In memory yet green : the autobiography of Isaac Asimov, 1920-1954

by Asimov, Isaac, 1920-1992

  It was fortunate that the upcoming Doctor's Orals filled my mind, or I would have been in a state of deep economic apprehension.

  I did succeed in achieving a state of deep academic apprehension, however. On April 23, a fellow student working under Dawson, a woman named Irene Eiger, was up for her Orals, and all the students expecting Orals of their own came in for what we called the "death watch."

  It wasn't just grisliness, you understand. The idea was to get her to

  tell us, in detail, all that happened. That would give the rest of us some idea of the climate of things, and we might then utilize the knowledge to prepare ourselves better for when it was our turn.

  Unfortunately, Miss Eiger had a very rough time.

  There are, generally, two types of responses to a Doctor's Orals. One is paralysis which, at its extreme, leaves you unable to answer any question, including "What is your name?" The other is hysteria, which at its extreme leads you to respond to "What is your name?" with a long, jolly peal of laughter.

  Miss Eiger's response was, apparently, the former. Her dissertation was accepted, but she would have to repeat the Orals in September.

  My heart sank. It seemed a bad omen for me, and I sought out Dawson for some much-needed commiseration, consolation, and fatherly patting. I finally found him walking down the main stairs. I went up to meet him.

  "Dr. Dawson," I said, "Irene has just failed her Orals and . . ."

  "Yes, I know," he said, walking briskly past me upon business of his own. "That's why I'm glad you're next. You'll show 'em."

  It was nice he had faith in me, but I had no faith in myself.

  My own dissertation had been approved for examination by six of the seven committeemen. Only Dodson remained to be heard from. Unless I got approval from him too, it meant that the dissertation would have to be revised to meet his objections, and that could mean a terrible delay. From day to day I agonized, trying to get Dodson to the point without offending him.

  When Dodson finally came through, on April 26, it was with only "Qualified Approval." He wanted minor revisions. For one thing, he objected to my kinetics terminology, which incensed me at once, for I had carefully used the precise terminology used by Samuel Glasstone in his Textbook of Physical Chemistry. I saw Dodson on April 28, and it wasn't as bad as I had feared. He was perfectly pleasant and I was able to answer some of his objections, and I then introduced some minor revisions to satisfy the rest.

  Dawson would not let me make the corrections in pen and ink, as I had assumed I would be able to. He insisted on retyping any page that had to be revised even by the omission of a single word. That meant six pages had to be retyped.

  I accepted as a good omen the fact that on May 4, I was initiated into Sigma Xi, the scientists' honorary fraternity. I received a diploma and I attended a formal dinner at which Irving Langmuir spoke on rainmaking. He spoke to excellent effect for sixty minutes. Unfortu-

  nately, he went on to speak for thirty minutes more, and the audience grew restless. I learned from that that sixty minutes is the maximum length for any after-dinner speech.

  I was still capable of losing sleep over matters not related to my dissertation. We were keeping Putchikl in the backyard regularly now, but expected her to come bounding happily to us whenever we called her. We also noticed that a big ugly tomcat was keeping company with her. We didn't like his looks at all and disapproved of the relationship, but Putchikl ignored our lectures and seemed to find him tolerable.

  On the night of May 3-4, right after that incident with the mouse in the kitchen, Putchikl didn't come when we called her to say good night before going to bed. We stayed up and she still didn't come. Eventually we had to go to bed, but of course I didn't sleep.

  At 6:30 a.m. I became aware that it was raining, and I went to the backyard window to try to call her again. There she was, looking cold and unhappy, on the windowsill, and there was the faithful old torn, keeping her company. She clearly deserved punishment for her nameless orgies, but I took her in to dry and warm her and patted the torn, who then proceeded to go to his home next door.

  She then found a younger torn, a virile one who ravished her before my very eyes. I expected Putchikl to be embarrassed about this, but she seemed oblivious to the dictates of virtue and kept whining to be let out so that she might be ravished again.

