“Once I get ’em extracted, I’ll probably get a mixture. I’ll have to figure out how to purify individual pigments. That’ll be a challenge. Lots of trial and error.” He flashed the grin that was already growing familiar. “But I had a lot of experience with natural products chemistry at Illinois. This is gonna be fun.”
“We do have to worry about how to pay for supplies and equipment,” Emma replied. “I have spent all but about a hundred dollars of my USDA grant. I have to buy materials to grow the cells, and you will need solvents and, well, you know better than I what you will need.”
Joe shrugged. “I might be able to bootleg the solvents from the lab course. And I’ll beg the Kraut for a couple hundred dollars. That will get us started. Now, let’s go get a cup of coffee over at the Dining Hall, OK?”
Emma was not fond of coffee, but she agreed without hesitating.
EMMA AND JOE met frequently in the months that followed. Both had to meet the many responsibilities of the classes they taught and squeezed out time for their project in the evenings and on weekends. Emma learned how to grow large-scale fungus cultures and to harvest the brightly colored fungal mats by filtration.
She did this in her lab and took the material to Joe, who had staked out a fume hood in the organic chemistry teaching lab for his experiments in extracting the pigments. Sharp odors of the solvents, sometimes sweetish, sometimes oily and suggestive of gasoline, clung to his clothing. Emma enjoyed watching him work because he was so intensely engaged. If something went wrong, he cursed in Italian and stamped around the lab. When an experiment succeeded, he shouted with pleasure, took Emma by both hands and swung her around the lab.
“Joe,” she laughed after one such merry dance on a Saturday evening, “you are the most passionate person I’ve ever known. So full of feeling.”
“Ah, it’s because I’m Italian, you surely know that. I grew up in Little Italy in Chicago. Bellafiori. Means beautiful flowers.” He ruffled his dark curls and wiggled his hands besides his ears. “Some flower, huh? Should be bruttofiori, ugly flowers.”
“Oh, stop. You’re a very good looking boy, and you know it.”
“Boy?” he retorted, projecting his lower lip in pretended offence. “I’ll have you know I’m twenty-six, hardly a boy.”
“Well, that’s a good bit younger than I am.”
“And, of course, a gentleman never asks . . .”
“But you are no gentleman. I don’t mind telling you. I’m almost thirty-two.”
Joe shrugged. “Trivial difference. Besides, you’re so pretty, you look like one of the co-eds.”
Emma laughed. “You’re a liar, but a charming liar.”
He wrapped an arm around her shoulder and hugged her. He was very tactile, relaxed in expression of his affection, so unlike the family she had grown up with. “I will never lie to you, Emma.”
JOE’S HUNCH THAT the pigments were structurally related to carotene proved invaluable, because he was able to draw on the prior experience of the German chemists who had isolated and characterized beta-carotene, the yellow pigment of carrots. He extracted colored materials from the parent fungus and different preparations from three of Emma’s mutant strains.
Purifying the pigments proved more challenging. The usual procedure was to attempt to crystallize them. Crystallization from a solution occurs when a dissolved substance slowly becomes insoluble and assembles into highly ordered, regular arrays of identical molecules—crystals—so the very act of crystallization selects identical molecules to form the crystals and excludes impurities. But Joe’s many attempts did not succeed.
“I think we’re getting mixtures in our extracts,” he told Emma. “I’ve got to find a way to resolve the mixtures.”
They decided to attempt to isolate the bright red-orange pigment from the parent strain first because it seemed to be the most abundant. While Joe struggled with his brightly colored solutions and crystallization dishes, Emma screened hundreds of colonies after exposure to x-rays for more mutant strains, seeking those that produced more of the other pigments, and she continued the tedious mapping of her mutations.
Emma looked forward to working with Joe, and it was clear that he felt the same, teasing her with terms such as “my science pal,” “lady professor,” and “older, but wiser one.” While they worked, they exchanged life stories. Although Joe had grown up in a large Italian family in the tenements of Chicago and Emma on a small dairy farm, they shared the experience of overcoming the relative poverty and indifference of their families to pursue careers in science.
