Autobiographical: in Robert Rosen's own words, Part I

["Judith Rosen" <***>]

Hi Everyone,

I have finally found one of my father's papers that I have been hunting for
for quite a while; his "Autobiographical Reminiscences" that he was asked to
write for a Systems journal sometime in the early to mid- 1990's. It is the
only official thing he has written discussing the interests he had, the path
he took, the reasons why, and so forth. Because it was for a systems
journal, he said it was written with a slant towards that audience-- which
he usually didn't do. But this was more of a personal narrative rather than
about science, so he kept that in mind as he chose which things to discuss
and what to leave out. That is the only thing I don't like about this paper:
There was a lot he left out. But the fact that this paper exists at all is a
wonderful thing. I'm going to post it in pieces for those who are
interested. It's 15 pages long, single spaced, so I'm going to break it up
over a few days, but it will all be here on the list eventually. I will
label the installments, including  numbers, so that if any list members
don't want to read this biographical information about Robert Rosen, you can
just delete them and save space on your hard drive. One final note: Bear in
mind that this material is protected by copyright and can only be reproduced
or used elsewhere with written permission from me.

Cheers,
Judith



AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL REMINISCENCES
By Robert Rosen

I have never enjoyed writing as an activity in itself, though over the
course of time I have done a considerable amount of it. Already as a
graduate student, I begrudged the time and effort it required; begrudged it
because I already knew what I was merely now repeating and expositing, and
because I felt the effort expended on mere repitition could more profitably
be invested in trying to find out something new. I still feel that way.

I was early persuaded to act otherwise by my mentor Nicolas Rashevsky, then
my Major Professor at the University of Chicago. He did not tell me that I
was being "impractical" in such an attitude; that my scientific career and
status would depend on a burgeoning publication list. He must have known
that such arguments would cut little ice with me. He did not merely demand
it, as he was in a position to do. Rather, he invoked the Categorical
Imperitive; he pointed out that if others had acted as I was proposing to
act, then I could have no access to their accumulated knowledge and wisdom,
and therefore could not learn from them. I had no answer to this, so I
conceded, even while admiring his artistry in choosing that one particular
argument to which I would have to acquiesce.

So I thereby acknowledged a duty to report. That is how I view my scientific
writing; as reporting. It is not proselytizing; it is not advocacy; it is
not even instruction. And it is in that light that I have prepared the
present article, even though it is about me, and not so much about what I
know. I hope the reader will appreciate this spirit from the outset.

Though the reporting of my scientific work, including the material to
follow, is simply the discharge of a Kantian duty, I feel quite otherwise
about the work itself. I have never regarded my attachment to science as
constituting in any conventional sense a "career" or vocation or job. To me,
it is an Imperative in itself, more akin to what theologians refer to as a
"calling"; something which would be corrupted and defiled by being
subordinated to any such personal considerations as constitute professional
aggrandizement. Indeed, it has always seemed to me a kind of miracle that
people were willing to pay me to do what I wanted to do, and would have
done, anyway. On the rare occasions when, at  the urging of others, I have
violated this Imperative for parochial "career" considerations, I have
invariably come to grief. Whatever scientific powers I possess cannot be
employed to such personal ends; like witchcraft, they can only be directed
outward, and cannot be invoked on one's own behalf. Therein lies their
strength, and also, in another sense, their curse.

I must spend some time in explaining this Imperative, since it constitutes,
as it were, the invisible steel skeleton which has guided and which supports
the otherwise perhaps inexplicable diversity of my individual scientific
activities. To me, on the other hand, these activities comprise a
self-evident unity, each one forced on me by the preceding ones, and by that
underlying skeleton, of which I am never unaware.

Einstein has reported how his scientific instincts were galvanized in early
childhood by a compass needle. What the compass needle did for Einstein was
accomplished for me by humble living things; beetles and crickets and
caterpillars. Among my earliest memories are walks through wild and
overgrown vacant lots which dotted the asphalt Brooklyn landscape into which
I was born. Under ever rock was a new and thrilling universe of living
things. From these experiences was born an eternal passion, a lust, to
understand why these things, in their separate ways, were alive, while the
rock was not. The rocks were themselves mildly interesting, but in a bland,
impersonal way; it was the life which was the compelling challenge to me. If
I could find out what the life was, I would know what the rocks were, but,
as it even then seemed to me, not the other way around.

When I was five or six, I was taken to see the Disney film "Fantasia". I
remember being mesmerized by the panoply of life through the eons, which the
Disney cartoonists set to Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring". This was worth
spending a lifetime with. Though I did not even know the word at the time, I
had already determined to become a Biologist.

By that age, I had long since learned not to ask complicated questions of
the adults around me, either family or teachers, because they didn't know.
Although I had no idea then where they came from, books seemed more
authoritative, so I began reading anything I could find dealing with life
and the living. Unconsciously, I was casting about for information, not only
about this life which fascinated me, but on how one best went about
understanding it; information on how to be the kind of Biologist I
increasingly aspired to be.

