Frank Anthony Wilczek: a childhood tale.

Today, I was at the Kuala Lumpur Innovation Forum 2011. There, I met an academic from the USA, who had an interesting tale to relate to me. The subject of my son, Ainan, came up in conversation and he, by association, told me the tale of another precocious boy, he knew as a teenager: Frank Anthony Wilczek.

Wilczek was in the American academic’s classroom in school. In fact, they sat next to each other, since the students were arranged in alphabetical order and my new acquaintance’s name began with W. Now, you may think this is not particularly remark worthy. Yet, it is for a couple of odd facts. Firstly, the classes in question were AP Physics (Advanced Placement) and AP Calculus. These were, by American standards, tough classes. Thus, one could expect that the students in those classes were the brightest in the school. So, my acquaintance had been quite bright as a child. Yet, Frank Anthony Wilczek stood out in these classes – for he was, according to my informant, just 12 years old at the time. Wilczek had been a child prodigy, of sorts.

Now, I was told, everyone in Wilczek’s class was awed by his intelligence. My acquaintance said that he knew, just KNEW, that no matter how many extra hours of work he put in to his Physics and Maths, that he would never be able to be as good or as bright as Wilczek – it just wasn’t about the work, Wilczek really had something the others did not. Indeed, the common view in his class, at the time, was that, one day, Wilczek would win the Nobel Prize. Rather uncannily, Wilczek did just that, for work he had done when he was a graduate student in 1973 – “the discovery of asymptotic freedom in the theory of the strong interaction”.

The tale of Wilczek’s precocious childhood and adult success, is one that struck me as worth knowing more widely. Some people believe, really believe, that child prodigies only shine in childhood. Such people dig up cases of child prodigies who went astray as adults – such as Sufiah Yusof – and use that “evidence” to bolster their case that prodigies do not become adult geniuses. Well, the truth of course, is rather more complex. Some prodigies do, in fact, become adult geniuses – like Frank Anthony Wilczek. Many prodigies become respected experts or performers in their fields – and only a minority, I would say, a very small minority, ever go astray so magnificently as Sufiah Yusof did. In fact, she is the only example I know of her kind – so she is hardly typical of the life outcome of prodigies. On the other hand, there are rather many prodigies who became very distinguished adult geniuses...others include Norbert Wiener, the father of Cybernetics, John von Neumann and even Richard Feynmann, who had aspects of the child prodigy about him, particularly in his areas of interest – Physics and Maths.

What particularly struck me about the Wilczek story was that the other kids in his class were able to see, instantly, for themselves, that Wilczek would “win a Nobel Prize one day”. That was their assessment of their classmate – and funnily enough, he went on to do just that. So, intellectual promise is evident in childhood. It is quite possible to look at a young child’s manner of thought and make fair estimates for their future. Should that future not come to be, I rather think it has nothing to do with their quality of thought or ability, but would be due to the random obstructions that are encountered in many lives. Should such a child not live up to their promise that is not because the promise was illusory – it is because life can be hard, unfair and obstructive. Quite simply, life can get in the way of the promise of any child, prodigy or not. If, however, there is enough “luck” in life, of the young prodigy, such that their obstructions are not overwhelming, then, it is clear, that such prodigies can grow to be very special adults indeed.

I wonder what Frank Anthony Wilczek, who is still alive at just 60 years old, would think if he knew what his fellow classmates thought of him all those years ago? They saw his future before he had lived it. I wonder, did he see it himself, as clearly, or was his ultimate success a pleasant surprise?

Young prodigies should be nurtured carefully, for if looked after, they, too, can become as successful as adults, as Frank Anthony Wilczek is – and many others like him.

Posted by Valentine Cawley

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Doris Lessing on Nobel Prize Fame

Recently, Doris Lessing was bemoaning her newly won Nobel Prize fame. She opined that winning the Nobel Prize for Literature was a "disaster". She revealed that her life had become one long round of interviews and that she had ceased to write.

Now, that is her viewpoint from the present. However, I think she has overlooked something. Winning the Nobel Prize has made her much more famous than she had been. She is also 88 years old and probably near the end of her long life. To my eyes, she is thinking too much of the present and not enough of the long-term. In the long-term she will be dead - and what will remain are her books and her reputation. Winning the Nobel Prize has heightened her reputation and called attention to her work in a way she had never achieved before. History may turn more readily towards her, for having won that prize, than it would otherwise have done. She may have lost the ease of her quiet, writing life - but that loss comes at the end of a long and productive life. She has, however, gained something else: a more solid place in posterity.

