Lady Professor

by Switzer, Robert L. ;

  “Listen, you were very generous with me when I was trying to get through college. You lent me money and then wouldn’t let me pay you back. How about I pay you back now? I don’t make a lot at the college, but I live simply. I could send, oh, I don’t know, maybe twenty dollars a month. Would that help out?”

  “Oh, Emma, you’re very kind, but we could never ask you to do that.”

  “You didn’t ask me to do it. I want to do it. Now that I can. So, please, let’s just agree. No discussion. No one else needs to know. Now, tell me what you have heard from Papa and Bjorn and Susan. They hardly ever write. And, tell me, what can I bring them? Some things from the store?”

  “SUSAN STAYED OUT on the farm with the kids,” Bjorn offered by way of greeting the sister he had not seen in six years. “Here, gimme your bag. And what’s this?”

  He nodded toward a box of groceries that Emma had purchased at the Oosterfeld’s store: sugar, flour, salt, canned goods, all items that Hannah assured her that the family purchased regularly. Emma hoped that the gift would not embarrass them.

  Bjorn took Emma’s hand to help her into the truck—the same Ford truck of her troubled rides with Henrik. Bjorn’s hands were thick and callused, his face lined and deeply tanned, his hair now as much gray as blond, three days growth of blondish-gray bristles. He wore faded and patched bib overalls with a faint odor of the cow barn: manure, hay, sour milk. He would be nearly forty now, Emma realized. Some of her East Coast friends would regard him as a rustic hick, she knew, but she saw him as a familiar stranger, a taciturn, hard-working man whom she had once known, but no longer did.

  They spoke little on the twelve-mile trip over dusty, rough roads. The surrounding fields were green, the corn thigh-high, sweet odor of freshly mowed clover hay, oats and barley turning yellow-gold. Emma’s thoughts turned to hunting birds’ eggs with Henrik in fields like these. Henrik. Long ago vanished.

  Susan served dinner late in the evening after Papa and Bjorn came in from milking the cows. The sun glowed orange-red in the western sky. Emma helped light the kerosene lamps to illuminate the kitchen. It had been years since she had done this simple task.

  After the men washed up, the family sat down at the kitchen table, Papa presiding at the head of the table, as he always had, Bjorn and Susan at one side, and their sons on the other. Emma was ushered to the opposite end of the table in Mama’s old place. Papa’s hair was white now and he moved stiffly. Even though he was only sixty years old, his face was an old man’s face, weathered and lean with craggy bones and pale blue eyes, an aging Viking like his ancestors, turned to leather not by the sea, but by the land. The little boys, now aged six and four, rosy towheads in bib overalls like their father, peeked shyly at their aunt, but didn’t speak. When the meal of ham and green beans, fresh sweet corn on the cob and boiled potatoes was served by Susan, Emma noticed that no one said grace. That practice must have disappeared when Mama died.

  Papa and Bjorn talked with one another as though Emma had dinner with them every evening.

  “I’m worried about old Blossom,” Bjorn said. “Her right hind quarter is real bad, hot and hard as hell. She like to kicked me into the gutter when I tried to strip the pus out. Don’t seem like the bag balm is doin’ any good.”

  “If she loses the quarter, we might have to sell her. Too bad. She was a good milker,” Papa replied. He looked across to Emma. “Don’t suppose they taught you anything about mastitis at that college, did they?”

  “No, not about mastitis specifically. I suspect it’s a bacterial infection of the udder. Someday maybe there will be a drug against it. Paul Ehrlich has discovered one, but I don’t think it’s used for mastitis.”

  She considered adding that Ehrlich’s drug, Salvarsan, was used to treat syphilis, but decided against it. She had begun requiring her biology students to read Paul de Kruif’s Microbe Hunters, which contained the story of Ehrlich’s studies, along with many other fascinating chapters. It generated so much enthusiasm that she planned to add deKruif’s Hunger Fighters to the reading list in the fall.

  “Well, ‘someday’ don’t do much good,” Papa muttered.

