March 26, 2013
17 of 65
Rubbing Shoulders with Giants
“If I have seen further than others, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants” is a quotation usually attributed to Isaac Newton. Newton did write something like that in a letter to fellow scientist Robert Hooke, but the phrase and the concept were very old and well known, even by the 17th Century. Similar language is found, for instance, in a 12th Century manuscript by a philosopher known as John of Salisbury, and he attributed the saying to an even earlier time.
It is fitting that Newton should have borrowed the phrase for he was stating that the advances he made in the scientific world were possible only because he could build on the many hundreds of years of thoughts and writings of great men who had preceded him. That is true for all of us, though our accomplishments may not be as illustrious as Newton’s.
The recognition that Newton was “standing on the shoulders of giants” does not imply that he was merely a dwarf seeing the world from a good vantage point. Isaac Newton was certainly one of the towering giants of human intellect, and most of the scientific advances of the past 300 years have been made by someone “standing on his shoulders.”
Giant and creative intellects remain among us today, and I feel privileged to have known some of them. In order to keep this piece reasonably short, let me just talk about a few that I knew back in the old days at Arvada West High School. I remember going to the band room to put my French horn away many mornings when fellow students like Bert Bishop, David Keefer, Jim Mikkelson, Robert Polzin and others were gathered at the blackboard in the front of the room playing mathematical games. One would write three or four numbers on the board and the others would “guess” the numbers that should follow. I say they “guessed” because when I joined them my responses were often guesses. These guys, though, recognized the numbers as the beginning of a series and worked to calculate the formula on which the series was determined.
It is more fun than my description would lead you to believe. Anyone who enjoys Sudoku, for example, could find this an enjoyable pastime.
What becomes of those who bring such intellectual stimulation to the more prosaic minds like mine?
Well, Bert Bishop earned his Ph.D. in Statistics and has had a distinguished career at Ohio State University (after teaching me to appreciate classical music, appreciate the beliefs of the Unitarian Church and recognize the importance of the counterculture as it was emerging in the 1960s). Dave Keefer was awarded the Sergey Soloviev Medal by the European Geosciences Union because his work is said to have defined the study of earthquake induced landslides for the past quarter century (and he has always been a lot of fun to have around at any social gathering). Jim Mikkelson earned three electrical engineering degrees at M.I.T. before doing groundbreaking work on semiconductors and computer chips for Hewlett Packard and then forming Vitesse Semiconductors, which remains a publicly traded company even after his retirement. (I always wanted him on my team when we played football on weekends because he enjoyed blocking and tackling and physicality of the game.)
And Robert Polzin . . . . . I really don’t know much about his life. I had thought that he was working in the field of biology or biochemistry and at one time teaching at a medical school. However, I believe that he is now doing some form of financial analysis for the Department of Defense. It would be interesting to learn how he made that change, if indeed he did – or to learn the basis for my misinformation, if indeed I am mistaken. (He was a good friend who could tolerate my slightly (?) warped sense of humor)
It is also interesting that my brother Lonny was quite brilliant in most areas of mathematics and he earned his college degree in Anthropology, but spent his career as a civilian employee of the Department of Defense. I think doing so caused him to lead a very diverse and sometimes exciting life. He was stationed in such areas as Denver and Colorado Springs, Colorado; Albuquerque, New Mexico; Austin, Texas; Rapid City, South Dakota and London, England. He and his family were moved to all of those locations at government expense, while I got to pay my own money to visit him. The higher he rose in the DoD ranks, the more vacation he accrued so that he could continue to work on archaeological studies as a serious avocation. I could rarely take more than a week off at a time because I spent most of my life running my own business. I am not complaining; merely contrasting the lifestyles.
There have been other brilliant and fascinating people whose paths have crossed mine over the years. Many of them have the same broad shoulders as some of my old high school buddies. I truly am privileged to have known them all, and I may well write more about some of them. As life was unfolding, I was with them in the fray. Our feet, it seemed, were fixed to the ground. However, as time has passed and my perspective has matured, I find that I view life and the world more maturely and completely when I can at least lean on some of their shoulders.
A nice tribute to your intelligent friends. As they say, “it takes one to know one”.
For the last couple of days I have been reading a collection of columns that Russell Baker wrote for the New York Times in the 1970s and early 1980s. He often wrote about his ancestors from rural Virginia who were born, lived their lives, died and were buried all within a few square miles. All of the old high school buddies I mentioned here have moved away and I rarely have an opportunity to see or speak with any of them. There have been many other wonderful people who I knew for awhile and then they moved on. I was thinking that as interesting as the modern world may be, perhaps it would have been even more interesting in the old days when it was more likely that one could enjoy the company of good people such as these for a lifetime, and not just for a few years.