Forget all those illusions about the irresistible draw of crisp white
coats and progressive myopia. The truth is that the ‘new woman’ is just
not interested, instantly confining the chaps from the laboratory to a life
of earnest bachelordom and endless meals for one.

Such concerns are not new. Back in the 1950s, Margaret Mead and Rhoda
Metraux reported a survey of the attitudes of high school students that
showed although the majority believed science was a ‘good thing’, their
reaction to the thought of actually becoming a scientist (or, worse, marrying
one) was overwhelmingly negative. Hardly surprising perhaps, when one of
the most popularity cited images of the male scientist at work was dear
old Victor Frankenstein – a woman’s creation, of course – and someone whose
problems begin with his isolation and suppression of emotional relationships.

Frankenstein’s monster may be one extreme, but today’s Silicon Valley
technofreaks fare little better when it comes to pulling power. For as Mary
Beth Ruskai, a mathematics professor, recently commented on the attitude
of women to science: ‘Although it may be acceptable for boys to be computer
experts in the sense that it is not ‘unmasculine’, such interests are nonetheless
regarded as ‘nerdy’, rather than virile or socially attractive . . .’ (The
ÐÓ°ÉÔ­´´, 5 March 1990).

Computer experts can at least draw some comfort from the greats that
grace science’s past. In 1771, the great French chemist Antoine Lavoisier,
then in his late 20s, was corralled into an arranged marriage with 14-year-old
Marie Anne Paulze. Not a promising start, you might think, but Marie Anne
soon proved a more than able match for Lavoisier’s talents, translating
books and papers and picking up a first-class knowledge of chemistry in
the process.

Elsewhere, that dashing pioneer of group theory Evariste Galois certainly
knew the pain of love. He was expelled from the Ecole Normale in Paris and
torn apart by a passionate affair that indirectly led to his death, in a
duel, at the tender age of 20. As Galois put it in one of his last letters:
‘I die the victim of an infamous coquette and her two dupes.’

But this is no boys-only affair, most recently demonstrated by Dian
Fossey, noted zoologist and author of the best-selling Gorillas in the Mist.
Fossey may have been the primates’ best friend but her love life was strained,
to say the least, despite all the Hollywood mythologising. Marooned on
Karisoke mountain, she was hardly good company with her bad temper, drinking
and emphysema from smoking 40 cigarettes a day (The Dark Romance of Dian
Fossey, by Harold Hayes). Not the stuff of which dreams are made. Still,
beneath that formidable exterior even Dian craved the human touch, and
her desperate pursuit of National Geographic photographer Bob Campbell (finally
quashed by Bob’s hapless plea: ‘No, I’m sorry Dian, I just can’t . . .’)
suggests not only a woman spurned by the desires of the flesh, but also
an emotional void only rivalled by her near-pathological strangeness.

Strangeness may be a hindrance when love is at stake, but so also is
that other much-lauded scientific trait – devotion to the job. It is said
that following his marriage to Mary Stilwell in 1871, Thomas Edison dashed
straight back to his laboratory and did not arrive home until the following
morning. What Mrs Edison made of this behaviour is not recorded, though
the couple did go on to have three children (the first two appropriately
nicknamed Dash and Dot) and apparently remained in a state of loving togetherness
up to Mary’s death in 1884.

Edison’s appreciation of matters of the heart did not progress much
as he aged. After Mary’s death, and now nearing 40, the great man met teenager
Mina Miller. He immediately became infatuated with her. But one night shortly
before their wedding, Edison and Mina were walking by a lake with friends.
When she pointed out the beauty of the moon on the water, Edison was distracted:
‘(I) couldn’t appreciate it, was so busy taking a mental triangulation of
the Moon, the two sides of the said triangle meeting the base line of the
Earth at Woodside and Akron, Ohio . . .’

With chat-up lines like that, it is small wonder that your average researcher
may need a little assistance when it comes to the admittedly unscientific
arts of seduction and romance. Hence the appearance of Science Connection
– a new US-based dating agency that aims to do for researchers’ love lives
what Heineken once claimed for the parts other beers could not reach. According
to Ann Lambert, president of Science Connection, the agency is ‘the first
of its kind . . . a network through which single people interested in science
or nature can meet’. And with a membership including ‘chemists, physicists,
geologists, wildlife and molecular biologists’, there’s surely someone here
to cater for every conceivable taste.

