Chapter 80: Honoring a Scientist

Stockholm, Sweden: a week later

Tamara and Peter took Winnie with them to Stockholm, arriving on December 4. Winnie had a week’s worth of high-school assignments with her; Dr Borges, her principal, had agreed that her attending the events would be a unique educational experience, but she still needed to keep up with her classes. Emma was already en route to Stockholm via Cambridge; she wanted to see first-hand how her company’s energy farm was performing, and would arrive on December 6. Tamara’s parents would be arriving the day before the awards ceremony; they planned to watch Tamara’s first two lectures on the Nobel website where the video of the lectures would be streamed.

Winnie was vibrating with excitement when Tamara told her that she’d be going. Tamara wondered, however, whether it was because Winnie was excited by going to Stockholm or, more likely, by the prospect of a shopping trip to look for some formal and party dresses.

For her two solo Nobel lectures, Tamara decided to de-emphasize the technical aspects of the research where possible and discuss how her discoveries fit the general knowledge of the field. In her Physiology or Medicine talk, she covered the background behind MRI technology and then described how the brain’s thinking process could be visualized by using functional MRI techniques. She tried to keep this presentation light-hearted and did get a number of laughs.

“So,” she told the audience, “after our MRI had been calibrated to work with my high-resolution head coil by scanning a brain phantom—that’s an artificial imaging model designed to duplicate the organ’s structure and density—the technician needed a live brain for fine tuning.

“So of course I volunteered. It’s not very often that one gets to see inside your own head; I always wondered what was inside there and now I’d get to see it in high definition.”

Laughter.

“So the tech ran a few calibration scans while I sat there listening to the chirps, clanks, bangs, taps, clicks, and all of the other racket a MRI machine makes, and suddenly I had a wonderful insight into a problem that had been plaguing me. Three seconds later, the MRI went into an emergency shutdown. The tech shouted from the control room ... I won’t quote him, but sailors could learn some new ways to curse.”

More laughter.

“So I went to the control room to see what had happened. It seems that my increased brain activity resulting from my mental insight had completely overloaded the data acquisition routines and the overload made the computer shut the MRI down. When we looked at the imaging scans that had been acquired just before the shutdown; we saw that the scans showed a massive streak of white—indicating strong blood flow—spreading out from my prefrontal cortex and fanning out all over my cerebrum. Of course, this obviously must have happened because the detector’s imaging sensitivity was set too high. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.”

Laughter

“But this was a brand-new discovery of sorts. I was told later that this event was the first time in history that a true brainstorm had ever been recorded.”

Laughter, then applause.

“It was during that MRI scanning session where we first got to see in detail the brain’s fine structures and the electrical activity of the neurons which connected them. I’ll explain a bit now about how electrical impulses travel through neurons and you can see from this slide how the neuronal filaments trace a pathway between the brain’s specialized regions. The structure here is...”

And Tamara continued, showing how the different structures in the limbic system lit up while a subject was being trained to distinguish between and to memorize scents. Soon she came to her lecture’s end.

“ ... In summarizing this lecture now, neurologists and neuroscientists are now able to localize how and where sensory information travels in the brain and we can even follow how the neuronal impulses travel between the brain’s specialized structures. This ability is opening up entirely new areas of research in neurophysiology and neuroanatomy and has the potential for us to learn how to target pharmaceuticals to treat diseases such as depression and bipolar disorder. Thank you for coming and thank you to the Nobel Academy for their recognition of my contributions to medicine.”

Wow, a standing ovation from this staid, formal group, Tamara thought as she looked out at the audience. She waved her hand in thanks and acknowledgment and then walked to the wings.

Soon after her lecture, the Karolinska Institute hosted a press conference with Tamara and the institute’s Nobel committee. This was a formal affair and the members of the press were very polite and respectful. Many were also technically knowledgeable and more than a few had actually read some of Tamara’s scientific articles.

The days between the various formal Nobel events were busy, but Tamara, Peter, and Winnie still found time to sightsee. The evenings had formal dinners where Tamara got to meet many of the members of the Nobel Academy. Her first formal dinner was hosted by the Karolinska Institute on the evening of her Medicine lecture.