  “No. The pace of discovery is slow, and practical benefits from it are even slower.” Emma didn’t dare tell her family that her own research was driven purely by curiosity and with no practical applications in mind. “There was a lot of work at Cornell on corn, though, that is leading to some much improved varieties of field corn. Hybrid corn, they call it.”

  “Oh, ja, I’ve heard talk about that. But you have to buy the seed instead of using your own.”

  “What we need to buy is a tractor,” Bjorn interjected. “One of them Farmalls. We could work the fields and cultivate the corn a lot faster than with horses.”

  “And where do we get the money?” Papa retorted. “Eight hundred and twenty-five dollars. Plus more for the cultivator. Hell, you could buy ten acres of good land for that. We’re still payin’ off the mortgage on the barn. And milk down to seventy-five cents a hundredweight.”

  Emma sensed that this was an argument that had been repeated many times before. Eight hundred dollars was nearly a third of her annual salary; she could not afford to offer to help her family as she had promised the Oosterfelds, so she remained silent.

  The next day Emma helped Susan can sweet corn. It was familiar work from her years on the farm. The little boys helped bring in and husk the fresh ears, although they were much slower than Susan and Emma, whose hands flew. Emma did not know her brother’s wife well and was unsure of her attitudes, but she hoped to gain some insight into the family’s life from her.

  “How have you all been since Mama died? Has Papa been depressed?”

  “Oh, he don’t say much. Just work, work, work, him and Bjorn. They are a pretty good team, but they argue about the farm. Bjorn wants to modernize, and Papa don’t. Your mama and me, we was a good team too, after we got used to each other, and I can’t hardly keep up with it all now that she’s gone. I put my foot down about milkin’ cows, though. I don’t work in the barn. The house and garden and two kids is enough.”

  “Oh, I agree with you. A farmer’s wife works as hard as her husband.” Susan glanced gratefully at Emma, then turned back to husking corn.

  “What news do you have from Kirsten? I never hear from her. She was upset with me because I didn’t come back for Mama’s funeral, I guess, but, Susan, it just wasn’t possible. I couldn’t even have gotten here in time.”

  “She took it hard when your mama died. So sudden and all. We haven’t seen much of her ourselves since then. We get together two, three times a year. Christmas. She became a Catholic, you know, after she married Kurt Reinhardt. They’ve got five kids. One ever coupla years. Oldest is thirteen, fourteen, I forget. Her and Kurt took over the Reinhardt farm after his father died. But Kurt’s mother and his two youngest sisters are still at home. It’s a handful.”

  “Well, the truth of it is, she was Mama’s favorite. Not me.” Emma hoped the bitterness she felt did not show in her voice. All she had accomplished mattered little to Mama.

  “You ever think about gettin’ married? You’re what, thirty now? Or are the men all scared off because you’re a lady professor and all?”

  “Oh, I’d marry if I met the right man. Just haven’t yet, I guess.” Here we go again: first, Hannah Oosterfeld, now Susan. Why are they so worried about my marrying?

  “Well, don’t marry a farmer.” Susan exchanged glances with Emma.

  Emma nodded. This was as close to a confession of her unhappiness as Susan was likely to make. Emma hoped that her face conveyed understanding.

  “The Hansens are pretty hard-driving,” she said softly. “Maybe that’s what got me through Hancock and Cornell. But, Bjorn’s a good man, and you have two beautiful little boys. They were so sweet and polite when I gave them the hard candy.”

  “Well, take care you don’t spoil ’em now. We don’t buy ’em candy.”

  “No danger. I’m not here often enough fo
r that.” Was the family so hard up? When Susan did not reply, Emma probed gently. “The Oosterfelds said that things were getting pretty tight at the store because of the depression, and last night Papa was grumbling about the price of milk . . .”

  “Oh, we’ll never go hungry because we can grow our own food. Cash is awful short, though. Got to pay the taxes and interest on the mortgage so’s they won’t try to take the farm.”

  “I wish I could afford to help.”

  “Oh, Bjorn would never stand for that. Don’t even mention it.”

  They continued cutting corn from the cobs in silence.

  “What ever happened to that Midlothian boy you was going out with? Did he get away?”