No doubt, Doris Lessing is not the only Nobel Prize winner to be besieged by sudden fame. Yet, almost all Nobel Prize winners share one thing in common: they tend to be old. It takes time for a reputation to accrue. It takes time for people to notice the quality of one's work and thinking. It takes time for the Nobel committee to decide that someone is of sufficient merit to make such an award. Indeed, so much time does all of this take that many decades often pass between the work that merited an award, and the award itself. I used to think this was a bad thing. I used to think that the money that came with the award would be more useful in the early stages of a career, while the creator is still young. However, there is another side. The great fame that a Nobel Prize usually bestows is less disruptive to a career nearing its end. So, perhaps it is merciful that this most prestigious of all awards should come so late in a life. The result is that little work is lost to the ever present interviews - but that a more enduring fame is won.

So, though Doris Lessing may not understand this, at this time, her Nobel Prize is much more of a blessing than a curse. Her reputation may endure that much longer and her place in literary history be that much more secure because she was picked out, from all the world's writers, for the greatest prize of all.

There is something else Doris Lessing could do. She could always say: "no" to the interviews, go somewhere quiet, and isolated, and begin to write again. So, even if made world famous through the Nobel, the choice for peaceful solitude remains in the hands of the creator - they just have to be firm enough to make it.

(If you would like to learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged eight years and five months, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, four years and ten months, and Tiarnan, twenty-seven months, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html I also write of gifted education, IQ, intelligence, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, College, University, Chemistry, Science, genetics, left-handedness, precocity, child prodigy, child genius, baby genius, adult genius, savant, wunderkind, wonderkind, genio, гений ребенок prodigy, genie, μεγαλοφυία θαύμα παιδιών, bambino, kind, niño, gênio criança, gifted adults and gifted children in general. Thanks.)

Gerhard Ertl, Nobel Prize for Chemistry 2007

Given the subject of Ainan’s central interest, it seems appropriate that I should mention Gerhard Ertl, Emeritus Professor at the Fritz Haber Institute of the Max Planck Society, in Berlin. He has just been awarded the 2007 Nobel Prize for Chemistry for his ground-breaking research into surface chemistry.

Now, like many areas of basic research, there are often many applications that go beyond the obvious. Ertl’s extremely precise work, under conditions of vacuum, has revealed the inner workings of many chemical mysteries. Ertl has provided an answer as to why iron rusts, the destruction of the ozone layer, how fuel cells work, the operation of catalytic converters (through the oxidation of carbon monoxide on a platinum catalyst) and other catalysts such as the iron used in the Haber-Bosch process for fixing of nitrogen fertilizers. His work began in the 1960s and has had an extensive influence over all areas of surface chemistry.

This is the first time I have heard of Gerhard Ertl – a name known, I suppose, beforehand only to his colleagues in Chemistry. It is this way with many Nobelists. Their work is of great importance to mankind – but they labour in the relative obscurity of their respective niches. It is only when they win a major prize, such as the Nobel, that we become aware of them. I am not sure that that is the best situation. I, for one, would like to know of the names and personalities of those who shape our world – and not have to rely on the decision-making powers of a body in Sweden to bring them to my attention. I would rather have known of Ertl beforehand – and all the other great scientific thinkers at work, today, whose names may never be known, by the public, unless they are recognized by a Nobel Award.

Congratulations to Gerhard Ertl. Unusually, in these times of scientific co-operation, in which group work is common, Ertl does not share the prize with any other scientist.

Oh, and Happy Birthday, too: the prize was announced on his 71st birthday.

(If you would like to learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged seven years and ten months, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, four years and three months, and Tiarnan, twenty months, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html I also write of gifted education, IQ, intelligence, the Irish, the Malays, College, University, Chemistry, Science, genetics, left-handedness, precocity, child prodigy, child genius, baby genius, adult genius, savant, gifted adults and gifted children in general. Thanks.)

Doris Lessing, Nobel Prize for Literature

Doris Lessing, the well-travelled British writer, has just been awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. The really surprising thing about this is that she is still alive. Doris Lessing was elderly when I was a teenager. She is eleven days short of her eighty-eighth birthday.

Now, you may wonder why I mention this. Well, there is, as usual, a good reason. The Nobel Prizes were originally intended to be awarded early in the life of the recipients, to free them from the burden of commerce, and allow them to focus on creative work. 88 years old is not young. It is not what the prize was originally intended to be for. Now, this is not Doris Lessing's fault - it is the way the prizes are deliberated over that delays the awards for decades, in many cases. It takes a long time to come to a consensus - and this is where the problem arises.

Nobel stipulated, in his will, that the prizes were to be awarded in "the year subsequent to the work". They really were meant to be awarded swiftly.

The most frequently mentioned work of Lessing in connection with the prize has been The Golden Notebook, a feminist classic from 1962. That is a long time to wait to be recognized.

Don't misunderstand me: I wish Doris Lessing well - and her lifetime work has now been recognized by the highest of prizes - it is just that such recognition should have happened a long time ago, if at all, were Nobel's intentions respected.

Well done Doris Lessing.

The Nobel Prizes are to be awarded on December 10th, by King Carl XVI Gustaf, in Stockholm, Sweden. They are valued at $1.5 million USD.