Her Chemistry lecture was next and for this talk, she had to get more technical. In it, she explained that the theory behind her invention was about a hundred years old and it involved the stimulation of atomic bonding in molecules by increasing the system’s energy. One of the theories she relied on had shown that the electronic motion and the nuclear motion in molecules can be separated, both mathematically and also physically. The mathematical separation allows for the calculation of the different molecular wave functions, and gives a result in terms of nuclear positions and electron position probabilities. By using the energy of her G-force coil invention tuned to the proper frequencies, she could manipulate the delocalized π electrons in the aromatic ring structure to force the synthesis to produce the desired optical isomer.

Twenty-five minutes later, she was done and breathed a sigh of relief.

I feel like an imposter, she mused. I’m an engineering physicist, and here I’m getting a Chemistry Nobel. Well, what I discovered makes good use of the Schrödinger equation, so at least that’s physics.

The Swedish Academy of Sciences had their own press conference organized after Tamara’s Chemistry lecture and far fewer journalists covered it. Almost all were from scientific and technical publications. The most significant question that was asked concerned applications for her invention.

“Clearly the major one is in pharmaceuticals. It allows the synthesis of complex molecules without the problem of having both enantiomers present. Techniques do currently exist, like chiral preparative high-performance liquid chromatography, but the process I developed is much more efficient. And this invention is especially significant for pharmaceuticals, since the human body is very chiral selective; it can react dramatically differently for each enantiomer of a drug. Case in point: Thalidomide. One enantiomer is effective against morning sickness but the other is teratogenic and causes major birth defects.”

And the other question of note was how she got into chemistry.

“That was through my MRI work. In my working with the subjects who we were training to distinguish between similar scents, I noticed how strongly the olfactory tract mobilized the rest of the limbic system. There long had been a belief that humans secrete pheromones but no well-controlled studies have ever been published showing that human pheromones exist. I thought that looking at brain responses to chemicals which are supposed to behave like putative pheromones might be a cool way to test the MRI high-resolution coil. So I took a little time to look into that question. We got that line of research started and I’ve now passed it off to others better able to do that work. I keep informed about its progress, though, and have several collaborations with real chemists and endocrinologists who are pursuing that work.”

Finally, on the ninth of the month, Tamara and Emma gave their joint lecture. Emma discussed the theory of how molecular lattice structures could be developed using superconducting materials and showed the computations which supported her theory that electrons could be densely packed into such structures. Then Tamara showed how she physically accomplished this; through the use of the superconducting single electron transistor. Emma’s theory was confirmed when Tamara discovered a method to force electrons to move against a charge gradient. Using the SET circuits that she had developed, when energized, the circuits created an attractive non-electrostatic force—a force which she hadn’t identified at the time but later theorized that it was related to dark energy—on the free electrons which was about two orders of magnitude greater than the normal repulsive electrostatic force, and pulled the electrons into the lattice.

Then came another press conference and again, most of the journalists were technical writers and many were interested in the energy-storage device that EEC Energy had developed.

“Indeed,” Emma told one questioner, “the device employs the design that Miss Alexandre developed. It’s analogous to the large-scale lithium-ion battery cells used in current energy storage systems but our accumulator is far smaller, lighter, more efficient, and of course, safer. We’ve developed a large-scale energy farm in Cambridge that’s on line now; we’re on the verge of introducing power cells for use in electric vehicles; and soon small consumer-sized accumulators will soon be available in the standard battery sizes.”

Later in the afternoon, Tamara and the other laureates gathered in the Nobel Academy offices to learn the choreography of the ceremony; how they would enter the stage, move to their seats, how they were to receive their honor from the king, who would present their diploma and medal, and finally to bow slightly to the king, to the Academy members, and then the audience. They would have a final walk-through at the concert hall site before the ceremony.

And then it was December 10^th, the day of the awards.

The formal ceremony, a prestigious and impressive event, was held in the Stockholm Concert Hall, and was attended by the Swedish royal family. The king personally presented the Nobel diploma and medal to each laureate. In addition to the members of the Nobel Academy, many dignitaries were present as were, of course, the families of the laureates and various other guests.

In the evening following the award ceremony, a formal banquet in honor of the laureates took place. A sumptuous dinner was served; there were a few speeches and some entertainment; and in addition to the Swedish royal family, various dignitaries and family guests were present.

Through the whole week, Tamara was impressed by how grand of an event the entire Nobel Week was. Winnie was thrilled with the whole experience, too, and greatly enjoyed going to the events that were open to the family members. She also enjoyed being fussed over by several of the other prize winners who told her to study hard and let Tamara be a role model and in a few years, she’d be back here accepting her own prize.

Two days later they were back home.