  9

  The Doctor's Orals, I understood, were to begin with a speech by the candidate, outlining his dissertation and explaining it. Only after that did his questioning begin.

  Unwilling to leave anything to chance, I wrote out a speech and memorized it. I recited it to Gertrude, who listened patiently. Then I recited it to Dawson, who listened to the thirty minutes' worth and said, "Cut it." By May 14, I had cut it down to twenty minutes and. had to memorize the new version.

  While I was doing this, the new state of Israel was founded, and the June 1948 Astounding came out with "No Connection." 5

  Most of the letter column in that issue was given over to thio-

  5 See The Early Asimov.

  timoline, which made me uneasy. It was a bad time to remind the professors of the existence of the article.

  10

  On May 20, 1948, I got to school for my own death watch. The obsequies were to take place in Room 206 of the Low Library, a building and room with which I was unacquainted, so that I would not have the benefit of familiarity.

  It began at 2:00 p.m. and after a lunch I had difficulty eating, I was ready. Or at least I was there.

  It was clear that I was going to react in the second fashion: not paralysis, but hysteria. I was laughing as I went in.

  I got up and gave my speech with only an occasional giggle, and then the questioning began.

  It is no use asking me for the procedures in detail. I wrote nothing of it in my diary and I remember very little.

  One fellow asked me how I knew the potassium iodide I used was indeed potassium iodide. My impulse was to answer truthfully that I never questioned it. It said "Potassium Iodide" on the label and that was enough for me.

  Some dim instinct warned me that that was the wrong answer. I thought desperately and quickly and said, "Well sir, it dissolves as potassium iodide does, and yields iodine as potassium iodide does, and it gives me my end point as potassium iodide would, so it doesn't matter what it really is, does it?"

  That was a good answer.

  One fellow asked me how I knew that the enzyme I used was indeed derived from the mushroom species I said it was. I said that it came from mushrooms bought at the grocery store.

  "So what?" said he.

  "So Agaricus campestris is the only species sold in the grocery store."

  "How can you be sure of that?"

  Again I had to think rapidly. "If I had had any doubts, sir, I would have referred to a text on mushrooms."

  "Whose?" he said.

  I said, shrewdly, "Yours."

  That was a bad answer. He hadn't written any such text.

  At one point, I muffed questions I ought not to have muffed, as when I totally fumbled the difference between a hormone and a vitamin.

  At another point when I didn't know the answer, I hesitantly guessed and Dawson, who sat opposite me at the other end of the long table, leaned back so that no one would see him (they were all looking at me, of course) and shook his head slightly from side to side.

  Whereupon I said, despondently, "But I see that Dr. Dawson is shaking his head at me, so I guess I'm all wrong."

  That was surely one time that Dawson had reason to disapprove of my "absolute integrity," for he turned a distinct pink and said, "You were not supposed to say that, Isaac," and everyone turned to him and made mock-serious comments about helping his student unethically.

  No one was really unkind to me, however, and after an hour and twenty minutes, Professor Ralph S. Halford asked me the final question.

  He said, "What can you tell us, Mr. Asimov, about the thermodynamic properties of the compound known as thiotimoli
ne?"

  For just an instant I was thunderstruck, and then the hysteria I had been fighting off all this time washed over me and I broke into peal after peal of helpless laughter and had to be led from the room.

  I had reason to laugh. It didn't seem conceivable to me that they would tease me in that fashion if they had not by then decided to pass me. Apparently, thank goodness, they had read the thiotimoline article and had taken it in the spirit in which it was meant.

  I was right. In five minutes they had come out and, as was traditional in the case of a pass, each held out his hand and said, "Congratulations, Dr, Asimov!"

  I had made it. I was Isaac Asimov, Ph.D.

  11

  I called up Gertrude and my parents to inform them of this successful climax to my education. I then went out with Dawson, and with Joselow and Tarpley (who were waiting for me) to a nearby bar, where we all sat down and toasted my success.

