AND THEY THOUGHT SHE WAS JUST ANOTHER PRETTY FACE

Readers of my autobiography will recall that I met my present wife in the Fall of 1948 during our sophomore year in high school.  I promptly fell in love with her and dated her for five years, until, during the Spring of my senior year at college, she dumped me and married Gordon Hirschhorn, son of the Canadian uranium king.  Thirty-four years and various spouses later, we were finally married.  As a young woman, Susie was a Botanist, and after following Gordon to Chicago, she did graduate work in Botany at the University of Chicago and ran a microbiology lab for ten years.  By the time I came to my senses and found her again, she was a real estate agent in Chapel Hill, raising her two sons.

Susie told me that she had actually been a co-author on some scientific papers, but had not kept them and could no longer recall their subjects [although when we take a walk, she is still prone to identify plants and trees by their Latin names.]

This morning she came into my study carrying an offprint that she had discovered in an old file drawer.  There it was:  “FREE HISTIDINE CONTENT OF TURNIP VARIETIES AND THEIR RESISTANCE TO HISTIDINE REQUIRING MUTANTS OF ERWINIA AROIDEAE.” 

She is listed as the second author [Ed Garber, the professor, was first, of course.]  It was published in 1957.  Among the footnotes is a reference to an earlier article on which she also appears as an author.