Part 4 — That Does Not Compute
Saturday, January 8, 1972
Mom dropped me off at 9:00 as usual. It was the first Saturday after New Year’s Day and the first Saturday physics session in 1972. I’d been going to a special program at Butler University for exceptional junior high and high school students since October, a year ago. I wish I’d known about it sooner! It changed my life.
After Dad died, I’d pretty much lost interest in everything. Before then, I wanted to become an engineer like my father and planned to study science and engineering in college. I was especially good at math and was in the accelerated program, which covered seventh and eighth grade math in one year. I was halfway through first year algebra when Dad died. Up until then, I’d been at the top of my class. After losing my father, I lost all interest in math and science, and it was a real struggle to get through the rest of the school year. My algebra teacher was very understanding and spent a lot of time helping me.
Ninth grade started out as an unmitigated disaster. Although I was still in junior high, grades counted on my high school transcript. That meant that if I screwed up, it could affect my ability to get into a decent university. I might have lost interest after dad died, but even with the depression I felt, I still wanted to go to a top college, and for that, I needed to graduate near the top of my class. However, math that year was geometry and the teacher looked like she was eighty. She was very strict and didn’t believe in grading on a curve. She had no problem with failing the entire class if she felt they didn’t measure up to her standards.
If humanity ever devised the perfect form of torture, it was the theorem-proof paradigm. Seriously, instead of imposing a prison sentence for theft or murder, they should make criminals prove a bunch of theorems. ‘Mr. Smith, having been found guilty of embezzlement, I hereby sentence you to prove two thousand theorems before returning to society.’ On the other hand, that kind of torture had probably been banned by the Geneva Convention. I didn’t just struggle in geometry — I was drowning.
Mom saw what that one class was doing to me. I’d always been a whiz at math and now I was seriously in danger of failing the course. She tried getting me a tutor from the high school, but I balked at it. No way was I gonna admit to needing help. Then she remembered an article she’d read back in May about a special program at Butler University.
Butler is a small, elite private university, nestled along the banks of the White River and the Central Canal. It’s known in particular for its Department of Astronomy and Physics, its School of Music and its athletics program. Indeed, the Butler Bulldogs encompassed several NCAA Division I teams. However, when it came to theoretical physics, Butler was considered one of the best.
Having remembered the article she’d read when I was finishing eighth grade, Mom called the offices of the Indianapolis Star and after several redirects and spending a lot of time on hold, was finally connected with the man who wrote the story. From him, she obtained the contact information for Professor H. Marshall Dixon, who had been running the program since 1957. Mom spoke with Dr. Dixon about the program and what was involved. She told him about the struggles I’d been having with geometry and about how I’d been exceptionally adept at math and science until my Dad died.
Dr. Dixon explained that there was no formal admission process. All who were capable were free to attend. The program wasn’t accredited. There were no exams, no grades given nor high school or college credit awarded. There was no formal structure. Kids learned by doing, and each student’s program was individualized to meet their particular needs and interests. No one was ever asked to leave the program, but the lessons were rigorous and not everyone was capable. Students either thrived or they dropped out.
Kids were thrown in with other kids and given college-level math and physics material to read and problems to solve. Working, alone, in pairs and in teams, they solved equations, derived formulae and performed experiments that would have challenged a physics major. Mom had her doubts about whether the program was right for me, but she never told me about them. She was desperate and Dr. Dixon gave her something she hadn’t had in a while. He gave her hope…
<> <> <>
Saturday, October 11, 1969
When Mom told me about the Butler program, I balked. What good would it do to throw me in with a bunch of math geniuses when I was on the verge of failing geometry? Mom didn’t give me a choice. She woke me up on Saturday morning, made me get ready and then drove me to the Butler Campus. We drove past the Hinkle Fieldhouse, one of the oldest basketball arenas in the country, past Clowes Memorial Hall, where we’d seen several Broadway musicals, past the Holcomb Observatory and Planetarium, where we used to see all the regular planetarium shows, and then parked the car in the West Mall parking lot.