  I felt it was absolutely necessary to have a drink (as on the occasion of my Army discharge nearly two years before) but didn't know what to drink.

  Dawson said, "What do you like, Isaac?"

  I said, "I don't know. The kind of wine we drink at Passover, I guess."

  "That's port wine," said Joselow, who was Jewish.

  Whereupon Dawson ordered a Manhattan for me. I loved the Manhattan and ordered another. In fact, since Dawson made it clear that the sky was the limit, I ordered—and drank—five.

  What Dawson didn't know was the effect alcohol had on me. By the time I was drinking my fifth, the Universe had turned into a pink haze and I could hear Dawson (dimly) say, "Let's get him back."

  I walked back to Columbia, with Joselow and Tarpley on either side of me, holding me up, and Dawson (as usual, nattily dressed, and with his homburg at just the right jaunty angle) walking a full ten feet behind in an effort to make it clear he was not connected with the sordid spectacle just ahead.

  Joselow and Tarpley got me back to the laboratories and, over my feeble protests, began to ladle dipper after dipper of black coffee into me. It took three hours and several visits to the bathroom (where I used my chronometric stopwatch to time the duration of the urination and then tried to announce the results when I emerged) before they felt I could be trusted on the subways.

  I had a quick dinner with Joselow and his girlfriend and then I eventually got home to an anxious Gertrude.

  I went to bed almost at once but, thanks to the coffee and the excitement of the day, there was no chance of sleeping. Gertrude told me the next morning that I lay in bed all night giggling every once in a while and saying, "Doctor Asimov."

  I had gotten my degree twenty months after returning to research.

  As it happened, John Blugerman was completing his dental-school stint and was ready to get his doctorate (of dental surgery) as well. Commencement day for both of us was June 1.

  12

  I had refused to attend commencement day when it was a question of getting my bachelor's or my master's degree. Obviously, the matter of my doctor's degree was something else. My father, particularly, wanted to attend.

  I compromised. I was not going to put on a cap and gown. I was not going to go through the ritual. With eight thousand graduates of all sorts, where was the distinction? It would be enough to sit in the audience. I took Gertrude, and my father. Henry Blugerman met us there.

  The academic procession lasted half an hour with candidates pouring in from four directions. I was thankful not to be part of it. It was bad enough sitting under the hot sun in the bleachers.

  The ceremony itself was hard to endure but finally Columbia's president, Frank D. Fackenthal, worked his way through all the gradations of degrees and reached those who were getting the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the sciences. A number of cap-and-gowned individuals arose and Fackenthal conferred the degree on them.

  As he did so, I leaned over to my father and whispered, "A cloud from heaven is showering gold on them, Pappa, and it's showering gold on me, too, at this very minute, even though I'm not up there."

  My father wasn't amused. He wanted me up there.

  After commencement was over, I took Gertrude and the two fathers to Havemeyer Hall where, as luck would have it, Dawson was present. I introduced everyone and my father simply beamed. One of his reasons for coming to the United States was to insure a better life for his children, and he had labored toward that end all those years in the candy store. Now his firstborn had worked his way up to the very highest academic degree.

  After my father and Henry left, I went to University Hall to pick up my diploma. It was a small and unimpressive thing, written in English. It was, however, the only one of my diplomas that I saved. I framed it, put it up on the wall, transferred it through all my shifts of abode and, at the present moment, it is still on my wall.

  The only sour note of the day was that the Columbia Appointments Office had issued a handout to the newspapers saying that the average Ph.D. salary, fresh after graduation, was $5,400 a year. Since I was only going to get $4,500 from Elderfield, it was clear that I was considerably below par.

  Stuyvesant Town

  The next day, June 3, 1948, I officially started my postdoctoral stint with Elderfield.

