Chapter 3 Original Preface My Teacher

It was a howling day in the fall of 1939.On the street outside the apartment building, fallen leaves swirl with the wind, and every leaf dances as if it is alive.I was comfortable in the warmth and safety of my bedroom while my mother busied herself preparing dinner in the other room.We don't have those big bad kids in our apartment who always get you in trouble for no excuses.Just a week ago, I had a fight—I can’t remember who it was after all these years, it might have been Snonny Agata from the third floor, and I slammed it to He threw a punch and found that he had punched through the large glass window of Mr. Schitcher's pharmacy.

Mr. Schitcher was very concerned about my injury: "It will be all right soon, I promise." He comforted me and applied some excruciating disinfectant to my wrist.My mother took me to a doctor's office in the apartment.He removed the shards of glass with a small pair of pliers and gave me two stitches with a needle and thread. "Two shots!" my father kept nagging that night.He knew the meaning of a needle, and he was a tailor in a garment factory.His job was to use a very sharp saw to cut huge piles of fabric into prototypes, which were then passed to a long line of women sitting at sewing machines.He was delighted that I was able to overcome my natural shyness to rage.

Fighting back is sometimes a good thing.I never intended to use violence.This incident happened by accident.Sonny pushed me first, and I punched Mr. Schitchert's glass next.I broke my wrist, had medical bills that I shouldn't have spent, and smashed a piece of plate glass, yet no one got mad at me.Even Sonny is much friendlier to me than before. I couldn't understand why things turned out this way.But contemplating this question in the warmth of an apartment, gazing out a bedroom window at New York Bay, is more comfortable than venturing down to the streets. As usual, my mother changed clothes, put on makeup, and waited for my father to return.The sun was about to set, and together we looked out over the rough water.

Pointing roughly across the Atlantic Ocean with her hand, she said, "The men over there are fighting and killing each other." I looked that way intently. "I know," I replied, "I can see them." "No, you can't see," she retorted, almost harshly, "they're too far away," she said, and returned to the kitchen. How does she know if I can see them?I do not understand.I squinted and looked, and I thought I did see that little strip of land on the horizon, and on it were tiny figures pushing and fighting each other and dueling with swords, just like in my comic books.But maybe she's right.Maybe it's just my imagination, kind of like the monster that occasionally wakes me from my slumber in the middle of the night, my pajamas drenched in cold sweat and my heart pounding.

How can you know when one is imagining?I gazed into the gray water until my mother beckoned me to wash my hands for dinner.What made me happy was that my father lifted me up with both hands.I can feel the cold of the outside world in the stubble he grows in a day. One Sunday that year, my father patiently explained to me that 0 was a placeholder in arithmetic, taught me to read the names of big, oddly pronounced numbers, and explained why there was no largest number. ("You can always add 1 to a number," he said.) I was suddenly asked to take the required course for children to write all the whole numbers from 1 to 1000.We didn't have stacks of paper, but my father gave me a stack of gray cardboard that he had amassed when he sent his shirts to the laundry room.I started this training with enthusiasm, but to my surprise, progress was very slow.When I had just written hundreds, my mother told me it was time for me to take a shower.Reluctantly, I am determined to write to 1000.Like the mediator he often played throughout his life, my father stepped in: If I could happily go to the shower, he would help me get on with the writing.I am very happy.By the time I took over, he had written almost 900, so when I hit 1000 it was just a little later than usual bedtime.The importance of these large numbers has never been forgotten in my life.

Also in 1939, my parents took me to the New York World's Fair.The exposition showed before my eyes the wonderful prospects that science and high technology can bring.The era of budding is over, here are the various products of our era that can benefit the people of the future.But it may come as a surprise that the people of the future don't know much about the people of 1939. The "future world" will be a place where everyone is strong, clean, and productive, and as far as I know, there won't be any poor people in sight. "Looking at the Sound" is a confusing but fascinating exhibit.Indeed, when the tuning fork was struck with a small hammer, a beautiful sinusoidal curve appeared on the screen of the oscilloscope.Another poster told people: "Listen to the light".Indeed, when the light hits the photocell, I can hear the kind of sound that static makes in a Motorola radio when tuning between channels.The world clearly showed me wonders I had never imagined.How does sound become image, and how does light become sound?