So how does Science Connection work? Subscribers complete a 50-word
‘mini-profile’ together with a form detailing educational achievements,
scientific interests, favourite books, music and so on. For their $60 a
year they are then guaranteed a monthly listing of other mini-profiles compatible
with their own. Having picked the best of the bunch, the subscriber requests
a further ‘biographical profile’ and, hey presto, Cupid’s arrow is but a
shot away.

Although I have no plans to sign up myself (I checked – and married
with two kids is not an option on the application form), I reckon Science
Connection is on to a winner. So whether your own particular longing is
for love in the laboratory, sex on a centrifuge or even a romantic weekend
for two studying the flora of Tierra del Fuego, it seems Lambert’s venture
might be just what the doctor ordered.

Marc Nicholls is editor of Evolutionary Trends in Plants.

Albert Einstein is Simonton’s ‘model’ – a man who swapped company for
the solitude of his sailing boat, wasted away his final years developing
a unified theory that was to all intents useless, and sported a scarecrow
haircut and dress sense to match.

Simonton is not the first to attempt an analysis of scientific genius
– it’s something that has kept the rest of us entertained for decades. The
fact is, there’s a kind of voyeuristic satisfaction in dissecting the lifestyles
of the unusually talented, perhaps as a sort of compensation for their quite
undeniable achievements.

My favourite genius-watcher was Cesare Lombroso of Turin University
in Italy who, at the start of this century, published a list of geniuses
and their physical distinctions. Thus we learn that Archimedes was scarcely
5 feet tall, Newton and Boyle suffered from deformities, Linnaeus was hydrocephalic
and Darwin had a stammer.

Lombroso showed a smug fascination in charting these deficiencies that
has characterised the sport ever since. ‘Genius is often associated with
abnormalities in that organ which is the source of its glory,’ he once said,
echoing Aristotle’s equally implausible assertion that ‘No great genius
is without some mixture of insanity.’

Simonton’s insights are less provocative, although their implications
bode ill for the future of science. Einstein, for example, who was once
denied a PhD assistantship at Zurich university owing to his stubborn ‘individuality’,
would have fared better in the big-science climate of the 90s, where few
granting agencies are likely to fund ‘crazy’ projects and collaboration
and management issues are increasingly at the heart of productive research.

But for those scientists seriously set on the road to geniushood, there
are some ground rules that may be of use – the age of your parents, for
example. Havelock Ellis’s Study of British Genius (published in 1904) showed
that most men who fathered geniuses were over 30 at the time, and scarcely
a single mother under 25 had the good fortune to produce one. Many were
rather sickly children, although less generally sickly adults.

Whether these bodily shortcomings affect the genius’s sexuality is anybody’s
guess, although talent in the laboratory does seem to be offset by poor
performance quite often in bed. Indeed, Lombroso pointed out that many geniuses,
including Newton, Galileo, Descartes and Copernicus, were celibate (perhaps
giving credence to Michelangelo’s claim that ‘I have more than enough of
a wife in my art’).

Why do geniuses get such a mixed press? Perhaps part of the reason is
the precociousness that, although not a prerequisite, is often associated
with talents in later life. Any parent who recalls the appalling fuss surrounding
child prodigy Ruth Lawrence cannot help but feel a touch of relief that
their own offspring have been spared a similar fate.

Last year’s offering, 13-year-old Stuart McDonald, delighted the newspapers
by signing up for mathematics tutorials at the University of Southampton.
Unfortunately for Stuart, though, he does not seem to conform to the ‘risk-taking,
go-getter’ type favoured by Simonton. When asked by a reporter why he disliked
climbing trees, for example, he explained that he couldn’t understand why
people like to do things that are slightly dangerous and added, ‘anyway,
it makes me feel embarrassed about being descended from an ape’.

Stuart does not reveal whether he feels a similar sense of revulsion
at being descended from his non-genius parents, but whatever the reasoning,
this kind of precocious nonsense is surely the sort of thing that gives
talent a bad name. An American friend of mine who survived a similar experience
(and later traded in his ‘genius’ tag for a career in psychotherapy) confided
that the only real memory he had of his childhood ‘excellence’ was the daily
dread of being beaten up by his contemporaries while waiting for the university
bus at the tender age of 14.

To the cynics, such social problems seem mere luxuries. Organisations
such as the Foundation for Gifted Children are on hand to try and comfort
those of extraordinary talents, but the whole thing still smacks of Doogie
Howser-ism (the teen-medic soap hero with a line of patter that makes most
adults reach for the remote control).

But perhaps there is a downside to genius. Consider William Sidis, who
spoke four languages fluently at 5 and was admitted to Harvard University
at 11 (where he gave a startlingly original lecture on the fourth dimension)
yet died destitute.