  “Oh, Victor.” Emma felt a flush of remembered affection and pleasure tinged with disappointment. “He was never serious about marrying me. Or anyone else, I don’t think. I don’t know. A fellow scientist, a woman, once told me, ‘Marry your work.’ Maybe that’s what I’ve done.”

  Susan laughed. “Well, work don’t warm your bed at night.”

  Ha, Emma thought but did not say, I don’t have to marry to have a bed companion. Although it had been a long time without one.

  “True,” she replied, “but there is something to be said for being the master of your own fate.”

  After three days on the farm, Emma was ready to return to Harrington, and she sensed that her family was ready for her to leave. As she rode on the train, she reflected: how little life had changed back in Stanton Mills and on the Hansen farm, while her own life had been utterly transformed.

  No one had asked about her work. She longed to tell them how excited she was about teaching biology in college, the wonderful news that she had discovered how to generate mutants in Neurospora with x-rays, the new discoveries she read about in scientific journals. But it was a completely unfamiliar world for them and she didn’t want to appear boastful, so she talked about what they wanted to talk about. We are from the same root stock, she mused, but I am not like them, perhaps never was. Maybe I, too, am a mutant.

  CHAPTER 12

  1931 - 1932

  “PROFESSOR KÖHLER, I need a chemist.” Emma entered the office of Harrington College’s senior chemistry professor with energy and directness.

  “Ach, Fraulein Professor Dr. Hansen. Good day to you. How are you?” Prof. Köhler replied.

  He could never get accustomed to the informality of Americans, which he felt bordered on rudeness. Köhler was a native of Germany and had received his doctoral training in the famed school of chemistry founded by Justus von Liebig at Munich. During the economic and political chaos following Germany’s defeat in the Great War, he emigrated to the United States and had been named professor of chemistry at Harrington in 1920. He retained his formal manners, insisted on the umlaut over the o in his name, and spoke heavily accented English. His courses in chemistry were well known for their thoroughness and rigor—and for being dry.

  “I am well, thank you. And you, sir?” Emma realized that, in her excitement, she had been too abrupt and stood waiting until Köhler waved her to a chair.

  “Bitte, sit yourself down. Now tell me, Fraulein Doctor, why does a biologist need a chemist?”

  “Well, I have isolated a series of mutants in the fungus Neurospora crassa that have defects in pigment formation, and the way they fall into genetic complementation groups suggests to me that they are somehow involved in the chemical synthesis of the pigment. I can explain it more fully, if you wish.”

  “Ach, I’m afraid I have no understanding of this Vererbungslehre, what you call genetics.”

  “That’s not important, sir. The point is this: if I knew what the chemical structures of the various pigments produced by the mutants were, I might be able to deduce what the genes do.” Emma leaned forward in her chair.

  Her conversation with James Sumner some years earlier rang in her ears: “How does it work?” she had posed as the fundamental question of biology. “What is it made of?” he had insisted had to be answered first. She now saw the wisdom of that.

  “I don’t know enough chemistry to do that.”

  “Hmmm. Any idea of the chemical nature of the pigments?”

  “No, sir, but they are colored: yellow, orange, red orange.”

  “Not inorganic, you think?”

  “No, I doubt that.”

  “Vell, then, why don’t you talk to the new fellow, Joseph Bellafiori. He’s a new Instructor in chemistry. Studied organic chemistry with Professor Adams at Illinois. Just got here. He might could help you.”

  “Thank you. I haven’t met him. Thank you for the suggestion.”

  “Ja, bitte schön. Gudt luck.”

  She found Joseph Bellafiori the next day in the small laboratory where a few male students worked at stone-topped wooden benches on a project in the organic chemistry lab course. He was talking softly, but intently to a pair of students, who held a glass flask of bright yellow fluid for his inspection.

  He looked up at her, his eyes widened and he broke into a grin. She had not expected him to be so young—almost boyish. Bellafiori was a smallish man, not much taller than Emma, and athletically built. His head was covered with dark loosely curled hair; his eyes were the color of horse chestnuts; and his complexion was surprisingly rosy.

