“Got to keep it close to ten degrees,” he muttered to no one in particular. “See if I get better separation of the urease than I do at zero or room temperature.”
He turned to Emma. He was a sturdy, round-faced man, late thirties, with disheveled hair.
“Jim Sumner,” he said, extending his right hand.
Emma shook the proffered hand and tried, unsuccessfully, not to gaze at the empty left sleeve pinned back to his shirt.
“Yes.” He nodded. “Lost it in a hunting accident when I was seventeen. You don’t see many one-armed biochemists, do you? My professor at Harvard, Otto Folin, told me to go to law school, said I could never do research with one arm, but I showed him. It takes determination, this business I’m in, Miss . . . I’m sorry, what was your name?”
“Hansen, Emma Hansen. I’m a biology graduate student. I’m afraid that I don’t know much biochemistry, Professor Sumner, but my advisor, Professor Hutchinson, suggested that I talk to you about filling the gap.”
Sumner waved Emma to a lab stool and sat opposite her on another stool. “I hope you don’t mind talking here in the lab. I’ve got to keep checking the temperature of this water bath. See, I’m trying to find the optimal conditions for extracting urease from jack bean meal with thirty percent ethanol. Most of the proteins are insoluble, but my enzyme stays in solution and I can harvest it by centrifuging out the precipitate.”
“I’m sorry, Professor, but I don’t know what urease is.”
“It’s an enzyme, Miss Hansen. Cleaves urea into ammonia and carbon dioxide. Do you know what an enzyme is?”
“Yes, sir, it catalyzes chemical reactions in cells.”
“Yes, but do you know what it is? Chemically, I mean?”
“No, sir.”
“Well, neither does anyone else. I think they are proteins, but this famous professor over in Germany, Richard Willstätter, says they’re small organic molecules, just riding along on protein colloids. The only way to tell is to isolate a pure enzyme and analyze it, right? That’s what I’m trying to do. Been at it for seven years now. My colleagues think I’m crazy.”
Emma laughed. “Well, I hope you prove them wrong, sir. I admire your determination. But I only came to get your advice about the best way to learn a little biochemistry. I’m a student of biology with an interest in genetics.”
“Hmmm. Not sure about a little biochemistry. That’s like being a little pregnant. How much chemistry have you had?”
“One year of general chemistry. I must say I couldn’t see much connection to biology. It was all about the Periodic Table. Solubility of metal ion sulfides, rare gases, what not.”
“That’s inorganic chemistry. Have you studied organic chemistry?”
“No, sir.”
“Well, you need to. Then you can take my medical biochemistry course. You’ll have to work hard because one course is not really sufficient. But, I think you’re wise to make the effort. Tell me, Miss Hansen, what do you think is the fundamental question of biology?”
“How does it work?” Emma blurted without thinking, then wondered if it was too childlike.
“Exactly. How does it work? But before you can even get to that, you have to answer an even more fundamental question: what is it made of? What are the chemical structures of the molecules that make up cells and confer function on them? Until you know that, how can you understand how structure determines function? That’s the axiom of biochemistry.”
Emma shivered. A sickening wave of uncertainty passed through her. None of her training approached biology in this strictly chemical and reductionist way. She had learned to look at plants and animals carefully and identify the details of their anatomy, and with the aid of good microscopes and stains, she could make out some of the internal structures, but she knew next to nothing about the chemical makeup of cells. She had learned to observe the behavior of living creatures under carefully controlled conditions, modify those conditions and determine what changes resulted.
“I’m afraid I’m not well prepared for that kind of research, Professor Sumner. I’ve done all of my work through observation of living creatures. Can’t one learn a great deal about biological function that way? Genetics seems a powerful tool for that, don’t you think?”
“Well, yes, it’s a different approach. More descriptive, but useful, of course. But someday it will all come down to biochemistry.” He stood up and examined the thermometer he pulled from the water bath. “Excuse me for a moment. The temperature has dropped to nine degrees. I need to add a little hot water and stir the bath a little.” He laughed. “If you think this is a primitive, you should have seen my first lab. I didn’t even have an ice chest.” After a few moments of intense attention to his procedure, he sat back down on the lab stool. “Tell me, since you’re a student of genetics, do you know what a gene is?”
“Of course. It’s the fundamental unit of inheritance.” An edge of irritation had crept into Emma’s voice. That was elementary.
“No, no. I mean, what is a gene, chemically? What is it made of?
“No, sir, I don’t know that.”
“Neither do I.”
“But there’s good evidence that genes are carried on chromosomes, which you can see under a microscope.”
“And chromosomes are made of what?”
“I’m sorry. I don’t know.” Emma’s irritation was now mixed with embarrassment.
“Mostly proteins and desoxyribonucleic acid. So genes are probably made of one of those two kinds of molecules. Possibly both. I’m betting on proteins. They seem to me to be the only molecules with the structural complexity needed for such sophisticated functions as genes have.” Sumner grinned and ran his only hand through his hair. “There’s a challenge for you, Miss Hansen. Isolate a pure gene. A real long shot.”
“Oh, my. I have no idea how to do that.”
