An Extraordinary Talent can be a Handicap | Harvey A. Smith

Ironies and Epiphanies

same stories about them. It was then I appreciated the seriousness of Kay’s declining memory. My empathy for her condition became more personal a few years later when my wife Lucy was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s Disease.

Not many months after the lunch, I received an invitation to a book signing at the ASU University Club. The title of the book was “It Was Magic. The Kathryn Gammage Stories.” The author was Sally Y. There was a crowd and Kay was placed at the second-floor landing at the top of the stair way. When my turn came to purchase the small volume, I obtained Kay’s signature and then turned to Sally, who was standing nearby. As I handed her the book, she pulled me aside, signed her own name, with the addition “Enjoy the Magic,” and opened to page 36, which was headed “Mystery Man.” In part:

Friday lunch date... It’s in my calendar I wrote it down.... Maybe I made it up. I’ve done it before.... Oh, he’s here, My Mystery Man. I’ll say, “It’s so good to see you. I’ve been looking forward to this all week.”

Handing back the book, Sally said, as if sharing a special secret, that I was the Mystery Man!

While Kay Gammage was waiting for me in her apartment for our lunch appointment, Sally said Kay knew she had a lunch date, but did not know with whom. However, she determined it must be with a man because she had a headache.

An Extraordinary Talent Can be a Handicap

Harvey A. Smith

Harold—just out of high school—enrolled as a math major at a college with no graduate math department. When they found Harold already knew the most advanced math offered there, they called Penn and asked that something be done, and Penn’s department invented a research position for him. I was in the first graduate class he took there. We had common interests in

music as well as math and became friends.

Harold earned a bachelor’s degree, taking mostly graduate courses for his math major, and was admitted to the Ivy League’s most prestigious math PhD program. He often returned to Philadelphia and explained the latest mathematical developments at his new school to Penn professors.

I invited Harold to a musical soirée at a Penn professor’s home, where our hostess served separate refreshments for vegetarians. As I drove him home, he asked, “Why would someone be a vegetarian?” I explained it as well as I could. He thought for a few minutes and announced, “That’s reasonable. I think I’ll do that!” For years, when Harold was our dinner guest, we accommodated his vegetarian commitment. Suddenly, he announced he was no longer a vegetarian. A student he met in the cafeteria had told him it was unhealthy.

Harold passed his preliminary PhD exam and sought a thesis advisor. A while later he asked me, “Harvey, you solve problems; how do you do it?”

“What do you mean? You must have solved lots of problems in your courses!”

“Oh no! I have an eidetic memory. I remember everything I read; I even remember what page something was on. I always dropped the course if I couldn’t find the method for solving a problem. Now my advisor has given me a dissertation problem and, of course, there’s nowhere to look that up!”

A dissertation must be an original contribution. If a method for solving it was known, the problem wouldn’t qualify. Harold described his assigned problem. It was out of my field. I was working on my own dissertation and couldn’t offer to help him. (Later, I saw that problem was solved by another of the advisor’s students.) After few months, Harold told me he had given up on the PhD and settled for a master’s degree. Could I help him find a teaching job?

I was teaching at a technical institute that, like his first college, also didn’t have a math major, and they hired Harold. He taught well and was liked by students and faculty. Unfortunately, toward the end of his first year, he sat down at a table in the faculty cafeteria with the President and the Director of Admissions. The latter introduced himself, and Harold unwisely advised him that if any highly talented students applied, they should be rejected so they would go to a good school instead. He was fired at the end of the year. Harold appeared on the verge of nervous collapse, sure that he would never get another job.

Harold visited a friend who taught math at a minor university that, at least, had a graduate math department. An administrator there had just an-

Ironies and Epiphanies