Building a cathedral.

摘要

When I was a medical student ages ago, I thought it was my duty to look with a very critical eye to my professors and to find them hopelessly obsolete. This attitude is befitting a young person, as every young person is convinced that world civilization has started at his or her birth. But there are always some professors who are so outstanding that they command your respect despite all your youthful resistance. One of these professors, prof. Rondoni, was a superb lecturer and a good scientist with a sense of humor (when several years later I told him that many of the professors who graduated my class were no longer alive, he winked and said in his lovely Tuscan accent: ja, ja, there has been an epizootic of professors). I attended his last lecture and he told us he had always done research, all his life, and that perhaps we may wonder what he had accomplished in a lifetime of research. He told us a story. Once upon a rime, in a small provincial town, the local nobleman gave a party for the well-to-do people of the area, and everybody came as elegant as they could come, the ladies wearing all the jewels they could display. Suddenly, there was a great cry, the lady of the house had lost her precious pearl necklace in the garden, how could she find it among the bushes, the plants, the flowers, in the darkness? Fortunately, the captain commanding the local garrison was among the invited gentlemen: no problem, madam, he said, do not worry, it is very simple. He called all his soldiers, put them shoulder to shoulder at one end of the garden, from one wall to the other, and told them to march forward, one step at a time, always shoulder to shoulder, each looking at the small square of ground in front of him. Naturally, one soldier found the necklace. Science, Prof. Rondoni said, is like that. Each of us looks at the small piece of science in front of his or her eyes, and, sometimes, one finds a pearl necklace.