Just as youth is wasted on the young, so intelligence is often given
to those who cannot use it properly or do not even want to learn. And even
if the true genius is one who readily takes control of these gifts, how
many of us really fancy a life ruled by excessive workloads, crackpot theories,
God-awful dress sense and the frustrations of always going to bed alone?

March Nicholls is editor of the journal Evolutionary Trends in Plants.

Others have suffered, I admit. (In particular, I seem to recall Sewall
Wright’s work on inbreeding in the guinea pig that involved forcing incest
on the poor little beasts for 20 or so generations before he could confidently
show that shacking up with your nearest relatives is definitely not a good
idea.) Rats have had it bad, but there’s something smart about a rat that
makes it a battle fought on more equal terms.

No, despite the popular images of Disney and Tom & Jerry, it is
undoubtedly the plucky little laboratory mouse that has suffered most. Take
1988 – a particularly tough year for murines. When the news came through
in April that Harvard University had obtained a patent for a mouse genetically
engineered to render it more susceptible to breast cancer, it seemed just
another bad omen in the increasingly one-sided saga of mice and men. The
same year, a virologist, Malcolm Martin, hit the news with his proposal
to introduce the genetic code of HIV into mouse embryos.

But even while the mouse population was reeling from this affront, other,
less spectacular abuses were continuing daily. Here’s an extract from a
university press release issued in October: ‘The researchers then injected
the cancer cells into the flanks of nude mice, a breed of hairless mice
lacking an immune system and therefore unable to reject cells of another
species .. ‘Nude mice indeed! And what’s all this about lacking an immune
system? Come on guys, play fair now, will you?

If you’re really serious about mouse welfare, you should visit the Jackson
Laboratory’s amazing ‘mouse mart’ in Maine. ‘There’s nothing Mickey Mouse
about shipping 45,000 rodents a week!’ screams a headline, and true enough
Jackson Lab can lay claim to being the birthplace of hundreds of strains
of mutant mice, and a worldwide supplier without equal.

So what’s in the Jackson catalogue? Well; for just $6.50 you can pick
up a spunky little AKR/J strain that is ‘guaranteed’ to develop leukaemia
within six months. Or maybe you fancy an ‘ocular retardation’? This mouse
not only has an eye mutation, but also suffers the ignominy of blocked sperm
development, so you’ll find great fun using it to understand the crucial
mysteries of male reproduction (and why there may be more truth than rumour
in the old fears about masturbation sending you blind ..).

And you don’t even have to carry the little creatures home with you.
More than half the Jackson Lab mice are now available as frozen embryos,
available in plastic vials for convenience of storage and instant ‘reheating’
as and when the need arises.

The range is truly startling. With between 750,000 and 1 million mice
‘on the shelf’ at any one time, Jackson Lab can supply anything from tight-skinned
mice, trembling mice and hyperactive mice through to mean moody mice able
to squeak along to the first few bars of Sinatra’s Mr Success. Unsurprisingly,
some mutations are induced through radiation or chemicals (genetics, like
cricket, is hardly a game for the weak-willed) but Jackson assures us that
in most cases a keen eye is the key; an army of murine detectives sort the
cages for spontaneous aberrations that might feasibly be profitable to some
research project or other around the world.

Fixing the mutation is usually fairly straightforward. As a humble mouse,
the idea of having to breed with your brother, sister, mother or grandfather
is no more unusual than a quick waltz around the water-feeder. Even those
who fail to come up with the goods can hardly escape the rigours of an enforced
breeding programme that Ceausescu would have shied away from.

With unwilling females, for example, researchers simply do away with
the problem by transplanting the mutant’s ovaries into a normal mouse. when
that mouse breeds, it then has no choice but to pass on the desired genetic
information.

Judging the psychological effects is anyone’s guess, but then again,
concern for our furry little friends has rarely been a topic of national
concern. So while Albert the Experimental Rat is afforded a weekly cartoon
strip in this magazine, the nearest the hapless mouse gets is a grainy black-and-white
photograph of one of its buddies, laden down with 57 varieties of tumour
or full-frontal dissected as a result of some experiment or other in the
name of mankind’s future.

What dear old Walt would have made of the mouse’s predicament I cannot
say, but with the proposed revival in Disney’s cartoon output, perhaps a
full length drama on the perils of the laboratory mouse would be the ideal
vehicle to bring public awareness screaming and kicking into the 1990s.
Mice are mice and men are men, but a patented mouse is merely property.
So, hey Mickey! Here’s looking at you, pal ..

Marc Nicholls is editor of the journal Evolutionary Trends in Plants.