  Tarpley told me, however, that there was an opening at Schering Corporation (where he worked) for a protein chemist. An industry could scarcely pay as little for a Ph.D. as an academic would, and since I was rueful of my below-average income, I agreed to go to Schering for an interview. I tried not to think what would happen if they offered me a job at a high salary and I had to go back and tell Elderfield, on my very first day on the job, that I was quitting.

  I went to Newark and took a streetcar to Orange Street, following the directions Tarpley gave me. He neglected to tell me that there were various Orange streets and that I had better specify the Orange Street in a particular town. I didn't. I just asked to be left off at Orange Street, was deposited in the wrong one, was unable to find Schering, and came back in great confusion.

  I had accomplished nothing and Tarpley was furious with me. I tried again on June 7, made it that time, was interviewed, gathered that the salary was to be no better than Elderfield's in any case, and dropped the matter rather thankfully. I would not be tempted into the shame of breaking my word; I would stick with Elderfield for at least a year.

  Now that I was through with my doctoral effort, I felt it possible to begin new things. For one thing, I bought a copy of Glasstone's Textbook of Physical Chemistry, which I referred to earlier. It was the first scientific book I ever bought of my own volition and not because it was a class requirement.

  It served as the nucleus of my personal library of science which, as the years passed, was to grow larger and larger and more and more important to me.

  Second, it was time, at last, to begin a new science-fiction story. It was now a full year since I had made my last sale—the thiotimoline

  piece. Since then, I had written only "Grow Old with Me," which, of course, had been a fiasco. On June 3, 1948, therefore, I began "The Red Queen's Race," a tale involving a time-travel paradox. It featured a tough-guy detective as hero—quite unusual for me.

  I was pushed into it, perhaps, because once "No Connection" appeared, I had no stories in press—not one—nothing that was slated to appear. That made me feel my science-fiction career was over, and I couldn't bear that.

  Meanwhile, I had the usual share of mishaps in daily life.

  On June 10, Gertrude went off shopping and left me my dinner of meatballs and potatoes in a delicious sauce. I loved it and ate it with the greatest pleasure, but did think that the portion was rather large. Even though I was used to large portions (for both Gertrude and I were brought up in the Jewish tradition of eat-eat-eat), this was a little too much so.

  You guessed it: Gertrude had neglected to say that the dinner was for herself as well as for me, and I had eaten the whole thing, her half and mine together.

  Then the next day, Sprague de Camp was in New York
and now that we had a larger apartment, we could invite him to have dinner with us and sleep over. He did, and we fixed up the couch for him.

  The next morning he could hardly breathe or move. It was in that fashion that he discovered we had a cat—which we had never thought to mention. It was in that fashion, too, that we discovered he had a virulent case of cat allergy—which he had never thought to mention.

  As for work with Elderfield, it chugged along. The great novelty was that I had a technician working for me, a very attractive and intelligent girl named Bella, who was married to Jerome Berson, who was, in turn, working for his Ph.D. in the department.

  I had difficulty learning how to leave the work to her, but it was better when I did. She could work in the lab more efficiently and intelligently than I could.

  One important aspect of the work was the necessity to freeze-dry material—that is, one freezes the substance and draws the water off by means of a vacuum. To keep the material frozen with a minimum expenditure of energy, the container with the frozen material should be placed in an insulated box. To buy an insulated box would cost $108, so I set about designing and building my own. I did it, too, with the help of another technician named Teddy. The materials and man-hours invested proved to come to many times $108, but I have always found it difficult to persuade people that it is easier to let professionals do the

  work and buy the result. I didn't even try to argue the point with Elderfield.

  3

  On June 26, Gertrude and I visited the Himelhochs. The visit was uneventful but we were driven back only as far as Seventy-second Street and Broadway. According to my diary, "from there we walked to Forty-second Street and Sixth Avenue via the Park side and Times Square. That was awfully pleasant—it being 2:00 a.m. and nice and mild."

  The thought of walking from Seventy-second and Broadway to Forty-second and Sixth (where we got the subway home, you see) by way of Central Park West and Times Square at 2:00 a.m. today would strike me dumb with terror.