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.
2 comments:
Female botanists are the best. My first love was one such, but we fell out over proper gardening techniques. In all sincerity, though, I do wish your wife and you the best. Your's is a superior presence, not least on-line.
Thank you. I learned a long time ago to defer to her superior wisdom when it comes to matters of the plant kingdom [and much of the animal kingdom as well.]
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