Translator: Robert Tucker Reviewer: Tanya Cushman
Four years ago began my love affair with a remarkable man.
But this is not your typical girl meets a boy story.
It's different.
Through this remarkable man,
I confronted that part in me
that in my childhood felt like an outsider.
It was that young, eight- or nine-year-old outsider
that at an engagement party for her 15-year-old cousin,
with all her family seated under this huge fig tree,
and everybody wishing her the same good fortune,
how she stood up, that young outsider, me,
and proudly declared
that marriage was not at the top of my list of priorities.
This was unacceptable.
Growing up in a conservative Jewish family in Georgia,
what was expected of that little girl, what was expected of me,
was to be gentle, to be shy,
to be educated enough to meet a suitable match,
to be a good housewife and please my future husband.
I had to maintain a bella figura at all costs,
because I represented not just myself;
I represented my remarkable family and my community.
My vision of myself was very different however.
But living in a system of defined values, beliefs and rules of conduct,
as we all do to some extent,
it is not a choice to be different;
it is not a choice to be an outsider;
it's a daily struggle
between my inner self and the expectations of the outside world.
The part in me that I learned to embrace through this remarkable man
is that part in me that, growing up, I desperately tried to bury and change,
hoping to be accepted and loved by others.
It was that part in me that I learned to hate
because I believed I was not good enough.
As a result, I retreated into myself,
and I was often, and still am, perceived as unsociable or arrogant.
Fearing such labels, I tried to be like others;
I tried to dress like others.
I stopped, as you can note.
I tried to love what was approved by those I wanted to belong to.
Eventually this distorted my inner self.
But this man I want to tell you about today
allowed me, like only a great friend and teacher can,
to look at myself through a different lens.
Like in so many love stories, I met this man ten years ago,
but at the first glance, I didn't give him a second look.
As I would soon find out, this was not surprising to him
because he was, and still is, often overlooked.
His name is Nikolai Rashevsky,
and, just like myself, he was a natural outsider.
I refer to him in the past tense here
because Nikolai Rashevsky passed away over 40 years ago.
And if you're trying to do the math right now,
yes, I had a love affair with a dead man.
(Laughter)
Nikolai, or better known as Nicolas Rashevsky,
struggled for 45 years of his scientific career
to establish a new research field in science.
Its name is mathematical biology.
Most of you have probably never heard about mathematical biology,
but its sexier nicknames - like computational biology,
bioinformatics, biomathematics -
might be familiar to you.
After all, for the past eight decades,
this field, designed to understand the living world,
revolutionized biology and medicine.
When, ten years ago, I began researching the history of mathematical biology,
I was very privileged to have met
a great mathematician and mathematical biologist,
Professor Lee Segel from the Weizmann Institute.
While we discussed the history of mathematical biology,
as a side story, Professor Segel shared with me
that the first generation of mathematical biologists
was ridiculed and criticized.
He blamed the same man that established the field.
He explained to me that the generations that followed
did everything to distance themselves from this man,
and they even changed the name of its discipline.
But this glimpse into history accompanied me for almost six years
before I decided to dig deeper.
Rashevsky intrigued me.
Why had I not heard of him when I practiced mathematical biology?
Why was he ridiculed and criticized, even by people that never met him?
Why did a famous mathematician, Richard Bellman, call him a charlatan?
I was struck by this contrast
between the legacy of the man
and his fate, sad fate, in the history books.
As I love puzzles,
I was determined to solve this one at all costs.
So I started work constructing his personal life.
It was very clear to me that to understand his science,
I had to understand the man behind it.
So I started by discussing his history with his friends, his neighbors.
I even dug out his granddaughter.
I found his students,
and I desperately wanted to know what was the color of his eyes.
As you can imagine, this was very important for my research,
so I downloaded his immigration papers.
Then I found out that he was this blue-eyed, tall -
very suitable match -
bearded hipster.
(Laughter)
At a certain point, while we shared my tiny apartment,
its walls looked like this huge working board,
connecting note to note to note,
trying to reconstruct his life.
But Rashevsky was an extremely private person,
and at a certain point, I felt ashamed for what I did.
Perhaps it was because he was trying to protect his family.
