Chapter 79: Family Thanksgiving

Dr Chakraborty spoke into his mic, trying to get the audience’s attention. When he did, he said, “Thanks very much, Miss Alexandre, for that excellent introduction. Dr Clarke, would you like to add anything?”

Emma looked at Tamara and grinned. “You inspired me, so I’ll give it a go,” she whispered.

She picked up her mic. “I only have one point to make since Miss Alexandre was so eloquent in her comments. I wasn’t as lucky as she was ... she got three and I only scored one.”

Laughter.

“Our research, as Miss Alexandre mentioned, was for improving battery technology. I had some general thoughts about electron storage in superconducting molecular matrices, where my calculations seemed to imply that electrons could be stored in a way that on the surface, appeared to violate one well known principle in physics. My maths showed that a true violation didn’t occur when the matrix was designed in a particular way. But there’s a big gap between showing something in a mathematical way and making a device to demonstrate the maths.

“When I gave Miss Alexandre her project, I had intended that it mainly serve her as a method to accustom her to formal scientific research, as she had recently joined my lab as an undergraduate student. In my experience, undergrads need careful mentoring to guide them in developing scientific discipline, but as it turned out, Miss Alexandre had already honed a considerable amount of discipline whilst a high-school student, working in a neuroscience lab at the University of Miami’s Medical School. So she was well prepared for her project with me and, as history confirms, did a smashing job in completing her project.

“I don’t have much more to add to the technical summary she gave, other than to say that the device she invented isn’t a true battery; that is, electricity isn’t created or stored through the mechanism of a chemical reaction, but that electrons are directly sequestered in an atomic or molecular matrix in such a way that they can be stored and extracted with virtually zero loss and very close to a hundred percent efficiency. Miss Alexandre’s demonstration of the flow of electrons against a charge gradient is the principle behind that device, which we’ve called an accumulator. That’s all for me, Dr Chakraborty.”

There was applause.

“Thanks, Dr Clarke. Let’s go to the questions already submitted and of course there’s the one that every laureate at Johns Hopkins has been asked—and we’re honored to actually have a significant number of laureates at our university—and that question is: ‘What were you doing when you heard you had won the prize?’”

Tamara grinned and raised her hand. “My boyfriend told me when I returned from my retreat. It was a week after the announcement that I found out.”

Laughter, and then Emma spoke, “At 5:50 in the morning? Please. Sleeping. Didn’t get much sleep after that.”

Question: “What was your reaction to hearing that you won a Nobel Prize?”

Emma responded, “So this was the second time for me and an early-morning phone call during the week that the Nobels are announced is typically a giveaway. But it occurred to me that I might be being pranked. Sometimes physicists can be quite childish in their pranks. Of course I was delighted, particularly for Miss Alexandre, because I was still celebrating her getting the Physiology or Medicine Prize the day before, and was amazed to hear that she had won the Physics Prize as well.”

“Me?” Tamara asked. “You won’t believe it when I tell you that I was totally speechless, would you? Me, speechless? Not possible.”

Laughter.

“I was so excited by my retreat experience that I wouldn’t let my boyfriend say a word. He finally got to tell me, but that was only about a half hour after I got home. And finally stopped talking to take a breath.”

Laughter again.

“Yes, I couldn’t believe it. The news didn’t become real until I played the voice-mail message from Stockholm.”

Question: “Did you know that you had been nominated?”

Emma answered, “Nominations aren’t ever announced. But I had no reason to suspect that I, or Miss Alexandre, were candidates.”

“A Nobel Prize was never on my radar,” Tamara answered. “I was just having fun doing research and learning new stuff.”

Question for Dr Clarke: “You’re in an elite group, winners of two Nobels. How do you think your work compares to those other scientists?”

“That’s not something that can be answered easily. Not to be glib about it, but I don’t think there’s any comparison that can be drawn. The varied work that led to the Prizes was so different, even for the four scientists who got multiple Prizes, that there’s nothing useful to compare.”

Question for Miss Alexandre: “You’re being proclaimed by many as this generation’s Einstein. How do you feel about that?”

“Unhappy and unworthy. Einstein was a true genius. His ideas about space-time and the connection between mass and energy, although they were based on current thought in the physics of that period, were simply stunning. And the predictions made by his theories, by and large, have withstood the test of time for over a hundred years. The public just knows his accomplishments because of his proof of the matter-energy equivalence, an equation that almost everyone can quote. My own work was nowhere at that level of creativity.”