“My dad runs a trucking business,” Joe told her. “He wanted me to drop out of high school at sixteen and work with him, but this teacher got me all excited about chemistry, and I knew that’s what I wanted. It was so beautiful and orderly. It explained so much about how the world is put together, and there were so many useful applications. So much more to discover. My teacher told me to go to Illinois, that they were really good in chem, so I did. Had to work my way through. The first couple of years I got a job on the ag farms. Mucking out barns, hauling hay and corn, stuff like that. I’m surprised they hired me, ’cause I didn’t know anything about farming like most of the ag students did. But I guess you don’t have to know much to shovel shit, huh? Oh, sorry, madam professor, for the naughty language.”
“I grew up with brothers. I’ve heard worse. And I’m very familiar with what comes out of cows. Besides milk, I mean.” Emma laughed. Then she frowned.
“What, Emma?”
“It still makes me sad to think of one of my brothers. Henrik. He was my favorite. He came back from the war shell-shocked. So changed, so unhappy. Started drinking a lot. Then he just disappeared.”
“Really? No idea what happened?”
“No. Some people guessed that he hopped the rails, became a hobo, but we don’t know. We don’t even know if he’s still alive.” Tears welled in her eyes, and she turned away so Joe wouldn’t see.
But he did see, and he gently wrapped his arms around her. “I’m sorry. You really loved him didn’t you?”
“Yes, I did.” She croaked and laid her head on Joe’s shoulder.
“That’s sweet. I guess I’m not that fond of my brothers and sisters. I’m the oldest of seven, and it was always crazy around home. Barely enough to eat. I never got to sleep without someone else in my bed until I went to college.”
“I’m amazed that you made it through.”
“It was a struggle. But you know all about that. Having to drop out and teach and borrow money like you did. After my junior year and in grad school I got jobs with the chemistry department, so it was easier. And I got a little bit from joining the Army.”
“The Army?”
“Yeah, well, all male students had to join the cadet corps for two years, but I stayed in for four years and got a commission. They paid a little bit for drills and summer camp. I still have to go to drill once a month and summer camp. I’ll show you my uniform sometime. Second Lieutenant Bellafiori.” He drew himself up proudly and marched around the lab in mock military fashion.
“Oh, I don’t want to see it. It will make me think of poor Henrik.”
“OK. I understand. No soldier Joe.” He returned to the table. “Do you think your folks are proud of you, all you have accomplished, a Ph.D., a lady professor and all?”
“You know, it’s disappointing, but I don’t think so. It’s all so foreign to them. It doesn’t mean anything. I feel rather isolated when I visit them.”
“Me too. Same thing. They think I’m completely odd for loving something so much, something that’s so hard to describe. They’re having a really hard time since the Depression has got so bad, and I don’t think they understand why I can’t send money. They don’t understand why I’m so happy. ‘All those years in college and no more money than that?’ ”
“Are you happy?”
“Oh, yeah. And really happy now that I’ve found you. I love this project we’ve got going . . . and . . . and
. . . I love being around you.”
“I like it a lot too. But . . .”
“But, what?”
“Well, we’re . . . partners in research. Collaborators. I’m not sure we should . . . let . . . other feelings . . . complicate things.”
“Emma,” Joe said, gently kissing her cheek. “I’m not sure we will be able to avoid that.”
CHAPTER 13
1932
“YOU KNOW, I’M gonna have to give up on differential crystallization and try something new. Our mixtures are too complicated, too many chemically similar components, I’m guessing,” Joe mused, as he sat with Emma in her office on a chilly Saturday evening in April. “There was this Russian guy, Tswett, who separated plant pigments by pouring solutions of them through a hollow glass cylinder filled with calcium carbonate and then washing through with various solvents. He called it chromatography—color writing—because the different pigments separated into colored bands that he could see on the white background in the tube. Maybe we could do that with our pigment mixtures.”