Following directions she’d written down, she marched us toward a huge, ancient-looking stone building, identified by a sign as Jordan Hall. Entering through a humongous, heavy wooden door, we climbed up a mammoth staircase to the second floor and marched down a long hallway. Overhead, dim old-fashioned globe fixtures hung from the ceiling, with interspersed bare fluorescent fixtures that made a constant hum. Finally, we came to an old wooden door with a frosted glass upper panel. The name ‘Prof. H. Marshall Dixon’ was printed on the glass in bold black letters. A cardboard sign had been added below his name that was hand-printed with a marker, ‘Enter Without Knocking’. How curious.
At first it appeared that Mom was going to knock anyway, but then she thought better of it, shrugged her shoulders and opened the door. What I noticed first was the three young teenage boys inside. One of them appeared to be around my age of thirteen, and the other two looked to be a bit older — maybe fourteen or fifteen. Immediately I felt overdressed. Whereas I was wearing school clothes — a button-up dress shirt with the collar unbuttoned, bell bottom slacks and leather dress shoes, the two older boys were wearing t-shirts, shorts and sneakers. Of course a lot of kids dressed like that in school too, but I was a nerd and I dressed like the other nerds.
I noticed how uncomfortably warm it was in the building. Outside, the sky was overcast and there was a light drizzle, with a temperature in the mid-sixties. Inside, it felt like it must be eighty degrees. It was no wonder the three boys were dressed for summer. If Mom made me come back, I was definitely gonna hafta dress like the other boys did, no matter what Mom had to say about it. Then again, just seeing the boys made me feel hot inside.
The boy who looked my age was utterly cute — I couldn’t think of a better word to describe him. He had blond hair and freckles across the bridge of his nose and on his shoulders. Upon seeing me, he broke into a broad grin with the cutest dimples. He wore big round wire-rim glasses and was dressed in a tank top, cutoff jeans and sandals without socks. I felt myself blush when I looked at him and much to my horror, I started to get hard. I couldn’t help it.
Shifting my focus, I looked at the man who was standing next the boys. He was a strange-looking fellow — old like Mom, with a nearly bald head, a goofy grin and the thickest glasses I’d ever seen. He was dressed in a stiff white shirt with a bowtie, crisp gray pants and well-worn leather shoes. Finally, I took a look at the room, which was much larger than my father’s office at Delco had been.
Bookshelves took up the entire wall on the right side of the room, behind a large wooden desk. More bookshelves ran the length of the wall opposite the door under a pair of windows. Between the two windows was a large blackboard, filled with equations. There was also a blackboard on the wall on the left side of the room — actually it was three blackboards on vertical tracks. One had been slid up, nearly to the ceiling, another had been slid down, partway to the floor, and the third was at a bit above my eye level; all three were filled with equations. Both the desk and a table in the center of the room were stacked high with magazines — or maybe they were journals. In fact, there was no horizontal surface that wasn’t covered.
Stepping forward, Mom reached out to shake the professor’s hand and said, “Professor Dixon, I’m Betty Lindsey, and this is my son, Jeff. We spoke on the phone?”
Practically ignoring Mom, the professor replied, “Hello Jeff. Don’t bother shaking my hand. We’re going to be spending a lot of time together and it could get tiresome if we shook hands every time, don’t you think?”
Caught off guard, I just stood there, and so he continued. “I understand you’ve had a rough time of it of late. We’re here to help. I know geometry can seem daunting to even the best of us, but the skills you learn are ones you’ll use again and again in every field of mathematics, and in physics, too. The problem is that most teachers make geometry as dull as dishwater. Memorizing the names of all those theorems is rather pointless. You’ll never be tested on that again. Not on the SAT and not in college, but junior high and high school teachers have to do something to earn their pay.”
Turning around, he opened a drawer in his desk and pulled out a thin paperback book and handed it to me. The title was Geometry Made Ridiculously Easy. Continuing, he said, “You can keep this book through the end of the school year, but I would like it back so I can give to the next hapless victim of high school geometry. You’ll have no trouble remembering all those theorems once you learn to relate them to something on the mind of every teenage boy: sex…”
“Are you sure that book’s appropriate for a thirteen year old?” Mom interrupted.
Grinning, Dr. Dixon replied, “There’s nothing in there that any boy of twelve wouldn’t already know about, and nothing’s more effective as a teaching tool. Not that we do anything like that in our sessions here, but desperate times demand desperate measures.”
