They’re Never Too Young
May 30, 2016: May we respect the Fallen on this Memorial Day. On now to my essay: This past weekend I attended a Georgia Tech Research Corporation board meeting in the North Georgia mountains. Our meeting was highlighted by fascinating research presentations on Einstein’s gravitational waves and water on Mars, but more on those in a moment.
First, it’s the time of year when universities are on our minds. Newly minted graduates are celebrating, and newly accepted students for fall 2016 are busy making final plans for their college adventures. I was sorry to miss the UT Austin graduation on the Mall; I’ve always likened that to an Olympic Opening ceremony, only bigger, as required in Texas.
GT President Bud Peterson paid a visit to our group and gave a preview of the incoming fall class. The averages: SAT, about 1460; GPA, 4.0+; and AP courses, 10. Any discussion about who’s the smartest person in the room would be hard to resolve in a gathering of these freshman. The admissions office has to differentiate based on arts, sports, and leadership accomplishments on the resume and possibly on the high school faculty recommendations. Alumni of GT are welcome to write letters of support, but we are allowed to have absolutely no influence on the decisions.
I make that last statement for any of you who have children seeking admission in fall 2017. I’m happy to add a letter to the file, but no matter my lifetime record of service to the Institute, it will be reviewed only with respect to what it reveals about the candidate in question. Even the senior executives of the school stay clear of any controversy around that touchy topic. “So what if your grandfather is the Governor?” I applaud their consistency in that practice. However, there was one child who came to special attention of the President, not because of qualifications, but because of age. He’s 11! I guess Jeff Foxworthy (a GT alumnus, by the way) would have to agree he is smarter than a fifth grader — his peer group. This young man was admitted and is undoubtedly qualified. I was quick to ask if I could recommend him to my fraternity, thinking he could only help the Chapter’s overall GPA, but I got a flat no to that. They’re arranged an adult chaperon and will keep him segregated from the 18-year-old social scene.
This young man might find some company with a 15-year-old female Ph. D. student also starting this fall. He’ll probably graduate in a couple of years and break her record. Three years after he has his Bachelor’s degree, he’ll be able to apply for a driver’s license, unless he has invented his own autonomous car by then.
I do not have companion statistics for the Cockrell School of Engineering at UT Austin where I am employed. This is the time of year I start getting plenty of letters asking for help getting a child admitted to the school of choice. A common complaint I hear from Texas parents is this: “How did you get your two children from Atlanta admitted to UT? I can’t get mine in, and I’m a fifth generation Longhorn.” My admissions were in 1999 and 2006, and I suppose both UT and GT are much tougher tickets now than a decade ago. I personally did nothing special to get my kids accepted; they earned that on their own merits.
On an unusual note, I just got an email from a young lady whom I do not know and can’t even guess her city of origin from her phone-only signature. She has the happy circumstance of having been admitted to both GT and UT Austin in BME for fall 2016 and is trying to decide which will better serve her entrepreneurial instincts. With no other personal facts about her and no intimate knowledge of the BME programs at either university, the best I could do was congratulate her on two great choices. I didn’t feel qualified to recommend a life-altering decision based on only superficial information. Perhaps she’ll look me up one day at one school or the other and tell me how she made her decision.
So what do these extreme achievers go on to do? At the GTRC dinner I happened to sit with two young professors, Laura Cadonati and Deirdre Shoemaker, who are directly behind Einstein’s head in the photo above. (This is the third and final likeness of Einstein by American artist Robert Berks and was installed on the Tech campus last fall.) They played key roles in the recent validation of Einstein’s gravitational waves theories. They both are part of a worldwide consortium of researchers in astrophysics but are among a handful of geniuses in their particular areas of focus. Cadonati is part of the team than measured the passing gravitational wave earlier this year, and Shoemaker is a pure mathematician who was able to use Einstein’s equations to calculate spot-on the observed phenomenon, as evidenced by the graphs overlaid on each other in the video linked above. Coincidentally, Shoemaker and her husband, the chair of physics at GT, both earned their advanced degrees at UT Austin before pursuing their careers in Atlanta. They became “ramblin’ wrecks and helluva astrophysicists.”
Beyond their singular achievements, the two women talked about mentoring high school students interested in physics, mathematics, or, more particularly, relativity. With an 11-year-old in the freshman class, I guess one can never catch such interests too early.
I did discover than neither had ever used a slide rule, so whatever exposure to Einstein’s work I may have had as an undergraduate is probably not translatable into the data crunching power of today.
Another highlight of the meeting was a presentation by Assistant Professor James Wray. A team of his Ph.D. candidates identified perchlorates as the hydration source for observed water streaks on Mars and thus proved the existence of water on that planet. I’m sorry I didn’t get much personal time with him to elaborate. It’s better if you have questions to confine them to my newfound knowledge of astrophysics.
There are many benefits in having a lifelong association with a top tier university. Whatever comes of this year’s election and the other pervasive worries of our society, it’s uplifting to see in action and meet brilliant teams doing research that is consequential to our understanding of our universe. Their discoveries may one day be vital to the very existence of our descendants. In the near term, at the very least they are role models who will attract promising young women and men to the sciences.
<Image from GA Tech news used here for journalistic purposes.>
