associated with undergraduate (and some post-graduate) theses.
In fact it serves to illustrate that most of the theses out there are simply not worth the paper they are printed on, or maybe even the disk space they occupy. They would be totally disposable if not for lol my thesis. Just think about that before adding “M.Sc.” or “Ph.D.” to your name. (What if I modify my CV by replacing “Ph.D.” with “Ph.D.LOL”? I don’t think anybody would notice.) Could it be that it’s not updated any longer because at long last people have realised that? I seriously doubt it.
This week, I resigned from my position at Duke University with no intent to solicit employment in state-funded academic research positions in any foreseeable future. Many reasons have motivated this choice, starting with personal ones: I will soon be a father and want to be spending time with my son at home.
Other reasons have to do with research academia itself. Throughout the years, I have been discovering more and more of the inner workings of academia and how modern scientific research is done and I have acquired a certain degree of discouragement in face of what appears to be an abandonment by my research community of the search for knowledge. I found scientists to be more preoccupied by their own survival in a very competitive research environment than by the development of a true understanding of the world.
I guess everybody who started working in science 20—25 years ago would agree that applying for a job now is not what it used to be.
No, I don’t blame the internet. Just the opposite: it was thanks to internet that I got all my jobs (away from my blessed fatherland, that is). But I do blame the cancerous growth of HR departments and proliferation of incompetent HR managers.
I would stop short of calling for universal abolition of HR departments. (On a second thought, I don’t see why I should. Yeah, let’s just get rid of them. No human being deserves to be called a ‘resource’.) Nor will I reject outright the notion that somewhere there may exist intelligent, competent, compassionate, human HR managers. I never met one though.
My point, however, is that as recent as in 1990s, the HR people knew their place and did not stand between me and my prospective boss. These days I am getting a rejection letter and have no clue on whom to unleash my wrath. Head of the department? The assessment committee? The human resources? The whole damn place? I know: I... shall... unlike their Facebook page. That will show them.
From the lecture 10 of the MITx course 4.605x, A Global History of Architecture, by Professor Mark Jarzombek (Fall 2013):
One thing you can get from this course is why all the maps in your book are wrong, except in our book. So this is not right. I mean, it’s not wrong, just completely useless. I mean, who really cares if the Qin was here or there or there — the point is, what do we learn from maps? What can maps tell us about connections and connectivity? It’s not about national boundaries. In our modern world we’re obsessed. We fetishize the national boundary, because of certain tropes of international law. This was not necessarily the case in the earlier time. Yes, boundaries were important. But to do history is not about the history of the nation, national boundaries. History is about certain connections and how countries or nations rise and fall, or certain dynamics that go across region and across time.
So the Shang had five capitals. And as they got power, they moved the capital to particular places. And then as they lost power, they moved the capital to another place. And of course, with that huge populations had to move with them. Because all the bureaucrats and all the whole regime — it’s like saying, when Bush became president, the capital would move then to Texas. So you would have to build the capital, and then thousands and thousands of people would have to go down to Texas. And then comes another president and will have to build a new capital in Arkansas or Nevada or wherever. We’d be continuously building capitals and reusing them. And then of course, when Obama came in, he would burn Bush’s capital down. And then build a new one in Chicago. And then everyone would have to move up to Chicago.
It was the lowest form of work in the academic hierarchy, made all the more difficult by the tendency of Professor Vogelsang to publish papers based almost entirely on von Iglefeld’s work, but under the Vogelsang name and with no mention made of von Igelfeld’s contribution. In one case — which eventually prompted von Igelfeld to protest (in the gentlest, most indirect terms) — Vogelsang took a paper which von Igelfeld asked him to read and immediately published it under his own name. So brazen was this conduct that von Igelfeld felt moved to draw his superior’s attention to the fact that he had been hoping to submit the paper to a learned journal himself.
‘I can’t see why you are objecting,’ said Vogelsang haughtily. ‘The paper will achieve a far wider readership under my name than under the name of an unknown. Surely these scholarly considerations are more important than mere personal vanity?’
As he often did, Vogelsang had managed to shift the grounds of argument to make von Igelfeld feel guilty for making a perfectly reasonable point. It was a technique which von Igelfeld had himself used on many occasions, but which he was to perfect in the year of his assistantship with Professor Vogelsang.
From the open letter by astrophysicist Amaya Moro-Martín to the Spanish prime minister, published in El País on 19 August 2013 (the English version published in The Guardian 28 August 2013):
Afortunadamente España lidera la cruzada de las homologaciones. Fuera de nuestras fronteras cualquier título original vale, un verdadero escándalo.