My parents were not scientists and they knew next to nothing about science.But by teaching me about the need to be skeptical and curious, they taught me these two difficult things to come together, which is at the heart of the scientific method.Their lives were almost impoverished, but when I declared that I wanted to be an astronomer, I received unreserved support, even though they (like me) had no idea what astronomy was.They never persuaded me to be more thoughtful, to suggest that it might be better to be a doctor or a lawyer. I wish I could talk about the teachers who inspired me to pursue a career in science during my elementary, middle, and high school years, but when I look back, I don't have one.All that can be recalled are dull memories of the periodic table of elements, of levers and slopes, of photosynthesis in green plants, of the difference between anthracite and bituminous coal.No ever-increasing sense of novelty, no exposure to any evolutionary history, no one to tell us the wrong ideas that everyone has embraced.In high school lab classes, all we got was guesswork.If we don't get results, we don't get a passing grade.Back then, we were never encouraged to pursue our own interests, nor were we asked to explore perceptual or conceptual errors.At the back of the textbook there is what can be said to be interesting material.School is often over before you really know it.You can find wonderful books on astronomy in the library, not in the classroom.Teachers teach you multi-digit division like a recipe in a cookbook without explaining how single-digit division, multiplication, and subtraction combine to arrive at the correct answer.In high school, teachers reverently and piously taught the method of finding square roots, as if this calculation method had been taught by Mount Sinai himself.Our learning is simply remembering what you were asked to do and getting the right answer, and it doesn't matter that you don't understand what you're doing.In second grade, I met a very competent algebra teacher from whom I learned a lot of math.But he is also very strict and often makes some girls cry.During my school years, my interest in science was maintained by reading science and science fiction books and magazines.

University is where my dream came true: I found that university teachers not only understood science, but could actually explain it.Very fortunately, I entered a very good school for the era of study - the University of Chicago.I became a student in the physics department with Enrico Fermi as the master.I learned the true elegance and charm of mathematics from the theories of Subramyan Chandrakikar; I was fortunate enough to discuss chemistry with Harold Urey; Mahler's biological apprentice; I studied planetary astronomy with G. P. Kuiper, who was the only total eclipse researcher at the time.

When I was studying with Kuiper, I first learned what is called back-of-the-envelope computing: an idea that might solve a problem pops into your mind, you immediately find an old envelope, use your basic physics knowledge, in Write a few rough formulas on the envelope, fill in the possible values, and check to see if your answer solves your problem.If unsuccessful, you seek another solution.Finding mistakes this way is as easy as cutting butter with a knife. At the University of Chicago I was also fortunate enough to take a general education course taught by Robert M. Hutchins.His courses present science as an integral part of the splendid tapestry of human knowledge.It is hard to imagine an aspiring physicist not knowing about Plato, Aristotle, Bach, Shakespeare, Gibbon, Malinowski, Freud, and other eminent scholars.In an introduction to science class, he gave Ptolemy's theory about the sun revolving around the earth in a vivid and fascinating way, which made some students have a new understanding of the research on Copernicus' theory.In Hutchins' courses, the status of the teacher has little to do with their research.Unlike the standards of American universities today, teachers were judged then on the basis of their teaching and their ability to impart knowledge and inspire students to the next generation.

This active academic atmosphere has enabled me to fill many gaps in my past education.Many things that were previously very mysterious (not only in science) became clear in my mind.I have also witnessed firsthand the privilege enjoyed by those who are able to discover some of the laws of the universe. I have always been very grateful to the teachers who tutored me in the 50's and have been trying to know if each one of them knew my gratitude.But when I look back, it seems clear to me that the most important things I learned came not from my middle school and elementary school teachers, nor from college professors, but from my almost ignorant knowledge of science. My parents, their education began as early as 1939.