“Well, you’d have to devise an assay. A way to measure how much gene activity you have. Not sure how you’d do that outside of a living cell.” Then he smiled kindly. “First, you’ll have to learn some biochemistry. And do something much more cut and dried for your Ph.D. Tackle the big problem after you’re settled somewhere.”
“Thank you, Professor Sumner. You’ve given me a lot to think about.”
“Sure, sure.” He turned back to his water bath and stirred the milky solution in the beaker. “What do you think? Should I try acetone instead of ethanol? It’s miscible with water.”
EMMA SLIPPED QUIETLY from the laboratory, her confidence shaken. The world of science was so vast. She had only mastered a small corner of it. Was it even the best corner for her to explore? The mysteries of the living cell—tiny as it was—were so many, so large, so complex, and so difficult that understanding them seemed an almost impossible goal. The many scientists studying these mysteries were like a group of primitive savages who have come across of box of fine Swiss watches and who strive to understand how and why they work. How does it work? That was the question.
The savages contend among themselves for the best way to understand the strange objects. Some insist that their significance lies in the regular ticking sounds they emit. Others puzzle over the symbols on the dial or the slow movements of the hands. Still others smash the watches with rocks and exclaim over the tiny gears and springs that spill out. Will they ever be able to integrate their observations into a coherent understanding of how a watch works? Emma saw herself as one of the savages staring at her own mysterious watch, turning it over and over in her hands. How does it work, and how can I find out?
CHAPTER 9
1926-1927
A SHADOW FELL across Emma’s lab bench. She replaced the glass cover on the Petri dish she had been studying and glanced up.
“So, Emma, still fiddling with your red bread mold?”
She shrugged with annoyance. “Of course. Don’t you have anything better to do, Lenny?”
“Aw, be nice. Just a friendly visit. After all, you’re the prettiest grad student in the buil
ding. Of course, the others are all men. Heh, heh.”
Emma remained silent. She knew she wouldn’t be able to concentrate on her cultures until Lenny went away. Leonard Lansing Hallowell III was the eldest son of a well-off farming family from Ohio. He had been sent to Cornell to pursue a graduate degree in plant genetics by his father, who was determined to pursue scientific agriculture, a passion that Lenny did not share. He lounged around the lab and engaged the other students in conversation about their research and genetics, picking up ideas that he often offered as his own in classes and seminars. His excuse for his research inactivity was that he had to wait until next year’s corn crosses were performed in the field and the offspring were available for analysis. His family paid all his expenses. He lived comfortably in his own apartment, entertained guests with bootleg gin, and was in no hurry to complete his degree and return to the farm.
Lenny had no interest in Emma’s research—she was the only student in the building not working on maize genetics, so there was little he could pick from her brain—but he was flirtatious and often asked her out. She always declined. Lenny was attractive and companionable, but Emma resented his lack of seriousness and his easy sense of entitlement that flowed from little more than growing up in wealth and comfort.
Besides, there was the thing with Herschel Greenspan.
“So, convince me, Miss Lady Professor Hansen, why it’s important to work with this useless moldy stuff instead of a commercially important crop like corn.” Lenny seated himself comfortably on a lab stool, settling in to kill a half hour or more.
“Please don’t call me that.” Emma growled. Word had gotten around of Emma’s future ambitions, which most students considered completely unrealistic.
“OK, sorry. But tell me about this, this, fungus you’ve been working on for more than a year. It’s not of any use to anyone, is it?”
Emma was reluctant to discuss the reasons for her unconventional choice of research topics with this superficial young man, but she felt that they were good ones. She had come to realize that, as a woman, she would never be able to obtain a faculty position at the research university. Her best hope for a faculty position, if she could obtain one at all, was to teach at a small college, perhaps a college for women. But she was determined to continue research in biology, presumably in genetics, when she was established in her independent career. She couldn’t imagine a career in science without the possibility of the joy of discovery.
“You will never be able to amass the resources needed to compete with university scholars in the established fields of genetic research, such as with maize or the fruit fly Drosophila,” Dr. Weatherbee had written her, when Emma wrote of her concerns for her future. “You should strive to develop your own research objects, a new system not pursued by other investigators. Moreover, it would have to be a kind of research that can be done with meager resources and little assistance.”
No fields of corn with carefully removed tassels and bagged ears, no multiple cages swarming with fruit flies for Emma’s independent career. But what? Until now she had been able to pursue research projects out of pure curiosity, for the fun of solving problems and discovery. Now she had to limit her choices to practical considerations. What novel, but feasible research should she attempt?
Emma struggled with this question until, a few months into her Ph.D. program, she heard a lecture by a U.S. Department of Agriculture scientist, Bernard O. Dodge, who had studied a strain of fungus, which he called Neurospora crassa. The fungus was known to reproduce asexually, growing as chains of fuzzy white filaments, but Dodge had discovered a sexual mode of reproduction. When strains of two different mating types were mixed, the cells differentiated and formed little packages, called perithecia, that contained tiny tubes filled with eight spores each in neat rows.