Por el mismo conducto le envío las 700 páginas de certificados y documentos que tenía preparados para el día en que se convocara una plaza con mi perfil, algo que nunca ocurrió. Es la documentación requerida para acreditar la veracidad de mi currículum. Recopilar esa documentación fue una labor de investigación tremendamente gratificante. Sepa usted que en los muchos trabajos que he solicitado fuera de España la documentación requerida es algo más escueta, aproximadamente de 10 páginas: un plan de trabajo y un breve currículum, que no hay que justificar porque la comunidad científica opera con un código de honor. Si quiere un día se lo explico.
También le devuelvo la carta que la Fundación Española para la Ciencia y la Tecnología tuvo el detalle de enviarme hace unas semanas a mi antigua dirección en la Universidad de Princeton. El objetivo de dicha misiva es realzar la “marca España” con un programa denominado “Ciencia Española en el Exterior”. Sepa usted que me trasladé a España hace cinco años y cuando emigre próximamente la ciencia que haga ya no será española, ni será gracias a España; seguiré haciendo ciencia a pesar de España.
Por último, y a cambio de todos estos documentos que le devuelvo, le pido tan sólo una cosa: devuélvame usted mi dignidad como investigadora, y en el mismo envío, si no le es mucha molestia, devuélvasela a toda la comunidad de investigadores en España, y no se olvide de los de humanidades.
We’re fortunate that Spain leads the crusade for academic degree validations — beyond our borders any academic degree from a reputable university is valid, a real scandal.
I am also sending you the 700 pages of certificates and documents requested to certify the veracity of my curriculum vitae, which, due to the hiring freeze, I will no longer need. Collecting all this documentation was a tremendously satisfying research project. You should know that, with the many jobs that I have applied for outside Spain, the requested documentation is slightly briefer, approximately 10 pages: a research plan and a short curriculum vitae that does not need to be backed up with certificates, because the research community operates on an honour code (I am happy to explain this principle to you if you wish).
I’m also returning the letter that the Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology (FECYT) thoughtfully sent to my old email address at Princeton a few weeks ago. The goal of this missive was to promote the brand of Spain with a programme called “Spanish Science Abroad”. Please let them know that I moved back to Spain five years ago — and when I emigrate shortly, the science I will do will no longer be Spanish, nor thanks to Spain; rather I will keep doing science in spite of Spain.
Finally, in exchange for all these documents I’m giving you back, I make just one request: please give me back my dignity as a researcher. At the same time, if it is not too inconvenient, please give that dignity back to everyone in the research community in Spain, and please do not forget those in the Humanities.
To my great surprise, my review of 3.091x course became the most popular post of all time on this blog. That is to say, more than 365 pageviews. I know, it’s peanuts, but then I never expected this blog to be much visited in the first place. Let’s see if my 100th post (!) will be a hit.
HLS1x Copyright, aka CopyrightX, was the second edX course I took. Apart from the fact that these are both edX courses, there is very little in common between CopyrightX and 3.091x. I intend to continue with edX next academic year and look forward to surprises. Yet I dare to suggest that there is very little in common between CopyrightX and any other edX course.
To start with, one cannot simply, single-clickingly (is there such a word?) register for CopyrightX, like for any old edX course. No sir, you have to apply. This year class was limited to 500 participants. Mmm, I thought, intriguing. I just had to apply and see what happens next.
Мы сидели, подперев головы, и предавались самоуничижению, когда в зал заглянул Федор Симеонович. Насколько я понял, ему не терпелось узнать мое мнение о составленной им программе.
— Программа! — желчно усмехнувшись, произнес Хунта. — Я не видел твоей программы, Теодор, но я уверен, что она гениальна по сравнению с этим... — Он с отвращением подал двумя пальцами Федору Симеоновичу листок со своей задачей. — Полюбуйся, вот образец убожества и ничтожества.
— Г-голубчики, — сказал Федор Симеонович озадаченно, разобравшись в почерках. — Это же п-проблема Бен Б-бецалеля. К-калиостро же доказал, что она н-не имеет р-решения.
— Мы сами знаем, что она не имеет решения, — сказал Хунта, немедленно ощетиниваясь. — Мы хотим знать, как ее решать.
— К-как-то ты странно рассуждаешь, К-кристо... К-как же искать решение, к-когда его нет? Б-бессмыслица какая-то...
