Books: April 2, 1997
The Universe at His Fingertips
Blindness is only a "nuisance" for evolutionary biologist Geerat Vermeij '68
Privileged Hands:
A Scientific Life
Geerat Vermeij '68
W.H. Freeman and Co., $23.95
Three years after he graduated from Princeton, Geerat Vermeij ¹68 earned a Ph.D. from Yale, then went on to become an eminent evolutionary biologist and paleontologist. His academic credentials are all but unmatched in his field. A professor of geology at the University of California at Davis since 1989, he has been awarded MacArthur and Guggenheim fellowships, is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and has served as editor of Evolution and Paleobiology, the leading journals in his field.
Vermeij (pronounced ver-MAY) moved with his family to Nutley, New Jersey, from the Netherlands at the age of nine and Americanized his first name to ³Gary.² One special day in the fourth grade he decided to become a scientist. Wanting to decorate the window sills of the classroom, his teacher, Mrs. Colberg, brought back a few shells and pieces of coral from Florida. Already fond of shells from explorations at beaches in the Netherlands, Vermeij was startled by the elegance of the Florida shells. They seemed to have ³been crafted by a sculptor with an eye for regularity and intricate detail,² he remembers. ³The shell interiors were not dull, but smoother and more polished than I had ever imagined possible.²
Thus hooked, Vermeij went on to learn as much about the evolution and structure of mollusks as any scientist on earth. He has advanced the field time and again with discoveries at crucial junctures in their evolutionary history. One occurred in 1970 when, on a field trip to Guam, he realized that some mollusks had developed thicker shells than others, apparently to protect them against predators. The discovery was striking confirmation that the role of predators is highly significant in how and why a given species adapts and changes over time. Vermeij was able to accomplish such a feat by recognizing patterns that other scientists had not noticed.
Remarkably, he has accomplished this without seeing a single shell. He was born in Sappemeer, Holland, with a rare kind of childhood glaucoma that enlarged his eyes and left him with little vision. Suffering excruciating and relentless pain, he was subjected to semiweekly operations in an effort to provide relief and salvage what vision remained. Finally the country¹s leading ophthalmologist, then treating the youngest of Queen Juliana¹s four daughters for a similar ailment, recommended that his eyes be removed and replaced with artificial ones.
This procedure would eliminate the pain, remove the the threat of permanent brain damage, and create a normal appearance. His parents‹³wisely² he states‹consented, and the fina1 surgery took place shortly before Geerat¹s fourth birthday. On the operating table, he recalls, he saw a glow of yellow‹then nothing. Afterward, the doctor urged his parents to treat him no differently than they did his brother, Arie. ³Regard blindness as a nuisance that can be overcome, not as an unmitigating tragedy or debilitating affliction,² the doctor counseled.
In Privileged Hands, Vermeij relates how, guided by a strong and loving family, he did just that by turning an apparent disability into an advantage. Immersing himself in academics‹his ³only plausible alternative²‹he learned to see biological form and function by means of his ears, nose, and, especially, his charmed hands. He did so with a perception that other students and, later, even eminent scientists such as Stephen Jay Gould could not match with their eyes.