He was born to one of the richest and wealthiest families in Ukraine.
He received an impeccable education.
He was considered to be a prodigy.
He spoke several languages.
By the age of 19,
he received his doctorate degree in theoretical physics.
But he was also a kind, a charming person, with a precious sense of humor.
And he managed to sweep off her feet
a Russian princess, an orphaned Russian princess, Emily,
with whom he raised three daughters
and shared his great love and admiration
until the day he passed away.
But during the Russia Revolution, Nicolas and Emily had to flee Russia.
Eventually, Nicolas found a position
at the Westinghouse Research Laboratories
in Pittsburgh,
where he worked for almost a decade
as a physicist.
On one evening, he was invited to a social gathering
at the University of Pittsburgh,
and he incidentally overheard two biologists discussing cell division.
They were sharing with each other
that it was impossible to know how cells divide,
when, naively, Rashevsky approached them and asked why that was.
They responded, laughingly, that nobody could know how cells divide
because this was biology.
But for Rashevsky, this was unacceptable.
So he decided to tackle the problem himself.
And he did it the only way he knew how, as a physicist.
So he took this biological cell,
abstracted it to a sphere,
set aside its complexities and variations,
and developed a mathematical model
that would explain how this sphere divides.
He borrowed from his own research in physics,
where he worked on the division of fluid drops into smaller droplets.
And when he presented this mathematical model to biologists,
well, you can imagine how outraged that they were.
Because this sphere, this idealized cell, had nothing to do with biology.
But this did not discourage him.
It made him even more eager to cross over to biology.
But he didn't want to become a biologist at any point.
He had a dream.
His dream was so challenging:
he wanted mathematics to take biology
to the same level of precision it took physics.
Now, imagine, you have biologists screaming out loud,
"Experiment! Experiment! Experiment!"
and this physicist rushes in with his paper and pencil,
not promising them a solution to a specific problem,
but a methodology,
a new way of thinking about biology
which would provide biologists with a bunch of theoretical possibilities
out of which one, perhaps, might predict biological phenomena.
But Rashevsky was a realist,
so he decided to understand what experimental biology was all about.
On one evening, he was experimenting with a human brain,
but the lab he was working at was closing.
So he packed up this brain,
and passing a night guard that was horrified by this,
he took the brain home with him.
(Laughter)
I told you he had a precious sense of humor.
After this fear fiasco, Rashevsky decided to tackle a nervous system.
He designed a new, unprecedented theory,
which connected the inhibition and excitation actions in a neuron.
He called this theory a "two-factors theory."
But what was interesting to me about this theory
was not the fact that Rashevsky succeeded.
It was not even the fact that two decades later
Hodgkin and Huxley would receive a Nobel Prize
for their own theory based on Rashevsky's model.
What was interesting to me was
that when I looked through the physiology books of that time,
I found out that the theory was attributed to a physiologist, Archibald Hill.
As it turned out,
Archibald Hill presented his theory several years after Rashevsky.
But this time, Archibald Hill used experimental data
and not intuition and speculations as Rashevsky did.
The two theories were verified by a physiologist.
So not only did the models, the mathematical equations,
look identical,
these theories predicted and fitted the experimental data
in exactly the same way.
Now, this injustice raises many questions.
Why was Rashevsky's theory set aside
while Hill's theory was placed in the history books?
After all, it was the same theory.
Was it perhaps because Hill had a Nobel Prize
and Rashevsky was a nobody in biology?
Or was it perhaps because Rashevsky was presenting his views
as an outsider in biology?
But Rashevsky by no means was an easy person,
although very kind and very attentive to people around him.
He had what we call a strong personality.
He would rarely bend under pressure
or change his views or conform it to the expectations of the outside world.
The most striking of all was his rhetorical style.
It was filled with overstatements and exaggerations fitting a marketing man.
But he was marketing.
He was marketing his dream to turn it into a reality.
But you can't really build a discipline working a day job as a physicist.
So Rashevsky applied and received a fellowship
from the Rockefeller Foundation
to develop mathematical biology at the University of Chicago.
This place was not an accident,
because the University of Chicago,
at that time,
under the Robert Hutchins presidency,
believed and understood
that interdisciplinarity is a route to innovation.