Question for Miss Alexandre: “As a physicist, how did you get into neuroscience and brain anatomy research?”

“Actually it was the other way around. In my opening remarks, I mentioned that I became interested in magnetic resonance imaging, or MRI early on. I’ve always had an affinity for electronics; even as a child, I read and understood college electrical engineering texts. That affinity allowed me to become knowledgeable about radio frequency energies and the circuits needed to generate them. MRI devices employ RF together with large magnets to allow them to work. So I was studying, at first, electrical engineering topics as applied to a medical diagnostic device. My objective was to make the device see better so the doctors could get better results.

“With the higher resolutions I was able to obtain, it became possible to image structures in the brain that had never been described before. That became interesting to me, so I set out to see what those structures did. The brain is essentially a collection of nerve cells organized in a particular way and simplistically, each region performs a specific task. The nerve cells connect to each other in ways that closely resemble electronic circuits and remember, I said I had an affinity for electronics. So it was a logical step to learn how those new brain structures worked.”

The questions continued for the next hour and covered a wide range of topics, including questions about Tamara’s education, her knighthood, Draper Prize, Medal of Freedom, and her Harry Potter skit in Cambridge. She was asked about being a Clarke scholar and for her recommendations to high-school students for their own success. Several reporters had uncovered information about her development plans in Haiti and asked questions about that.

Emma was quite happy that most of the questions were directed to Tamara; plenty of information about her was available while information about Tamara was about as plentiful as chickens’ teeth, as one questioner mentioned. After an hour and a half, the provost declared the conference to be ended. He asked that members of the media who wanted their additional or followup questions to be addressed, to send them to the University Relations Department and they would receive appropriate attention. Tamara would not give any personal interviews; her student and research schedule would not permit it.

“Thank you all for coming today,” he finished. “We hope you found the conference productive and you will allow us at Hopkins to return to our quiet academic life. I do believe that at one point, we had more media people on our campus than students. Farewell, and any further contacts, remember, it’s University Relations.”

Some press people tried to hang back to speak to Emma or Tamara, but security quickly ushered them out. As the hall emptied, Chakraborty came over to Emma and Tamara.

“Thank you for your outstanding presentations, both of you,” he said. “Emma, you were spot on in your prediction that Ms Alexandre...”

“Please, sir. I prefer ‘Tamara.’”

“Tamara it is, then. My goodness, you had them eating out of your hand at the end there. And the way you showcased Hopkins while essentially minimizing your work ... and your gentle self-deprecation was completely endearing—it was a stunning achievement. Just like your own research, I hasten to add.”

A campus officer came over to them when the provost finished speaking.

“Professor? And Ma’am? If you can follow me, we’ll drive you over to the JH Club now. Your companions, Miss Alexandre, have been told to meet you there.”

They left the hall using the stage entrance and Tamara saw that the need for the media van was gone; very few people were nearby and none were taking any notice of her. At the JH Club, though, she was certainly noticed as she was swarmed by her physics friends, faculty, staff, and students. When she saw Terence, she ran to him and hugged him.

“Damn, girl,” he said when she released him, “y’all don’t ever do stuff small. Ah’m definitely proud to know y’all and can’t wait t’see what y’all do for an encore.”

Tamara brought Winnie over to meet Terence.

“Winnie, Terence is one of the family too. He’s Barbara’s boyfriend—Peter’s sister—and a fellow Clarke scholar in Emma’s lab. Terence, Winnie is a new member of our extended family; I just became her guardian after she had a series of unfortunate incidents. I’ll tell you more when we have time, okay?”

While Tamara was being greeted by her colleagues, Winnie was hanging on her arm, whispering intently in her ear.

“Your conference back there was wicked awesome, Tamara,” she gushed. “The people were hanging on every word you said. It was so quiet I could almost hear people breathing. And the emotions in the audience were so positive, it almost made me cry; I’ve never felt a large group of people feel so good all together like that.”

Peter had been listening and chimed in. “She’s spot on, honey. I felt it too; you won the hearts of an awful lot of people there. So I’d expect that they’ll say lots of good things about you now. We’ll have to see what they say on the news shows later.”

While they were circulating, Emma found Tamara and gave her the latest tidbit.

“Chet got some phone calls from several talk-show producers. It’s like it was in Cambridge; they want fodder for their viewers,” Emma told her.

Tamara groaned. “Okay, Emma, are there any gimmicks?”

Emma shook her head. “Straight interviews, mostly. But naturally, they’re out of town. Two are taped in New York—Manhattan actually: The Late Show and The Tonight Show. And the last one, Real Time, is taped in LA.”

