Doctor Wood. Modern Wizard of the Laboratory: The Story of an American Small Boy Who Became the Most Daring and Original Experimental Physicist of Our Day-but Never Grew Up

I took no part in college athletics, except as an innocent bystander, until near the end of my senior year, when I suddenly decided to try for the Varsity tug-of-war team, and much to my amazement found myself in place number four just in front of big Higgins, the anchor, whom I next met in England shortly after the armistice of the World War. We trained for a month, and were all set for the Mott-Haven games with Yale, but learned on the eve of our departure that the event had been abolished for good and all, the day before, on account of its dangerous nature. We pulled on a plank walk, lying flat on our sides with our feet braced against high wooden cleats, the rope passing under the shoulder where it was gripped by the heavily rosined armpit of our heavy canvas jackets. The anchor sat with his feet against a cleat and the rope, with one turn around his waist, held in both hands. It was the stupidest contest to watch, as neither team moved forward or back, the only movement visible to the spectators being that of the scarlet rag tied to the center of the rope. Moreover, it was extremely dangerous, many internal and other injuries having resulted from the straining of the muscles to the limit, when practically lashed to rope and wooden cleats. We were listening to “Information Please” on the radio one evening, and a question which stumped every one of the group at the microphone was “What team wins its event by moving backwards?”. Of course I instantly said to my family and guests, “Tug of war or boat crew,” forgetting at the moment that we never moved at all. “Tug of war” was the correct answer, all the same! Transportation between Cambridge and Boston was by horsecars, the first electric trolley arriving about 1890, celebrated by Oliver Wendell Holmes in his poem “The Broomstick Train.” It took about an hour to get into Boston for the theater or other places of diversion. There was a persistent rumor that Professor Blank was sometimes seen at the “Maison Dorée”, and that any student fortunate enough to catch sight of him there was sure of high marks in his course. This may have been an advertisement of the resort designed to attract collegiate custom.

The course of experimental lectures on electricity given by old Professor Lovering was attended by crowds of freshmen, chiefly because it was well known that a large glass marble, dropped on the top step of the long flight of stairs which led from the bottom to the top row of seats in the lecture hall, would roll slowly to the bottom, going bump, bump, bump. The experiments were apparently those which he had shown in his first lectures, possibly a half century before — dancing pith balls, electrical chimes, electrified wig, etc., many of which I had done years before in the Sturtevant factory. They were amusing, however, and he was a delightful old gentleman, and it was an easy way of removing a condition in Latin composition. My future roommate “took” the electrical course, but never attended the lectures. I coached him for three evenings and he got an A, while I got a B, which shows that he was smarter than I was, for he gave the answers in as few words as possible, while I tried to show off by writing too much, which always infuriates the examiners.

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When Rob left Harvard in June, 1891, safely graduated with honorable mention in chemistry and natural history, despite the fact that he had doubtless “infuriated” more than one examiner, it was a relief and surprise to his family — and probably to some of the faculty as well.

Chapter Three. Alarms and Explosions

Alarms, Excursions, and Explosions at Johns Hopkins — Ending in Early Marriage and a Job at the University of Chicago

The legend that our Promethean poltergeist spat fire and crepitated flames when fate later made him a full professor — as did the unhappy bear beyond the mountain — is not untrue but garbled. The error is merely one of chronology and is readily understandable, since Wood regarded most professors as purple cows and might well have been upset when he became one.

Time embalmed the error when it wrote him up a couple of years ago, and there appeared in print another chronological mix-up concerning the period when he set fire to the boardinghouse hash. Both these Pantagruelian episodes occurred actually while he was still a student, doing postgraduate work at Johns Hopkins. He’s done even more outrageous things in his full professorial maturity, but it’s only fair to keep the record straight.