In fact, they were looking for queer ducks -
that's how they called outsiders.
But Rashevsky being Rashevsky,
he had a difficult time finding a place even there.
Receiving his fellowship to the physiology department,
its chairman, who actively disliked Rashevsky,
exiled him to the psychology department.
But with the university wanting to keep Rashevsky at her ranks,
they provided him with his own mini-department.
Even then, this mini-department was set at the university outskirts.
As students were rushing in, graduate students,
to study with this young, crazy professor,
they begged him to let them wear white coats
to at least look like the insiders, to look like the biologists.
But Rashevsky refused.
He asserted their difference.
But the physical isolation was not the only obstacle
this group of outsiders faced.
Wanting to publish their work,
they sent their papers to biology journals.
But they were rejected because they were too mathematical.
So they sent them to the mathematics journals.
But they were also rejected because they were too biological.
Yet again, where we might see an obstacle, Rashevsky saw an opportunity.
He saw an opportunity to embrace the outsiderness of his group,
and he founded
the Bulletin of Mathematical Biology,
which to this day is a classical journal in this field.
As years went by,
Rashevsky was establishing a name for himself ...
for better or for worse.
He worked on anything and everything,
from cell division to automobile driving.
Like a salesman, he traveled the globe,
willing to teach everybody willing to listen.
In fact, his department was unique for 30 years,
and this allowed him to design
the first training program in mathematical biology.
And Rashevsky fathered 26 doctoral students.
Now, you must be wondering what is so special about this story.
Nothing and everything.
Because science, like every culture, has its social and political organization.
For a new view to be accepted by this organization,
biologist Richard Lewontin argues
that it needs to account for four elements.
These four elements are
public communication - check for Rashevsky,
promotion and employment - check for this professor,
money and grants - check,
and 26 doctoral students
which account for the professional dependents.
Now, Rashevsky met all these criteria,
and yet, 50 years ago, his discipline, his department,
were erased from the history of the University of Chicago.
Even the department, the building,
where this young group of outsiders worked,
was demolished,
and now a hospital stands there.
Ironically, the man under whose charge Rashevsky's department was demolished
is the same Richard Lewontin
that set the criteria for the acceptance of new views.
When I met Professor Lewontin a few years ago
at his office at Harvard University,
I discussed with him his role in this puzzle.
I was very surprised to find out
that Professor Lewontin never spoke to Rashevsky
nor ever read any of his works,
even though he was the Dean of Biological Sciences
where Rashevsky worked.
He basically made his decision
based on Rashevsky's reputation as an outsider,
admitting that for Professor Lewontin,
at that time,
Rashevsky's school was living in a world very different from his
and that of biologists.
He viewed his enterprise as a waste of intellectual effort.
Rashevsky passed away as a lone wolf.
He considered himself as the last of the Mohicans,
desperately trying to keep his enterprise and his dream alive.
He advised various universities and governmental agencies
on how to develop their own departments for mathematical biology.
Eager to continue his work and leave something behind,
he established an organization called Mathematical Biology Incorporated,
which today is the current Society for Mathematical Biology.
But for me, this story shows
how being an outsider can haunt your achievements.
How Rashevsky's struggle
for the independence of mathematical biology
ruined his reputation in biology.
But you can imagine that it is more than that,
because, after living years in Rashevsky's life,
I felt I was transforming.
I understood that my choice to study Rashevsky's life
was not an accident.
By trying to understand him, I was trying to understand myself.
I could relate to him as an outsider, as an immigrant, as a scientist.
But the way he handled his struggles,
with grace, with determination, with patience and with wisdom,
is an inspiration to me.
Through Rashevsky, and despite his fate,
I embraced that little outsider in me.
I understood that being an outsider is a feature and not a bug in my system.
And I stopped fixing it.
Now, is being an outsider dangerous?
Will you be misunderstood or ridiculed?
Probably yes.
But outsiders, just like Rashevsky,
in any field,
bring with them innovation, creativity;
they build new paths.
And even when they seem crazy,
it's sometimes worthwhile to let them have a way of their own.
So, to all you outsiders,
embrace this feature in yourself,
go and make a way of your own.
Thank you.
(Applause)