Turning back to me, he continued, “What we’re going to do here is to approach mathematics and physics together. Rather than taking each course, one at a time, in a rigid lockstep progression,” he said as he moved his arms up and down and side to side like the robot in the TV show, Lost in Space, “you’re going to learn basic math by applying it to solve real problems in physics. After all, what good is math unless you apply it?
“Just don’t tell the math professors I said that. They’re fixated on studying math for math’s sake. Anyway, in high school, you’re forced to master geometry before you can move onto advanced algebra, which you have to master before you’re allowed to tackle trigonometry, which must be mastered before you can possibly understand the utterly trivial extension of algebra known as calculus.”
Scoffing, he went on. “You already know how to write expressions in terms of Δx and Δy. You already know how to expand a polynomial. We’ll show you how to write expressions involving infinite series and how to simplify expressions when Δx approaches zero. Combine all those things, and you have calculus. Yes, that’s all there is to calculus, and it’s so incredibly useful, so why leave it for the end of high school or the beginning of college?
“The way they teach trigonometry is dreadful. It’s still taught as it has been for centuries — for millennia. They plop a right triangle down inside a unit circle and define the trig functions in terms of the lengths of the sides of the triangle. That’s fine if you’re going to be an architect, but that’s not how trig is used in physics. Trigonometry is the basis for modeling waves.
“However, I like to use a different approach — one that brings together multiple concepts. We’ll define some very simple functions in terms of infinite series and then prove that any periodic wave can be described by those functions. Oh, and by the way, they also happen to be useful in calculating the lengths of the sides of triangles.” As he said ‘triangles’, he made the goofiest laugh. No doubt Professor Dixon was weird, but everything he said made sense. It was logical, so unlike what my geometry teacher taught in school.
As the professor went on and on, virtually ignoring my mom, she finally interrupted, saying, “If you don’t need me, when should I pick Jeff up?”
“We generally finish around 1:00, which is when the boys start to realize they’re starving. They tend to get so involved in what they’re doing here that they lose track of the time until their hunger finally overpowers their desire to keep going with their studies.” Again, he made that goofy laugh.
By the time Mom picked me up, I knew exactly what he meant. Finally, I’d found a place where no one thought I was weird. My interest in math and science had been reborn.
<> <> <>
Saturday, January 8, 1972
“Hi, Jeff, did you have a nice Christmas and New Year’s?” That was Kyle, the freckle-faced blond kid who was one of the first boys I met when I started attending the Saturday sessions. He lived in Lawrence, which was an incorporated town on the northeast side, but located entirely within the boundaries of the city of Indianapolis. Kyle was my age and although only a sophomore, he planned to skip the rest of high school and start college at Butler next fall.
“It was… interesting,” I replied. “My aunt had us over for a party on New Year’s Eve. My cousin got me drunk and tried to get me to fuck her. But that’s not for public consumption.”
“Way to go!” he responded. “You got laid on New Year’s Eve.”
“Gees. No. I didn’t realize she spiked my drinks until I couldn’t see straight. I never had alcohol before…”
“Not even beer?”
“Nothing. I was messed up, and I had my mom take me home.”
“But surely you weren’t too drunk to get laid,” Kyle replied.
“She was my cousin!” I reminded him. “No way I could fuck my cousin.”
“It’s not like you were marrying her,” he pointed out.
“But besides being my cousin, she’s one of the snobbiest, most stuck-up girls I know.”
“So?” he responded. “A cunt’s a cunt.”
I wasn’t sure what that meant, so I countered, “Just because you want to fuck every girl in sight, doesn’t mean I want to.”
Just then, Brian, one of the youngest boys in the program walked in and exclaimed, “Oh, my innocent ears! Save me from your sexual depravity.” Brian was twelve, but he talked more like someone twice his age. He lived right near the university and was a true genius. He was already studying quantum mechanics.
“Jeff passed up a chance to get laid on New Year’s Eve,” Kyle explained.
“Why’d you do that?” Bryce said as he entered the physics lab where we were congregating. Bryce was thirteen
“Because she was my cousin,” I explained. “She spiked my drinks and got me drunk and the next thing I knew, we were both naked…”
“You were naked, and you didn’t get laid?” Bryce asked. He was incredulous.