The initial trials were sufficiently promising that Joe and Emma began a series of experiments using small glass tubes filled with materials other than calcium carbonate and washing the tubes, which he called columns, with various solvents and solvent mixtures. By the end of the summer of 1932, nearly a year after they had begun their collaboration, they had found conditions for separation of the pigments. The red-orange pigment from the parent strain, which they named Pigment A, separated well from three other colored bands under their best conditions.
Most exciting was the observation that the three colored pigments produced by Emma’s mutant strains—one yellow-orange, and two pale yellow, which they designated Pigments B, C, and D—corresponded to the extra bands visible on Joe’s columns. Joe proved that by deliberately mixing extracts from the various mutants in different proportions and showing that the most intensely colored band corresponded to the extract added in largest amount.
“Look at that!” he exclaimed to Emma, pointing to a tall glass cylinder packed with white powdered cellulose on which all four colored bands could be seen slowly marching down the tube as he added solvent mixtures. “Isn’t that beautiful? We can collect the different colored solutions as they wash off of the column, and I’m going back to trying to crystallize them.”
“It is beautiful, Joe. You have been so patient. This is brilliant. Has anyone else figured out how to use this method to purify things?”
“I don’t know for sure, but I don’t think so. I’ll have to go to Columbus and search the Ohio State library. Harrington’s chemistry library isn’t complete enough. But I think everybody just forgot about old Tswett. I think we ought to write this up and publish it.” Joe grinned with pride.
Only Emma really appreciated what he had discovered, and her enthusiasm was as genuine as his own. He swept her into his arms and hugged her, as he liked to do.
He was doing that a lot lately, and Emma enjoyed it. She was falling in love with this young man, in spite of her reservations, her concerns that scientific collaborators ought not to let their personal emotions intrude on their research. If they became lovers, wouldn’t it change the balance? Wouldn’t he become more like a husband, more dominant? Would he still take her as seriously? Would she be expected to mute her criticisms and questioning of his work?
She had not told him of her growing affection, though, and she was finding it more and more difficult to hide it. To the attraction she had felt from the start was added respect for his intelligence and diligence, his cheerful enthusiasm, and his easy acceptance of her, a woman, as an equal. For his part, Joe seemed content to continue as a friendly—very friendly—collaborator. Perhaps he thought that Emma’s reserve, her coolness to his occasional hints of romantic interest, meant that his feelings were not reciprocated. Because they both had heavy teaching loads and much of their joint research was conducted in separate locations, Emma had been able to keep her subsurface feelings from Joe.
ON AN AFTERNOON IN late September, Joe burst into Emma’s office, where she was grading the first quizzes of the semester in her general biology class.
“Emma, you have got to come see this!” he exclaimed. “Come now.”
He pulled her up from the desk with both hands and led her to the door and across the Science Building to the chemistry lab.
“Look!” he cried, pointing to a glass evaporating dish.
There nestled in deep red-orange liquor was a cluster of maroon needle-like crystals jumbled together like a pile of tiny straws. “Isn’t that the most beautiful thing you ever saw? That’s Pigment A. Crystals, Emma, crystals.”
“Oh, that’s what you’ve been trying to do for so long.”
“Yeah, and that’s not all.” Joe waved his arm in the direction of an odd glass apparatus shaped like a lower case letter b filled with fluid. A long thermometer and a capillary tube projected into the fluid through a stopper in the opening at the top of the device. There was a Bunsen burner under the apparatus, but with no flame burning. “I’ve run a melting point already in the Thiele tube. The crystals melt sharply at 178 degrees.”
“Is that important?”
“Oh, yeah. A pure compound melts at just one temperature and the temperature does not continue rising while you’re heating it until it’s all melted. It’s called heat of fusion. Just like I teach the kids in the lab. If it’s not pure, the melting is smeared over a temperature range. Oh, man, this is so exciting. We’ve got it, Emma. I can do chemistry on it now. We’re gonna get the structure of Pigment A!”
Joe danced around the lab then stopped in front of Emma, who stared at him wide-eyed. She had never seen him so happy. He grabbed her and kissed her full on the mouth. She hesitated for a second, then kissed him back with enthusiasm and relief.