Princeton readers will find a unique perspective in his account of life on campus as a socially inept, impecunious, blind student‹probably the only one there at the time. His description of his first meal at Commons is memorable: ³A thick greasy slice of gristly roast beef lay before me like a corpse, mired on a muddy beach of instant mashed potatoes.² Gone was his mother¹s simple and healthful Dutch cooking, rich with nutmeg in fresh green beans, cauliflower, potatoes, and meat. ³Could I survive here, I wondered.²
He found other aspects of American college life in the ¹60s unappealing, the country seeming to disdain intellectuals and reveling in the banalities of television. ³All the ugliness and decay of the age were captured and amplified by the dissonant music that blared intrusively out of dormitory windows,¹¹ he observes. Nothing at the university was more humiliating than bicker. Although he did join a club, he eventually resigned to join the Wilson Society, ³the club for nonclubbies in Wilcox Hall.²
Fortunately, Princeton was more than bicker and rock music, and Vermeij found two flexible and openminded mentors, theoretical ecologist Robert H. MacArthur and Alfred G. Fischer, a paleontologist and geologist; they gently steered him toward a career he could master with his unusual talents. In Vermeij¹s special case, the official university policy seems to have been one of benign neglect. He was allowed to recruit his own student readers at $2.50 per hour (funded by the State Commission for the Blind), arrange his own procedures for taking examinations, and to take notes in Braille. This process produced a sort of muffled pitter-patter that course instructors could find annoying. One, Malcolm Steinberg, stopped the first lecture in his embryology course to ask Vermeij, sitting in the front row, what he was doing. ³Well, I am taking Braille notes with a slate and stylus, replied Vermeij, embarrassed by the attention. Now embarrassed himself, Steinberg hurriedly apologized and resumed talking. ³If he used the level of background static as a measure of the value of his lectures, Steinberg should have been well pleased,² writes Vermeij.
This inspiring, readable memoir is at its best when tracing the intellectual development and distinguished career of a wise, determined, and extremely likable man whom readers might never have the chance to know otherwise. Vermeij has a talent for making subtle nuances of evolution accessible, particularly in describing his own fieldwork in its relationship to theory. Paleontologists in the past have tended to focus on how large-scale changes in factors such as geology and climate shaped life. Vermeij¹s work, a foundation of the emerging field of paleoecology, is forcing a new view that interactions among animals, particularly predation, are also significant.
Believing that blind persons should not be held to different standards, Vermeij is a critic of affirmative action. ³Blindness is but one of my attributes, along with being stubborn, Dutch, male, scientifically inclined and a host of others,² he states. His rich life of scientific investigation, teaching, research, writing, and editing emphatically proves his point. Privileged Hands should be required reading for anyone struggling with physical disability.
‹John Boslough ¹67
John Boslough is the author of five books, most recently The Very First Light: The True Inside Story of the Scientific Journey Back to the Dawn of the Universe, with coauthor John C. Mather. He is currently completing a novel.
Putting Children First
The Worth of a Child
Thomas H. Murray *76
University of California Press, $29.95 cloth
Thomas H. Murray *76 in The Worth of a Child addresses the moral aspects of parent-child relations‹issues that are both timeless and, due to medical and social changes, always in flux. Murray, the director of the Center for Biomedical Ethics at the School of Medicine at Case Western Reserve University, is dissatisfied with how bioethics treats children; he is especially bothered by ³the failure to take seriously what we value about children and family life.² He proposes a integrated approach to family matters, focusing on why people have kids and the needs of children and parents.
Drawing on well-known cases, Murray¹s analyses of infertility treatments, adoption, prenatal testing, medical experiments, and abortion provide a fresh way to consider these issues. His thinking applies equally well to bioethical controversies beyond the scope of the book, such as genetic testing of adults. Given the highly personal nature of these topics, Murray stands a good chance of enraging readers when a discussion hits close to home. For example, a major concern with the intrusion of ³the inexorable moral logic of the marketplace² into family relationships leads him to question payments made to sperm ³vendors,² his economically oriented term for donors. While not always convincing, the provocations mean that Murray is doing a good job pursuing his arguments. His effort to move the abortion debate beyond its endless deadlock regarding the personhood of the fetus is especially notable. Overall, he combines the rigorous method of a moral philosopher with the common sense one would expect from the father of four children (namely, Kate, Nicky, Pete, and Emily).
‹Van Wallach ¹80
Van Wallach, who lives in Westport, Connecticut, is a frequent contributor to paw.
Books Received
Lambshead Legacy: The Ranch Diary of Watt R. Matthews [¹21]
Janet M. Neugebauer, ed.
Texas A&M University Press, $24.95
More Timely Rhymes from the Sherman Sentinel
Henry George Fischer ¹45
Orders to Sherman Sentinel, P.O. Box 64, Sherman, CT 06784. $6.50 paper