Thank You Prof. Wilson!

La Jolla, California, some Thursday or Friday in 2006. I am walking across the main square of the Salk Institute; “main square” doesn’t do this magnificent space any justice, of course: it’s a magic place, especially given the stop scientific minds which had wandered across it, but also because of its architecture and location; a concrete plaza with a fountain in the center, and a narrow canal where the water from the fountain flows West – towards the Pacific Ocean, aligned with the sunset at solstice. The Salk Institute was built on top of the cliffs north of La Jolla proper, and it almost seems to hover above the Pacific Ocean when looking west from the eastern-most edge of the square, from where you can’t see the vegetation between the Salk and the beach below.

I am crossing that main square towards the institute’s library. It’s one of these flawless Southern Californian afternoons; The sun here is not a rare pleasure of warmth like during the Austrian spring, or an oppressive inescapable presence like during the hours around noon like in the tropics; In Southern California. near the coast, the sun is just right. This warm saturated light flooded the Salk’s main square, and played with all the angles and corners of the elegant simplicity of the building. And this architectural brilliance (courtesy of Louis Kahn) is matched by the intellectual brilliance of many of the people doing science at the Salk Institute.

The institute’s library is on the other side of Salk from Computational Neuroscience Lab, Terry Sejnowki’s lab. This is the intellectually really exciting place where I had spent the last 3 1/2 years. Yes, memories sometimes paint the past more golden; Yes, I did indeed have an excellent time at Salk, both scientifically as well as personally.

On that Thursday or Friday I meant to do some more in-depth reading on my current research interest, oscillations of the membrane potentials of individual nerve cells. There is always more to learn; the more you read, the more good leads show up; both neuroscience and mathematics have a lot to say about oscillations and I firmly believed that reading more papers is the way to find the right dots to connect between scientific fields and their sub-fields, and the way to scientific progress. I still think that’s true. My desk in the lab was perfectly fine, but it was surrounded by recording apparatuses and physiology equipment; The library was a better place to focus on  the reading I planed to do; I had brought printouts of the papers I aimed to study. But before I got to these, I was looking at the books in the entrance area of the Salk library. There I saw this:

I decided to give it a quick look.

This was not Wilson’s first book I had read, but while I liked the others, this one caught on right away in a manner only a few books have excited me in my life. “The Future of Life” is a call to preserve the biodiversity of life on Earth; It starts out by describing this biodiversity, in a number of habitats which Wilson is especially familiar with. It’s not just a description of these animals and plants, instead it’s a literary firework enthusing the reader to be as excited about nature and all the fantastic organisms in it as Wilson himself is. I felt as close as possible as it is through words to be transported from the Salk library to the forests and lakes of the North American Northeast, and South where Wilson had grown up.

A perfectly nice late-week afternoon had turned magic. I read more than half of the book before getting to the papers I meant to study originally, which were all intriguing pieces of science, though of course not nearly as well written as “The Future of Life”. Modern day academic publications are typically very dry reading. After another hour or so, once my ability to concentrate had waned, I got my backpack from the lab and drove home to Pacific Beach. I raved about Wilson’s book to my non-scientist friends in PB that weekend during our movie nights and beach brunches, with my raves greeted by slightly surprised smiles. Th following Monday morning I went back to the library and finished “The Future of Life”.

Edward O. Wilson died last Sunday at the age of 92. Sadly I had never met him in person,  but from reading his books I had the impression that I knew him.

Thank you Prof. EO Wilson for all your writings!

A truly great mind, who will be missed.