Afterwards they looked into each other’s eyes for a long time. No words were spoken, but none were needed; a bridge had been crossed.
“OK, madam professor science pal,” Joe exclaimed. “I’ve been wanting to do this. You are invited to my apartment—my wretched little, messy apartment—for a celebratory dinner on Saturday night. I’ll cook Italian for you: chicken cacciatore and polenta.”
“Really? I didn’t know you could cook.”
“Oh, sure. Any chemist can cook. Recipes are much less precise than chemical procedures.”
“I’d love to come, Joe.”
JOE’S APARTMENT WAS the rear half of the second floor of an old house near the Harrington College campus that had been crudely converted into rental apartments. It was accessible by wooden stairs attached to the back of the house.
Emma climbed the stairs and tapped on the door. Joe pulled the door open. He wore a black rubber lab apron over a short-sleeved white shirt and trousers. He was barefoot, slightly flushed, and his hair was more tousled than usual. Wonderful aromas greeted her.
“Come in, come in. Sorry I didn’t have time to clear up my mess. I figured I’d better concentrate on cooking. Have a look around, but please overlook the disorder.”
The apartment had just two rooms: a large room with a small kitchen area installed at one end long after the house had been built, and a bedroom whose door opened off of the main room. Joe shared a bathroom down the hall with occupants of the front apartment. The big room was furnished with an upholstered sofa and chair of considerable age, a large wooden desk, bookshelves, and a table with four chairs. Papers and books were strewn over the desk, sofa, and floor, but the table had been cleared and set for two. Peeping into the bedroom, Emma noted that the double bed was unmade and clothing draped over a closet door and hung out of half-open dresser drawers. Cheerful chaos.
Joe dipped a spoon into a bubbling pot and carefully tasted a sample. “This is ready. Please, I don’t mean to rush you, but shall we eat?”
“THIS IS SIMPLY DELICIOUS, Joe,” Emma exclaimed. She smiled across the table to where he sat illuminated by the light of a candle he had set between them. His dishes were an odd col
lection of mismatched pieces. He had served the salad in a large porcelain evaporating dish obviously borrowed from the lab.
“Glad you like it. It’s my mother’s recipe. Sorry I don’t have any wine to go with it. If Roosevelt gets elected, they’ll finally repeal Prohibition, don’t you think? Then I’ll invite you again and serve it with wine.”
“Oh, don’t make me wait that long.” Emma laughed. “Of course, now I must invite you for dinner. I’m afraid my dishes won’t be so flavorful. I only know how to cook what we used to make on the farm. Country food. About the only spices we used were sugar and salt. Maybe vinegar, things like pickles and sauerkraut.”
“I’d be delighted with whatever you made, I’m sure.”
After dinner Emma helped Joe clear the table and wash dishes. They occasionally bumped shoulders while working. When a lock of Emma’s hair fell over her forehead while she was washing dishes, Joe gently brushed it back with his fingers. Their eyes met; Joe blushed and looked away. Perhaps because he was unsure of Emma’s response. Joe began enthusiastically talking about the next stage in his research plans.
“Now I get to do some real chemistry,” he said. “Determine the structure of Pigment A.”
“How will you do that? You’ve shown me the structure of beta-carotene. It looks awfully complicated to me. All those methyl groups and double bonds and funny little cyclohexene rings at the ends. And didn’t you say it was unstable in air and light?”
“Yeah. You’ve got to keep it in the dark, and it oxidizes easily. Well, here’s how I’m going to go about it. I need a really good elemental analysis, you know, exact percentage of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen. There’s a really good microanalysis lab at Illinois. I think I can get them to do it for us. There better not be any nitrogen in it.”
“Why not?”
“Carotenoids don’t contain nitrogen, so the chemistry will be easier if it’s a carotenoid, instead of something I don’t recognize. But first, I’ve got to go through the literature and make sure no one has described this exact molecule before. I don’t think so, but we’ve got to be sure.”
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