Something about the idea appealed as I travelled home that evening.
Writing a book was out of the question (too little time, too few ideas,
too meagre rewards) but what about editing a book? Editing is simple enough,
or so I thought. Editing is just a matter of dotting a few Is, crossing
a few Ts and, hey presto, sending the whole caboodle to the publishers.
Let the others do the donkey work, and anyhow, a book of the kind I was
proposing was bound to be better (or better received) for the combined experience
of its contributors. If only I’d known then what I know now.

I put my idea to a German publishing company. They drove down to see
me in a shiny new BMW. There must be money in academic books, I thought,
begrudging the fact that I hadn’t considered publishing it myself. A bargain
was struck and, a couple of weeks later, their confirmation was in the post.

Accompanied by a sample issue from a series of monographs, their letter
explained that they would be happy to publish the volume, provided I could
supply a list of chapters approved by my authors. Meanwhile, I glanced through
the freebie they’d generously enclosed, noting with pride that, while the
authors were relegated to small print inside the cover flap, the editor’s
name appeared in a bold typeface on both front cover and spine. Authors
were authors but editors were stars. Fame into the bargain, I thought greedily.

The following week I ran off a bunch of invitations together with chapter
listings and comments (or pleas!) to those prospective contributors I knew
personally. They replied immediately, as did several others who presumably
shared my enthusiasm for this grand undertaking. ‘I am interested!!!’ wrote
one. ‘Congratulations on this worthwhile endeavour!’ said another. ‘I’ll
be working on my chapter starting right away,’ added a third.

Others were less convinced. ‘Is there really a need for another book
of this sort?’ one respondent wrote. ‘Sorry but I’m tied up doing fieldwork
in Tierra del Fuego until Christmas,’ claimed another (when scientists make
excuses, they don’t do it by halves). Typically, the remainder were of the
‘I’ll try, but don’t expect too much,’ category, with worries about teaching
schedules, grant applications, tenure pressure and all the other guff that
goes to make up a scientific career these days coming to the fore.

Still, the publishers duly received the list and in autumn sent out
contracts, instructions to authors and promises of a minor fee on completion.
I set a deadline of January 1989, agreed to write a 10-page introduction
and to deliver the final manuscript to the publishers by March 1989 (then
almost two years away). Any reservations were fading fast. No doubt the
issuing of contracts would get things moving I thought, perhaps naively,
since nothing could have been further from the truth.

January approached and the letters started flooding in. Half of my authors
were already begging for an extension of the deadline, others claimed their
acceptance had been provisional, that their agreement to write a specific
chapter must now be changed since they had decided on some other topic,
or, worst of all, that they had since suffered some mishap, fatality or
incurable injury that now made participation impossible. My half-book was
shrinking to a third. Then I made the fatal mistake of anyone in this situation:
I extended the deadline until August.

Months passed without result. I tried pleading, sarcasm and fruitless
encouragement. I even considered bribery, but, as I didn’t have any funds,
this was hardly a sensible proposition. Our letters crossed once, twice,
several times, sometimes amicably but with growing tension. When one author
resigned, five others wrote asking whether they should follow suit. Our
collective confidence waned. Obviously something was going on behind the
scenes of which I was not aware. Perhaps they didn’t trust me. Would you
trust me? Would I, for that matter? Fortunately, several of the contributors
met at a conference that summer in the US and decided to forgive and forget.
At least, I presume that’s what they did since I was on holiday at the time,
soaking up sun, drowning myself in Martinis and generally trying to forget
the whole idea. I returned to a mailbag of renewed promises. The August
deadline came and went. I received four chapters with seven apparently ‘on
the way’. Even contributors who had previously pleaded death or insanity
as cause for their dropping out had now been miraculously cured and (if
only I’d lengthen the deadline) were eager to send something ‘as soon as
possible . . .’ I was in business again, but the magic was gone. I gave
amnesty till Christmas, moved to Britain and kept on hoping.

Now Christmas has passed and what did I get? An abstract promised almost
a year previously, two manuscripts hopelessly overdue, and a belated promise
to send the ‘final version’ of a chapter that I have yet to see in a ‘couple
of weeks’. That was over two months ago . . .

So, as my own deadline draws near, I’ll go pleading to the publisher
for another extension. ‘Not my fault,’ I’ll claim, though of course it is
my fault, all the way down the line. I lost interest you see, not consciously
but it drifted away. Does it matter, I ask myself? Besides, I haven’t even
started on that damn introduction . . .

Marc Nicholls is based in Leamington Spa.