Dodge had stumbled by accident on the finding that these little spores could be induced to germinate by heating, and the progeny of each spore could be grown into fungal colonies, which were genetically identical cells, all descended from one spore. Even more exciting, it appeared that genetic characters from two different parents were segregated in the spores into four of one type and four of the other, a pattern consistent with Mendel’s law. Perhaps this simple fungus could be used to study genetics in the same way that others had done using much more complex species.
Because of her experience with paramecium at Hancock College, Emma was strongly drawn to this possibility. The fungus reproduced rapidly, and it could be studied without great cost. She would need only inexpensive growth medium, Petri dishes, and a dissecting microscope. Best of all, Dodge had told her when she talked to him after his lecture that he did not intend to continue genetic studies with Neurospora because the USDA had reassigned him to other projects. He offered to send her his strains and copies of his procedures. Emma had eagerly accepted his offer and set to work on her Ph.D. research. The members of her research group thought she was making a big mistake, but Professor Hutchison agreed to let her, as he told Emma, “sink or swim.”
“This fungus isn’t of any agricultural importance, is it?” Lenny asked again, when Emma didn’t respond.
“Well, people don’t grow it to eat,” Emma replied. “They don’t eat fruit flies either, but they’ve been a valuable research tool. Besides, this fungus is a serious contaminant in bakeries and sugar cane processing plants, if you have to have a practical argument for studying it. Now go away. I’m trying to work.”
“OK, OK. But I really just came by to invite you to a party at my apartment on Friday night. Nine o’clock. Please come. We’ll have a merry time.”
“Thank you, but I can’t. I have a date.”
Lenny’s eyebrows rose. “A date? Who with?”
“None of your business.”
Emma had not told Lenny the truth, not strictly speaking. She did have a date, but it was on Saturday night, not Friday night. Herschel was never with her on Friday nights, nor during the day on Saturdays. It had to do with observing the Sabbath.
Six months ago Rosa suddenly announced that she was dropping out of Cornell and going to Germany to support the Revolution over there. Rosa and Herschel argued vehemently about it in Emma’s presence.
“You’re nuts,” he shouted. “You’re just going to be beaten up by the police or the fascist bully boys. What can you—one American girl—do over there?”
“The moment is ripe for the Revolution.” she retorted. “The workers can’t find jobs and those with jobs are on strike; the inflation has wiped out the middle class; the Weimar government is wobbling. The Party has sent out a call. I speak German. I have to go.”
“The timing is wrong. Maybe in twenty or twenty-one when the economy was so bad, you might have had a chance, but now the Socialists are weak and disorganized. Besides you speak Yiddish, not German. They hate Jews over there.”
“I speak high German too. And the Communist Party rejects all religion. They’re not anti-Semitic.”
“Hah! The Party is run by Russia. The Russians drove my family out thirty years ago. You’re going to get bloodied. For nothing.”
“Armchair radical. Do you think the Junkers and the industrialists will give up power without a struggle?”
SO ROSA LEFT for Germany, and Herschel remained behind. Emma could not imagine having such passion for a political cause. Only biology meant so much to her. With Rosa gone, Herschel never came by the women’s dorm, so Emma didn’t see him until they met by chance on the campus two months later. Herschel fell into step beside her.
“I’m so glad to see you, Emma. I have missed you.”
“It’s nice to see you too, Herschel. I’ve been so busy that I hardly see any of our friends these days.”
“Me neither. But . . . it’s you I have missed. Uh, perhaps, now that Rosa is away, uh, maybe there is an opportunity for you and me?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about, Herschel.”
“Oh, I think you do.”
They stopped walking,
and Emma looked directly at Herschel.
His dark brown eyes shone with mischievous invitation; his prominent lower lip moved from a pout to a grin. “I’m terribly attracted to you, and I get the feeling that you, maybe . . .”
“Damn it, Herschel, I, uh, I like you, but it wouldn’t be right. Rosa’s your girl. I couldn’t see you behind her back.”
“Oh, we have a, uh, an understanding. C’mon. Just for fun. Let me take you out for coffee, maybe go to a movie. You work all the time. A little relaxation would be good for you. Please.”
“Well, maybe just for fun. I don’t want a serious beau, you know. I don’t have time for that.”
“Oh, that’s OK with me. I’m sure not looking to get married. Besides, my family would never stand for me marrying a schicksa.”
“A what?”
“A gentile woman.”
“Oh.”
“So, may I come by your place on Saturday night? After sundown?”
So Emma and Herschel began seeing one another in her rare free evenings. Herschel’s big-city sophistication and cynicism, his fluency in foreign languages, his strange religion, which he practiced and mocked in equal proportions, aroused Emma’s curiosity. Perhaps inevitably, given the strong physical attraction between them—and despite the need for secrecy—they became intimate within a month.
Herschel had no interest in her scientific activities, but he quizzed her relentlessly as though she were a member of a foreign tribe—which, perhaps to him, she was.
“So, so tell me this. What would people back in—where is it you come from?” he asked one evening when they were together in his apartment.
“Stanton Mills, Illinois.”
“Stanton Mills. I love it. Right out of Sinclair Lewis. Anyway, what would the folks back in Stanton Mills think of you spending time with a Jew?”
“I dunno. I guess they’d think it was pretty strange.”
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