  Emma wrinkled her nose. “Hmm. Smells like boot polish.”

  “You’re right,” he replied, still grinning. “It’s nitrobenzene. They use it in shoe polish. Or used to. I’m teaching the boys about aromatic nitration reactions.” He paused. “What can I do for you?”

  “I’m Emma Hansen. From the Biology Department. I . . .”

  “Oh, so you’re the brilliant lady professor in biology I’ve been hearing about. Wow, smart and pretty too.”

  Emma felt warmth in her cheek. Flirtatious fellow.

  He extended his hand. “I’m Joe Bellafiori. Nice to meet you, Dr. Hansen. Why have you come to see me?”

  “I’m looking for an organic chemist to collaborate with me on the genetics and structure of pigment formation in the fungus Neurospora crassa, and Prof. Köhler suggested . . .”

  “So the Kraut sent you to me, eh?”

  “Well, yes. Don’t you like him? He seemed to think that you were well qualified.”

  “Oh, he’s all right. Very Old School. Drives a hard bargain too. I thought with a Ph.D. from the great Roger Adams at Illinois, I might be able to get a good research position, but there’s a Depression going on. No jobs. Köhler got me as an Instructor, yearly appointment for two thousand a year. I took it, but I’m going to be looking for a better job.”

  “I understand. I’m in my third year and still making what I earned when I was hired.”

  “That’s terrible. I’ve heard you are a wonderful teacher and even managing to do research.” Bellefiori turned his head and walked over to a student at the lab bench. “Mr. Woodley. Put out that Bunsen burner right now. Mr. Simpkins is heating benzene on the steam cone. The vapors are flammable as hell. You’ve got to pay attention to what your lab mates are doing.” He stepped back to Emma. “Sorry for the interruption. Can’t burn the lab down. Now tell me, Dr. Hansen . . .”

  “Emma, please.”

  “OK, good. I’m Joe. Tell me about this research you want to do. Why do you need an organic chemist?”

  Emma repeated her description of her collection of mutant strains that produced pigments of different colors and her idea that learning the chemical structures of the pigments would give clues as to the functions of the genes that had been altered in the mutants she had isolated. Bellafiori listened intently.

  “The mapping studies I have done so far are pretty crude, but I don’t think the mutations are alleles.”

  “Alleles? What’s that?”

  “Oh, sorry. I mean I think that separate genes are involved, not different mutations in just one gene.”

  “Oh. Well, if we work on this together, you’re going to have to teach me some genetics. I don’t even know what a gene is,
haven’t had any biology since high school. Now, the colors of the pigments suggest to me that that could be carotenoids. Do you know if they are soluble in organic solvents?”

  “Now it’s my turn.” Emma laughed. “What’s a carotenoid? And I have no idea what they are soluble in. You’ll have to teach me a lot of chemistry if we do this.”

  “OK, sure. This sounds like it could be fun. I’d love to do some research. If we solve the structures, we could publish it together. That would be good for both of us. But I don’t see how it’s gonna tell you what genes do. Doesn’t anyone know that?”

  “No. Not really. Genes determine characteristics of living creatures. All kinds of characteristics, but no one really knows how they do it.”

  With what she soon learned was characteristic directness and enthusiasm, Joe gently grasped her by both shoulders and said, “Let’s sit down and talk about it in detail. I’d love to work with you.”

  Emma and Joe spent the entire Saturday morning in her lab, talking about her research and discussing how to proceed. She showed him her collection of mutant strains and the colors of the pigments they produced. She tried to explain how she characterized the mutants by genetic tests, how the fact that crosses between two mutants sometimes led to progeny that produced pigment just like the parent strain indicated that they were mutations in two separate genes, how the frequency of crosses helped to map the mutations.

  Joe admitted that he didn’t fully follow her arguments, but he promised to sit in on her genetics course next semester. Emma in turn agreed to sit in on the second semester organic chemistry course.

  “So, can you grow enough of this fungus so I can try to extract the pigments from it?” Joe asked. “I need enough to do structural studies and I have to figure out which solvents to use.”

  “I haven’t tried to grow cultures in large flasks, but I think I can do it.”