Below: Pryslak at his home near Bryan, Ohio (photo by: Steve Linsenmayer)
thing: “In six weeks’ time, I’m going to have something for you.” And he always did. Pryslak said he devised protocols for diagnosing existing problems and predicting future ones that are in wide use in various industries. “I never made (my ideas) proprietary,” he said. “I never copyrighted them. I just share them wherever I go.”
As a boy, Pryslak had been “a Sputnik kid” and had won a science fair by using a radium dial watch to make alpha, beta and gamma particles visible to the naked eye. “I thought about where I was as a kid,” Pryslak said.
“And here someone is offering me the chance to work on something of this scale, this piece of equipment.” Naturally, Pryslak had to run the whole idea past his doctor and his wife. Both of them said, “no.” They had good reason, given Pryslak’s recent health history. But the tenacious Pryslak assured his wife that he was feeling pretty good and accepted the roughly seven-week position at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, in Meyrin, Switzerland. Pryslak is not allowed to say much about the time he spent at a location eight miles outside of Geneva. The Hadron Supercollider is located 300 feet down in solid bedrock, so Pryslak had to regularly ride “a very scary elevator.” Pryslak said he worked six to seven days a week, 12 to 14 hour days. He had a chance to meet Higgs, whom many of Pryslak’s family members have pointed out he physically resembles. When Pryslak left Switzerland, there were several short term modifications from and by several groups to be made by the end of 2011. The consortium of Pryslak suffered a mild stroke in 2010 and decided modifications allowed the LHC to accomplish a higher a year later that he’d optimized enough equipment for power rating later that year. a lifetime and trained enough people in his methods. Little more than a year later, physicists from CERN Three days after that, however, he received an announced that they had discovered a “Higgs-like” unexpected phone call from a man with a central Euparticle. ropean accent. The man identified himself as Arek, diIt goes without saying that this experience was a rector of BalticBerg Consulting. Arek said he’d heard career highlight, but Pryslak said there have been othfrom one of Pryslak’s former supervisors that he was ers. retired. Pryslak said he contributed to the creation of a one“I said, ‘Yeah for a whole three days.’” dose-a-month version of Risperidone, Pryslak recalls. “ ‘What’s up?’ ” an anti-psychotic drug. Patients who As it turned out, Arek coveted Prysare prescribed Risperidone often forI help people. lak’s expertise. Arek and his team get or neglect to take it regularly. I solve their needed someone to increase the ef“That’s a good feeling,” he said. “I problems. I enjoy ficiency of a piece of equipment they helped somebody’s pain. That, to me, were working with near Geneva, Switis the greatest. it immensely. zerland, called the Large Hadron Col“I had several other activities in my lider, a colossal particle accelerator career that gave me that same feeling,” built to collide protons. Pryslak said. They couldn’t get it above 50 percent, Arek These days, Pryslak, 66, and his wife are enjoying a explained. If they failed to increase the power, Arek lakeside retirement. said, they wouldn’t be able to use it to confirm or rule A friend in a nearby hardware store asked him to out the existence of the Higgs boson, aka the God help out in the shop one day, and now Pryslak is workParticle. ing there part-time. It isn’t really all that different from Pryslak thought the call was a joke, of course, and what he did before. then he put the sincere-seeming Arek on hold so that “I help people,” he said. “I solve their problems. he could collect his thoughts. I enjoy it immensely.” ¢
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