“When we got that offer to appear in England, the host wanted us for entertainment, not for any news value,” Tamara reasoned. “What kind of interview could we possibly do about our work—my work too—that a lay audience would care to listen to? Oh, here’s a thought. Has a Nobel laureate ever appeared on a talk show?”

“Good point. Something to check, innit.”

On investigation later, Tamara discovered that no science Nobel laureate had appeared on a talk show and she and Emma responded with their regrets.

The dinner that evening with Tamara and her collaborators was a happy affair. When the TV news came on, Tamara and a group of her colleagues watched the program and the coverage of her joint press conference was positive and upbeat.

Tamara spent most of the following day receiving congratulatory phone calls from Barbara and the rest of Peter’s family. Denise called and they spoke for a while and then she heard from Cindy. Abi called and even stopped by Tamara’s apartment in the afternoon, since she lived fairly close by.

Winnie had found the Khan Academy website and spent the day on line reviewing the topics for which she felt less secure.

Later in the day, Tamara received an email message from the University Relations Department. They had been getting numerous interview requests and wanted to know if Tamara would be willing to be interviewed. Tamara wasn’t too thrilled about giving interviews because once you open that door, whom do you allow and whom do you deny? So she decided to prepare a briefing document containing a short biography and a general description of her research. University Relations would provide the document to those journalists who requested an interview, telling them that her student schedule couldn’t accommodate a face-to-face interview.

On Thursday, Winnie took her high-school entrance exam and learned on Friday that she did well enough to be admitted. The documents from her West Virginia schools hadn’t arrived yet but she was told that she could start going to classes on Monday. And Tamara’s having Marks as her security proved to be a good choice because, on two occasions, Marks almost had to forcibly restrain an overzealous journalist who confronted Tamara, demanding time for an interview, and when she declined, threatened to become aggressive.

When the weekend arrived, Tamara visited her mother and told her in detail about her kouche experience.

“It was totally awesome, Mom. In a way it felt like the lwa when I sense their presence. But Mom, when I tried following the filaments of force in the air—I think I was sensing electron flow, actually, it was like being inside the MRI images. And the voice in my head was indescribable. It wasn’t a voice, really, but I’m sure that my mind interpreted it that way to separate those thoughts from my own thoughts.”

“This is really amazing, darling. Did you detect any trace of the kinds of personalities that the various lwa possess?”

“In some ways, yes. But that experience answers a number of questions I’ve always had about my abilities. If that energy structure has an organization anything like a brain—and the patterns I sensed seem to have structure—then the energy matrix could indeed somehow contain the combined memories of people. I got a whole philosophical lecture,” she giggled, “with references to Plato and Augustine. And a lot of Descartes. The entity in my head communed with me for what seemed to be hours, but Descartes’ first principle, ‘Cogito, ergo sum,’ summarizes that whole session. The entity is definitely pure thought and therefore, as Descartes maintains in his writings, the entity exists.”

“What an incredible experience, Tamara. So the entity has the life forces of the people of the world?”

“That would explain some of what I’ve experienced. He—for the purpose of discussion, I’ll say ‘he’—explained that the gwo-bôn-nanj of people, what others would call the ‘soul,’ is an indestructible energy construct; it’s basically the person’s immortal aspect. This must be how Granmanman came to me and left her memories and how I can translate languages. Somehow my brain knows how to access the energies of the gwo-bôn-nanj.”

“Tamara ... can you do this at will?” Nadine wondered.

“No ... I was in a deep meditative state when I ... um ... connected. It all seemed very dreamlike. It could have been a hallucination, but one doesn’t hallucinate knowledge that one didn’t know previously. I had to look up Descartes’ writings to confirm what I learned in that encounter. I also can’t simply call up someone else’s memory. There has to be an affinity, I learned. But about my language ability, I’m sure that it comes from some kind of access to a communications exchange in that energy construct—an affinity with a being I associate with languages. Since I associated that ability with Papa Legba, that created a special affinity, and the entity in my head agreed that this was one way of thinking of the ability.”

“Does this mean that our lwa aren’t real?” Nadine asked trepidatiously.

“Oh, no, the opposite is actually true, Mom. The energy of the person’s gwo-bôn-nanj interacts with the energy of the entity I communed with and creates a construction that takes on the identity of a lwa, or in other belief systems, with the spirit that those people venerate. Vodou is not the only faith that venerates an entity in a spiritual way.”