— Извини, Теодор, но это ты очень странно рассуждаешь. Бессмыслица — искать решение, если оно и так есть. Речь идет о том, как поступать с задачей, которая решения не имеет. Это глубоко принципиальный вопрос, который, как я вижу, тебе, прикладнику, к сожалению, не доступен. По-видимому, я напрасно начал с тобой беседовать на эту тему.
So we sat, propping up our heads and abandoning ourselves to mutual devaluation, when Feodor Simeonovich looked in. As near as I could make out, he was impatient to hear my opinion of his program.
“Program!” exclaimed Junta, smiling biliously. “I haven’t seen your program, Feodor, but I am sure that it is a work of genius in comparison to this— ” He handed Feodor Simeonovich the sheet with the problem, holding it in ginger disgust between two fingers. “Regard this exemplar of mental poverty and vapidity.”
“B-but, my dear f-fellows,” said Feodor Simeonovich, having diligently deciphered the handwriting. “This is B-Ben B-Beczalel’s problem! Didn’t C-Cagliostro prove th-that it had no s-solution?”
“We know that it has no solution, too,” said Junta, bristling immediately. “But we wish to learn how to solve it.”
“H-how strangely you r-reason, C-Cristo... H-how can you look for a solution, where it d-does not exist? It’s s-some sort of n-nonsense.”
“Excuse me, Feodor, but it’s you who are reasoning strangely. It’s nonsense to look for a solution if it already exists. We are talking about how to deal with a problem that has no solution. This is a question of profound principle, which, I can see, is not within your scope, since you are an applications type. Apparently I started this conversation with you for nothing.”
Isabel did not like her desk to get too cluttered, but that did not mean that it was uncluttered. In fact, most of the time there were too many papers on it, usually manuscripts that had to be sent off for peer assessment. She was not sure about the term peer assessment, even if it was the widely accepted term for a crucial stage in the publishing of journal articles. Sometimes the expression amounted to exactly that: equals looked dispassionately at papers by equals and gave their view. But Isabel had discovered that this did not always happen, and papers were consigned into the hands of their authors’ friends or enemies. This was unwitting; it was impossible for anybody to keep track of the jealousies and rivalries that riddled academia, and Isabel had to hope that she could spot the concealed agendas that lay behind outright antagonism or, more often, and more subtly, veiled antagonism: ‘an interesting piece, perhaps interesting enough to attract a ripple of attention.’ Philosophers could be nasty, she reflected, and moral philosophers the nastiest of all.
Hooray, I just downloaded a pdf file certifying that I
“successfully completed 3.091x: Introduction to Solid State Chemistry, a course of study offered by MITx, an online learning initiative of The Massachusetts Institute of Technology through edX”.
Frankly I don’t understand why it took 17 days to generate the certificate but hey, it was a free course and I wasn’t in a hurry.
I took this course hoping to refresh or possibly fill some gaps in my university chemistry, and also because it was one of the inaugural courses offered by edX. I expected it to be both challenging and fun. It was challenging all right. But it could do with a little bit more fun.
For the benefit of future students, here are my personal impressions of the course.
A striking phenomenon of the contemporary science scene is the remarkable Asianization of the American research laboratory: Asians now represent in certain disciplines, such as chemistry or engineering, the majority of graduate students in many American universities. In many of these institutions, more than half the postdoctoral fellows (the most exploited but also most productive sector of the research establishment) have received the bulk of their college or university education in Asia.
NO was published in 1998. You’d think that since then the said postdocs moved up to professorial positions across American academia and have taken, well, most of them. Wrong! As Lilian Gomory Wu and Wei Jing write in their recent Nature article:
Across all sectors, Asians in US STEM [science, technology, engineering and maths] careers are not reaching leadership positions at the same rate as white people, or even as members of other underrepresented groups. In academia, just 42% of Asian men are tenured, compared with 58% of white men, 49% of black men and 50% of Hispanic men. Just 21% of Asian women in academia are tenured, the lowest proportion for any ethnicity or gender. They are also least likely to be promoted to full professor.
But why? The authors argue that
east Asians’ humble demeanour could cause them to describe the implications of their research in modest terms, which might bring them lower ratings from reviewers.
On the other hand,
a work group of the US government’s Equal Employment Opportunity Commission reports that Asians are often perceived as ‘forever foreign’, which can affect how others assess their ability to communicate, their competence and, more importantly, their trustworthiness.
It’s all good to be hardworking, patient, family oriented and so on, but if you don’t sex up your research, you don’t get promoted. And don’t get trusted either.
This is the time of year — again! — when they start cleaning their desks and send holiday greetings to unsuccessful applicants. I don’t even have to open these emails anymore to know what’s there. I just got one today.
