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 Loomis to Mr. Hoke-Jones, who made the clocks. His workshop was reached by climbing a dusty staircase, and there was little or no machinery in sight, but one of the wonderful clocks was standing in the corner, almost completed, which made the total production to date six. Mr. Loomis asked casually what the price of the clock was, and on being told that it was two hundred and forty pounds (about $1,200), said casually, “That’s very nice. I’ll take three”. Mr. Jones leaned forward, as if he had not heard, and said, “I beg your pardon?” “I am ordering three”, replied Mr. Loomis. “When can you have them finished? I’ll write you a check in payment for the first clock now”.

Mr. Jones, who up to then had the expression of one who thinks he is conversing with a maniac, became apologetic. “Oh, no”, he said, “I couldn’t think of having you do that, sir. Later on, when we make the delivery, will be quite time enough”. But Loomis handed him the check nevertheless.

* * *

During the ensuing weeks they motored about England, visited the continent, and returned, showed motion pictures of the supersonic experiments before the Royal Society, went to the Derby, lunched and dined with celebrities — and then took a flying trip to Copenhagen, where they saw Niels Bohr, and then went on to Germany.

Again, at Berlin University, they showed motion pictures of their supersonic experiments, met Pringsheim, von Laue, Planck, Nernst, and most of the other famous scientists then alive in Germany. They visited the Zeiss works at Jena and the University of Gottingen, where they were invited to see a student duel. Wood was all for seeing it, but dueling was, of course, against the law, and Loomis was unwilling.

We hadn’t heard from Boys meanwhile (says Wood), and it was time to be getting aboard the Paris. Loomis had sent Boys his steamer ticket, but we had no means of knowing whether or not his courage would hold out. As the liner slowed down at Plymouth to take on the English passengers, we looked anxiously down on the little tender, and there he was waving his hand joyfully and all ready to scramble up the gangplank, looking as relieved at finding us really on the steamer as were we at seeing him on the tender.

We had the best of everything on the boat, and the Chief Steward had a special surprise for us every night at dinner, marvels of French cooking. On the last day he announced at lunch that he had a grand surprise, something very unusual, a great luxury! “Epatant! Only wait and see”. Sure enough, after the soup and fish a wagon was solemnly rolled up to our table, bearing a great silver dish covered with an oval silver dome. The Chief Steward was in attendance. He rubbed his hands together and smiled at us, and then lifted the cover, displaying in all its stark nakedness a huge shapeless mass of shivering, steaming corned beef, garnished with cabbage and cauliflower and whatever else goes with this, my pet abomination, a New England boiled dinner.

* * *

Back in America, they learned that Professor James Franck, Nobel prize winner, was coming over in January to give lectures at various universities. Wood suggested to Loomis that he hold a congress of physicists in his Tuxedo Park laboratory in Franck’s honor. Franck accepted and the meeting was held in the library, a room of cathedral-like proportions, with stained- glass windows. Franck gave his first lecture in America there. Wood, Loomis, and others made subsequent addresses. The visiting American physicists were conducted through the laboratory and shown the supersonic and other experiments. The congress in this palace of science proved such a success that it was repeated the following year.

Chapter Sixteen.

How Wood Solved the Mystery of King Tutankhamen’s Purple Gold — with the Aid of His Wife’s Nail Polish

In the weird Wood guest book at East Hampton is a drawing made by Ambrose Lansing, curator of Egyptology at the Metropolitan Museum in New York. It is only slightly Egyptian. It is a burlesque of Wood’s own Animal Analogues, and is entitled “The Wood and the Woodchuck”. It depicts the woodchuck stealing lettuce from a cold frame not unlike a museum case, and the Wood similarly engaged in purloining the famous purple-gold sequins of King Tutankhamen from their case in the Cairo Museum.

“A joke’s a joke”, said Dr. Wood, “but after all we didn’t steal the purple sequins. You might say we abstracted them with the connivance of the Curator. You might even say, if it gives you more fun to put me always in the worst possible light, that we surreptitiously abstracted them, but — ”

“Did Curator Engelbach of the Cairo Museum say, or didn’t he”, I interrupted,” ‘For God’s sake keep it secret until you get out of the country, and on no account let Howard Carter know’?”