“Guys, it was a party!” I again explained. “Her parents and my mom were there, as well as several other relatives and some of her parents’ clients.”
“And you were naked in front of them?” Brian asked, getting visibly excited.
‘No!” I answered. “We were in her bedroom.”
“So why didn’t you bang her while you had the chance?” Bryce asked.
“Bang who?” Lance asked as he entered the lab. Lance was seventeen and lived up in Carmel. He was a high school junior and like me and planned to finish high school a year early. He hoped to go to MIT or Cal Tech next fall.
“My cousin,” I reiterated. “She’s a total snob. She’s fourteen, but she tries to look like someone who’s eighteen. Her clothes, her hair and her makeup are over the top, you know? And she spiked my drinks and got me drunk for the first time in my life. I was gonna be in enough trouble for that, and man, did I have a hangover on New Year’s Day. And what if she got pregnant?”
“You realize those things wouldn’t have stopped anyone else in this room,” Kyle responded. “Not even Brian. His dick’s practically ripping through his pants.”
Brian turned red as a beet, but then he suggested, “Maybe he’s a homosexual.” That was not a topic I wanted to discuss.
“That would explain a lot,” Kyle chimed in.
Then Lance saved the day by saying, “Just because he didn’t bang his cousin, doesn’t mean he’s queer. Some guys just aren’t ready for sex, or they’re too shy, or maybe Jeff was too drunk to get it up.”
“You’re probably right,” Bryce chimed in. “Jeff doesn’t look queer, and he doesn’t act queer. He’s probably just too chicken to go all the way.”
“Tell me you at least made out and felt her up,” Kyle asked.
Thankfully, Professor Dixon entered the lab at that point and said in his booming voice, “Good morning gentlemen. Did everyone have a merry Christmas or a happy Hanukah and a joyous New Year?” Before anyone could actually answer, he continued, “I’m sure you’re well rested and dying to begin another morning of math and physics. I see were still missing quite a few bodies, so why don’t you get back to what you were doing before the break, and I’ll return in fifteen minutes.”
Before he could leave the lab, I ran over to him and asked, “Dr. Dixon, a friend suggested I go to a college summer science program, to earn some college credit and check out what life in college is like. Do you have any suggestions for that?”
“Those programs can be quite useful. They don’t teach anything you couldn’t take in college anyway, but with one area of study in only six or eight weeks, you can get a jump on your studies… Why don’t you come back with me and we can discuss it further?”
I followed Dr. Dixon back to his office and sat across from him at the round table in the center of the room. As usual, the table was piled high with physics journals and various manuscripts. “So why do you think you’d like to go to a summer college program?” the professor asked.
“I have a distant cousin who’s in his first year of medical school at IU,” I explained. “He went to a summer program at Purdue during the summer between his junior and senior years of high school. He went to Broad Ripple High,” I added. “He said it was a good experience for him. It gave him a taste of college life and having that perspective made it easier to choose the colleges to which he applied.
“At first, I was concerned I’d need this summer to pick up enough credits to finish high school at the end of my junior year. However, my cousin pointed out that I only need to finish high school before I start college, and I could do that during next year’s summer term. So it seems either way I have an extra summer off before I go away to college.”
“Most kids use the summer before college to work, putting away money for their college education,” Dr. Dixon pointed out. “Many of those who can afford it use that summer to travel. They go hiking out west, or travel all over Europe, or they go to Africa, India or South America, or Japan. I’ve been to all those places and even learned some of those languages. There’s a whole world out there to see and once you’re working, there’ll be less time to see it.”
“Professor Dixon, I can’t get a summer job because I get my father’s Social Security survivor benefit. I’d have to pay it back, dollar for dollar, for everything I earned. And when it comes to travel, I’ve never been away from home before. I never went away to camp. When I was younger, I went to day camp, and then my dad died. Sure, I’d like to see the world, but I’m not ready for that yet. Not on my own.”
“In that case, a summer college program might be just the thing for you,” Dr. Dixon replied with a smile.