Dear Dr. Doctor,
Thank you for your recent application.
The appointing committees have now had a chance to consider your application and have on this occasion decided not to take it any further.
You were up against some outstanding candidates and the choice of the shortlist was very difficult.
On behalf of whoever it is who couldn’t bother to write himself, I should like to thank you for your interest in applying.
With best wishes,
Human Resources
The other one came last week. I don’t remember what the application was about because the letter referred to it by some number and right now I am too tired to look it up. Most probably it was regarding the position advertised last Summer. I liked the wording so much that I made a note of it:
To continue its policy of investment in excellent people, the School of Something Else at the University of Poshborough is seeking to appoint up to (some number) high calibre individuals at either high or even higher level.
But I am the excellent people! How come they don’t see that?
I know. This is all my fault, really. Instead of just sending the application off and forgetting about it, I am worrying that they will expect more of me than I can deliver. So I put all sorts of ridiculous stuff in my covering letter. For example:
As you can see from my CV, I do not have a strong record of teaching at the university.
How’s that? I bet nobody else is doing this. My goal is to convince them that I am the best candidate to fill the position, not some sort of impostor. If they can see something from my CV, then they will see. Or maybe not. The point is not to worry about that.
Another mistake I keep on repeating is to do an informal enquiry, whenever such an option exists.
Dear Professor Professor,
I would like to apply for a position of Somebody in Something as advertised somewhere. However before sending the full application, I am asking for your kind advice.
<insert a stupid bit about not having a strong record of doing Something>
I do not wish to waste the expert committee’s time. <Why?> Therefore I would greatly appreciate your frank opinion whether I should proceed with full application.
Yours sincerely,
Dr. Doctor
Dear Dr. Doctor,
Thanks for the email and CV. Your career track is a bit unusual and the fact that you have not been active in science in the last three years will probably catch the
attention of the assessment committee.
I can not tell you whether to apply or not, it has to be your own decision.
Kind regards,
Professor
See? Totally absurd query and deservedly useless response.
Let me begin by saying that 3.091 is the most important class you will take at MIT. It’s true. But, you know, anybody who stands in front of you to lecture should say the same thing about his or her class. If they don’t believe that they shouldn’t be standing in front of you lecturing. The difference is, when I say it, I’m right.
See, I have tenure. So what does that mean? It means you find your passion and pursue it. You don’t waste time on trivia. And that’s what I urge you to do: find your passion and pursue it.
Making safe batteries out of earth-abundant, accessible materials for portable power, ultimately to drive the car with electrons, electric fuel, to eliminate this country’s dependence on imported petroleum — we can do it. How? By inventing. And the way we’re going to invent is to learn the lessons in 3.091 that will give us the chemistry we need to invent a battery that can send that car 250 miles on a single charge, and put it in a show room for the same price as a car with an internal combustion engine. The only thing that stands between that image and where we are today is invention, and the requisite material is right here in this class.
And then, lastly, let’s never forget about dreaming.
What are the origins of chemistry? The ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs refer to khemeia, which was a chemical process for embalming the dead. You know the Egyptians were very fixated on the afterlife. And the chemists were revered in that society — not like here.
Newlands was a musician and he talked about octaves. So if you start here, if this is a diatonic scale, so this is C, D, E, F, G, A, B, C. So potassium lies an octave away from sodium. He was ridiculed. They said, have you considered perhaps putting the elements in alphabetical order? They were cruel. Scientists can be very cruel to new ideas.
Few scientists complain that they do not own the knowledge they produce. Indeed, they are much more likely to complain when corporations or governments try to control dissemination of ideas. Most scientists receive a salary from a government, corporation or university. Their livelihoods do not depend on royalties from published work.
Indeed, it was not entirely clear if Reg had ever taught anybody at all and what, if anything, he would have taught them. His professorship was an obscure one, to say the least, and since he dispensed with his lecturing duties by the simple and time-honoured technique of presenting all his potential students with an exhaustive list of books that he knew for a fact had been out of print for thirty years, then flying into a tantrum if they failed to find them, no one had ever discovered the precise nature of his academic discipline. He had, of course, long ago taken the precaution of removing the only extant copies of the books on his reading list from the university and college libraries, as a result of which he had plenty of time to, well, to do whatever it was he did.
“But how do you know that the Observatory is on that peak especially?” asked Sniff, craning his neck to see the top, but without success as it was hidden in the clouds.
“Well,” answered Snufkin, “you only have to look at the ground just here. It’s covered with cigarette ends which have obviously been thrown out of the windows by those absent-minded scientists up there.”