Anne Arundel County, Maryland: Christmas

The Winsberg clan—those who lived within an hour or two driving distance—and Tamara’s parents, all gathered at Werner’s and Greta’s house, which could just about accommodate the crowd. Cindy and Tom had taken a week to be with Cindy’s family in North Carolina and had taken Kevin’s little group with them. They would be returning after the new year.

Of course everyone wanted the details about Tamara’s Stockholm trip and the events of Nobel Week. Even though everyone had watched the streamed Nobel Week lectures and award ceremony, they wanted lots more details, especially about the social events. Peter had photos on his phone of her Nobel diplomas, each one unique and beautifully calligraphed, and photos of the medals.

“Is that gold?” Janice asked.

“It is,” Tamara affirmed. “Eighteen carat. The medals came with a little booklet describing their history and the artists who designed them.”

“Looks big,” Janice commented.

“Yeah, a bit larger than 2½ inches. Weighs just over six ounces,” Tamara told her.

“Cool. That’s worth a bundle, right?” Mike asked.

“I was curious, so I looked up gold prices,” Peter said. “The gold value in each is about 9,000 dollars now. But she’s not selling them. They’re in a safe deposit box now.”

People were huddled over Peter’s phone, trying to read the inscriptions and figure out what the images represented.

“Okay, guys,” Tamara told the group when they asked about the designs. “Yes, one of the medal’s different than the other two. That one’s for Physiology or Medicine and the image on the back represents the Karolinska Institute, which awards that Prize. It shows a healer—perhaps a goddess—getting water for the girl standing beside her. The booklet says the image represents the healing of the ill.”

“So the other two are the Chemistry and Physics ones? They look the same,” Janice remarked.

“Right. Both of those prizes are awarded by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, so they have the same design,” Tamara continued. “The taller figure represents Nature, she’s surrounded by clouds. The figure holding up Nature’s veil represents Science, uncovering the secrets of nature. And before you ask, the inscription is the same on all three; it’s in Latin, from Virgil’s Aeneid. A direct translation doesn’t work well, and the translation that the Nobel Academy gives is more flowing than the Latin but it’s more of a paraphrase. I don’t recall their translation, but mine is closer to the original Latin: ‘It’s worthwhile to improve life by cultivating the arts.’

“Did you learn anything about your being on the Prize fast track?” Peter’s Uncle Dave asked.

“In fact, I did,” Tamara smiled. “I had a kind of private meeting with the Chemistry Nobel Committee before our news conference. All the committees are quite secretive about the nominators; they don’t divulge the identities of nominees or those who submit nominations and discourage nominators from revealing information about their nomination. But a committee member did tell me that they had received an unusually large number of nominations for me and many were, as she told me, from very highly regarded scientists.

“I asked if the Physics Committee knew what the Chemistry Committee was doing and if both committees were aware that I was a nominee for both. They don’t share that information between committees. Apparently they keep their proceedings strictly secret—some years ago, a committee member was kicked off the committee for leaking the names of the leading nominees and those names became public. At least that’s how I heard it told.”

“What are you gonna do with all that money?” Ernie asked. “Over two-and-a-half million?”

“Emma used part of her first Prize to set up the Clarke Scholars program,” Tamara replied. “I might do something similar, but maybe to support education in Haiti.”

Winnie got to share her experiences with everyone too and Tamara was delighted overhear her telling a group of the cousins, “The Nobel committees put on a real show—there were displays and exhibits about the work that Tamara and Emma did that were geared for non-scientists, so their work could be understood. And Tamara’s lectures were so interesting to watch, especially being right in the theater with her where I could feel the audience’s reaction.

“Seeing how easily she spoke about her research was inspiring to me. And I vowed that if a poor immigrant girl like her could come to this country and become a world-famous scientist, then I need to work my ass off to make her proud of me.”

On their way home that evening, Winnie was talking about how wonderful a family Peter had; she thought all of his cousins were great people and she had a wonderful time.

“And they all want to do something in business or science, too. Janice is in an MBA program. Mike wants to study environmental engineering—I didn’t even know there was such a thing. Audrey and Eddie—what a hoot those two are—she’s going into an oceanography program and he wants to study neuroscience. I need to think about what I want to do, myself.”

“You have time, honey,” Peter told her. “Get your basics in and look at any electives you might be interested in for your sophomore year. You did really well on the math, science, and English parts of your entrance exam; your social studies part was not as strong, but still good. You’ll be an excellent student in high school and your school has a good reputation. Lots of kids go on to top colleges from there, including Hopkins.”