“The problem is that according to my cousin, most of them are only open to kids between their junior and senior years,” I went on. “I checked with my guidance counselor, and she said that all the ones she was aware of specifically stated that sophomores aren’t eligible to apply. I thought maybe they’d make exceptions for kids like me, but my counselor said she can’t even write a letter on my behalf. Not when I don’t meet the requirements…”
“Your guidance counselor is too busy writing letters for college applications,” the professor interrupted. “She doesn’t have the time to help you with this, nor does she have the information you need on the various programs available. The person you need to talk to is your science teacher. You’re taking chemistry this year, right?”
“Yes, and my chemistry teacher is Mr. Franklin,” I replied.
“I don’t know him personally, but many of your peers who’ve gone to North Central think quite highly of him. You’re taking the advanced chemistry class, aren't you?”
“They call it Chemistry-X, but yeah, it’s rigorous.”
“That’s a college-level course, and you should have no trouble testing out of a year of basic chemistry when you go to college,” Dr. Dixon stated as he had many times before. “You’ll be all set to take either organic or physical chemistry, or both. In any case, your Mr. Franklin likely has information on all the top summer programs. Colleges literally deluge high school science teachers with circulars, brochures and even admission packets, trying to attract the best and brightest students. Students like you.”
“But what if they don’t take sophomores,” I asked.
“You’ll be a junior by the summer, but that’s irrelevant,” Dr. Dixon reminded me. “A lot of the top colleges treat sophomores like nonentities. They assume kids like you have lived sheltered lives and aren’t ready to be on their own. Going to college isn’t like going to summer camp. You’re on your own. There’s no one telling you what to do. You have to pick up after yourself, do your own laundry and get along with your roommate and your peers. College programs aren’t likely to bend the rules for someone who’s never been away from home before.
“However, if you find a program you really want to get into, I’ll call my colleagues and write letters for you. They might not make an exception, but it doesn’t hurt to try. Better still, try to find a program that takes sophomores. There won’t be many, but those that do will probably be a better place for you anyway.
“Now what were you and Greg working on before the break?” he asked.
“We were deriving Maxwell’s equations, and then we were gonna try to verify them with experiments on vacuum tubes in the lab,” I replied.
“I’m sure Greg must be here by now, unless he’s sick or something,” the professor responded. “Why don’t the two of you get back to the derivations, and then I’ll help you set up those experiments.”
<> <> <>
I wasn’t able to approach my chemistry teacher until Wednesday, as there wasn’t enough time before or after class. On Wednesday, however, we had a lab session, so I stopped him as he circulated around the room, making sure we’d set up our experiments properly. As he passed by my lab station, I asked, “Mr. Franklin, could I talk with you for a moment?”
“What about, Jeff?” he replied.
“I’m interested in attending a college science program this summer, but most of them only take high school juniors,” I began. “After I finish my junior year, I’ll be heading off to college, so what would be the point? Do you know of any that are open to sophomores?”
After thinking for a moment, with his curved fingers in front of his mouth, he extended his index finger and pointed it at me as if to emphasize his point and said, “You know, I think a college science program would be an outstanding way for you to spend the summer. But you’re right. Most of those kinds of programs are recruiting only current high school juniors. Let me look through the materials I’ve received and maybe put out some feelers to people I know.”
“There’s probably not much time before applications are due,” I pointed out.
“Remind me on Friday if I haven’t gotten back to you by then,” he replied.
Two days later, as I arrived for chemistry class, he motioned me to come to the front of the room while the other students were taking their seats. He handed me a glossy brochure and said, “Take a look at this over the weekend. Perhaps we can discuss it on Monday. The University of Iowa might not be Harvard or MIT, but they have solid academic departments including one of the top astrophysics departments in the world. It’s right here in the Midwest, and they take sophomores.”
Taking a quick look at the front and back of the brochure, I asked, “How much time do I have?”
“The application deadline’s February 14, but you have to send a notarized copy of your transcript, provide the names and addresses of two references, a teacher and an unrelated personal reference, write and submit two essays, and pay a $50 application fee.”
“Fifty dollars! Crap. How much is the tuition?” I asked.
“Tuition, room and board runs $550 for the six-week program,” Mr. Franklin answered. “Needs-based scholarships are available, but only for in-state students.”
“Yikes,” I replied.