(If you would like to learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, a scientific child prodigy, aged seven years and ten months, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, four years and three months, and Tiarnan, twenty months, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html I also write of gifted education, IQ, intelligence, the Irish, the Malays, College, University, Chemistry, Science, genetics, left-handedness, precocity, child prodigy, child genius, baby genius, adult genius, savant, gifted adults and gifted children in general. Thanks.)

Child prodigies and Nobel Prizes

Do child prodigies grow up to be Nobel Prize Winners? I ask this because it is clear that some people believe that child prodigies don't or won't do any such thing. (I can tell from the content of the searches with which they arrive on my site.) There is a general lack of awareness of what child prodigies have actually gone on to do, as adults. Perhaps this is because there is often more attention focussed on their childhoods than on their later adult achievements - or if they achieve big things, there is a tendency to focus on their adult achievements and forget their childhoods. Either way, there is a kind of reporting bias that obscures the truth of the lives child prodigies. Many of them go on to do interesting things.

One example is Lev Landau. Now, if you are of a certain age, you would recognize his name. He was a Physicist, born on January 22nd, 1908 into a Jewish family based in Baku, Azerbajian. He had a most curious childhood and was very early recognized as a child prodigy in mathematics - indeed, so early did he develop this gift that, he was later to say of his childhood: "I can't remember a time when I wasn't familiar with calculus."

This promising beginning bore fruit and he graduated from the Gymnasium at 13, but was not allowed to go immediately to University so he entered Baku Economical Technical School at 13. A year later, at 14, he matriculated at Baku University, in 1922, studying in two departments simultaneously - the Physico-Mathematical and the Chemistry departments. In 1924 he moved to the Leningrad University, graduating in 1927, and then to the Leningrad Physico-Technical Institute, from which he received his doctorate at the age of 21.

In his early career, he managed to study for a time at the Niels' Bohr Institute of Theoretical Physics in Copenhagen - a time which was seminal for him. On his return to the Soviet Union, he began to publish a stream of papers in Theoretical Physics. His greatest contribution was the Theory of Superfluidity in which he explained the properties of liquid helium, but he also wrote many papers across the fields of Physics: discovering the density matrix method in quantum mechanics, the Ginzburg-Landau Theory of Superconductivity, the quantum theory of diamagnetism, the theory of second-order phase transitions, Landau damping in Plasma Physics, the Landau pole in quantum electrodynamics, and the two-component theory of neutrinos.

In 1962, for his work on Superfluidity, Lev Landau received the Nobel Prize in Physics. This was also the year he was involved in a head-on collision with a truck, on January 7. He spent three months in a coma and was never to recover his creative abilities. He died on April 1st, 1968, as a consequence of the injuries he sustained.

Lev Landau is one of many child prodigies in history who grew up to be as distinguished as an adult as he had been as a child. He received many prizes in his lifetime for his diverse work - including the Max Planck Medal, the Fritz London Prize, the U.S.S.R State Prize (which he was awarded several times) and the Lenin Science Prize. It is, however, the most famous prize of all, the Nobel Prize, that we tend to remember.

He was a foreign member of both the Royal Society, London and a Foreign Associate of the American Academy of Sciences of the USA among many other international societies.

Nobel Prizewinners and genetic giftedness

The Nobel Prize is, probably, the most prestigious of all awards. Each year, it is awarded in six categories: Physics, Chemistry, Medicine, Peace, Literature and Economics. Yet, I have noted something startling in the prize awards: sometimes it seems to be inherited.

Now, what do I mean by this? Well, quite literally, there are winners whose children also won. This, in itself, provides a very strong argument for the genetic inheritance of genius. Out of the 787 Nobel Prize Winners there have ever been, I count 18 who were genetically related - sixteen of them by a parent child relationship, two of them as brothers.

The father-son pairings are William Bragg and Lawrence Bragg; Niels Bohr and Aage N. Bohr; Hans von Euler-Chelpin and Ulf von Euler; Arthur Kornberg and Roger D. Kornberg; Manne Siegbahn and Kai M. Siegbahn; J.J Thomson and George Paget Thomson.

The father-daughter pairing is: Pierre Curie and Irene-Juliot Curie.

The mother-daughter pairing is: Marie Curie and Irene-Juliot Curie.

The brothers were: Jan Tinbergen and Nikolaas Tinbergen.

There are married couples, too, who have won: four pairings - but I don't mention them - except for the implicit one above, because they are not blood-related (one would think, anyway!).

These instances are powerful evidence of the strong connection between genetic gift and the heights of human achievement - for their Nobel prizewinning achievements, across generations, signal something more important than the prize itself: the passing on of great gift between those generations, to bear fruit, once more.

I have a liking for continuity - and the thought that gifts are transmissible in this way is a nourishing one. It is not just great gifts that are transmissible, of course - but any gift, of any dimension.