“Anyway, I’ve gotta to get back to teaching the class. Take a look at this over the weekend, and we’ll talk.”
After I sat down, I took a closer look at the brochure and barely paid attention to the lecture. The front of the brochure showed a picture of a domed building more appropriate for a state capitol than a public university. At the top, in bold letters, it read, ‘Secondary Science Training Program’. At the bottom, it read, ‘A college-level science curriculum for exceptional high school students’. Opening the brochure, I read all about the program. The more I read, the more excited I became. But $550! How could I ask Mom to spend so much on me?
<> <> <>
Mom closed the brochure and said, “It sounds like a good program, and Iowa isn’t that far away. $550 is a lot of money, but you’d be getting five hours of college credit out of it. That’s similar to what you’d pay for in-state tuition, room and board at IU or Purdue.
“The question I have is: how would this program contribute to your college education? Those five hours of credit won’t mean anything if you don’t need them for your degree.”
“What do you mean, Mom?” I asked.
“You could take a course in basket weaving,” she started to explain, “but even if you earned credit for it, would it contribute to your knowledge as an engineer or a scientist? Would it help round out your knowledge? Perhaps it would satisfy the requirements for an elective, but would it be as useful to you as taking a course in economics, or Latin, or philosophy?
“What I’m asking you is if the experience of attending this program would substitute for something you would have taken in college otherwise?”
Although I had a whole sales pitch planned, her question took me by surprise and stopped me in my tracks. Sure the experience would give me a taste of college life, and it could help me to assess the advantages and disadvantages of the colleges I might apply to. But would the coursework actually contribute to my college education?
Continuing on, she said, “There are four tracks in the program, and I’m not sure any of them are right for you. The physics track would be useless. You’re already capable of testing out of a freshman-level college physics course. The biology track would be great if you were going into a field of biology or medicine, but you’re not.
“That leaves the computer science and research tracks. Frankly, I don’t think either would be of use to you in science or engineering…”
Finally getting my courage back, I interrupted, “Are you kidding? Computers are going to be an integral part of any field of science or engineering in the future. Just this last week, Hewlett-Packed announced a new scientific calculator that fits in a shirt pocket. It does everything my slide rule does, but much faster and more accurately. Within a few years, the HP35 and its successors will completely replace slide rules for making all scientific calculations.”
“And this engineering wonder costs… let me guess… $99.95?” Mom interjected.
“$395,” I replied, causing Mom to gasp. “But you know the price will come down and the capabilities will expand, and quickly.”
“But other than maybe using one of these marvels in the classroom, how else would you use computer science?”
Was she serious? This wasn’t the attitude I thought I’d need to conquer. I thought it would be all about the cost! I responded, “Mom, there isn’t a field around that won’t make use of computers in the future. Everything that Dad did at Delco was done by hand, but all of the calculations he used to do can be done better, faster and cheaper using computers.
“The world of Star Trek isn’t that far away, Mom. Maybe not warp drive and transporters, but computers that can understand speech and carry out your commands? That’s coming, and sooner than you think.”
“I don’t know,” she replied. “It all sounds pretty farfetched to me.”
“Computer programming is a required course in any field of study in engineering,” I pointed out. “At the least, the computer science track of the SSTP should get me out of taking a semester of programming in college.”
“But what if you don’t go into engineering?” she countered, “What if you go into chemistry or geology or astronomy?”
“In the future, computer programming skills are gonna be essential to any of those fields,” I proffered.
“I’m going to have to think about this,” she replied. “It’s a lot of money to spend on what might be nothing more than a glorified summer camp.”
“There isn’t much time, Mom. The deadline’s on Valentine’s Day. That’s less than a month away. I need to get references, obtain my transcript and write two essays.”
“There’s no reason you can’t start writing the essays, and the other items won’t take long.”
“Couldn’t I just apply anyway? I might not even be accepted.”
“Not with a $50 application fee,” she replied. “I’m not willing to pay that unless you’re all-in on this. Give me a few days to decide.”
“Maybe you should talk to Dr.… Mr. Franklin, my chemistry teacher,” I suggested. I’d intended to say Dr. Dixon, but then thought better of it. His kooky mannerisms would do more to turn Mom off than to convince her.
“Get me his phone number, and I’ll do just that…”