As I read, and assimilated, and integrated, my perspective continually
shifted. At first, I thought I would be what was then called a "naturalist";
continuing to study and observe organisms in themselves. But lots of other
people had been doing that for a long time, and they did not know (or even
care) what the life was; perhaps the answer was not there, however much fun
such studies might be. Then I thought I would be a paleontologist, going
back and back to the historical beginnings. That phase lasted somewhat
longer, until I realized the answers might not lie in historical records
either. By then I was reading about genetics and biochemistry, about
metabolism and physiology and embryology and the intriguing possibility
disclosed itself that, in the inner workings of what was alive would reside
the best way to get at what made it alive.

Thus, I entered into a prolonged empirical phase, essentially a reductionist
phase, dominated by biochemistry. Although it may surprise some people, I
acquired a fairly extensive laboratory capability during those years. By
this time I was in high school, a "Biology major" at Stuyvesant, taking
elective courses in analytical and organic chemistry, and using the
laboratory facilities for my own purposes when they were unoccupied. I
became rather notorious for these activities, but became good enough to be
utilized informally as a laboratory assistand at faculty demonstrations of
techniques.

It was the attempt to understand what I was doing in these empirical
activities (basically, to understand what a molecule was) that led me to
instruct myself in physical chemistry, and then to the physics which
underlay it, and then, fatefully, into the mathematics in which the physics
was expressed. I somehow came quickly to the conclusion that, wherever the
life was, the avenue for finding it was somewhere in there. That abruptly
ended my empirical phase, and I decided that henceforth, I must become
proficient enough in that mathematical language to understand, to the root,
what realities were being, or indeed could be, expressed through it.

Up to that point, I had had only the most perfunctory interest in the
sciences of the inanimate; these were the rocks again, and not the life.
Suddenly, it now seemed a matter of urgent necessity to master these things.
To facilitate acquiring such a mastery, it seemed the most natural thing in
the world to change my major. So I blithely shifted out of biology and into
mathematics. It felt perfectly right to do so, and I regarded it as the
merest tactical device in the service of the unchanging strategy I wa
groping for.

I couldn't explain to anyone that I was not "abandoning" biology for
mathematics. I well remember vainly trying to explain it to the Guidance
Counselor, who regarded us as high-strung, unstable adolescents, and to whom
any change in behavior patterns was an ominous portent of disaster. Somehow,
I managed to convince her that there was nothing sinister in what I was
doing, but henceforth I had the feeling of being watched closely. I did not
like it.

Thus began a long period of total immersion, in both pure mathematics and in
mathematical physics, which lasted almost unbroken until the end of my
student days. I was accepted by these constituencies as one of them, but at
the cost of not disclosing my ulterior motivations for being there. I felt
much like the Englishman who visited Mecca during the Hadj; disguised as an
Arab, and knowing he would be torn to pieces if his true identity were
disclosed. Indeed, except for the required year of college biology, I took
no more formal courses in the subject until almost done with graduate
school, and then only to satisfy formal degree requirements. But to me, this
posed no hardship; biology was "my" subject, which I could pick up again at
any time, whenever my extended tactical detour was through. In any case,
there was nothing in any of those college biology courses which I didn't
already know,  many times over.

I quickly came to recognize that my instincts had been correct; that the
mathematical universe had much of value to offer me, which could not be
acquired in any other way. I saw that mathematical thought, though nominally
garbed in syllogistic dress, was really about patterns; you had to learn to
see the patterns through the garb. That was what they called "mathematical
maturity". I learned that it was from such patterns that the insights and
theorems really sprang, and I learned to focus on the former rather than the
latter. More of this in a moment.

After a few years of such acclimation I came to focus my interest on the
theory of operators and of operator algebras. This was beaugiful in itself;
but it was also the language of quantum mechanics, then the last and  most
exciting word in theoretical physics. The science of the rocks, and hence,
it was impressively argued, of everything. I resolved to do my graduate work
at the University of Chicago, because its Department of Mathematics was then
the strongest in the country in this field; get my PhD there; and then would
turn back to my Imperative, apparently in the form of getting the life to
emerge from the rocks.

As it happened, I did not go to Chicago immediately after graduating from
Brooklyn College, for familial reasons. While growing up, I had come to love
New York and its infinite diversities, and was fond of boasting that there
was nothing which could not be found in that city, if one only knew where
and how to look. My parents, who were somehow terrified of my "abandoning"
New York for Chicago, threw these words in my teeth; why go to Chicago when
everything was already in New York? We came to a compromise: I would spend
my first graduate year in New York; if I found it unsatisfactory, I could
leave for Chicago unopposed.

******************************************TO BE
CONTINUED**************************************
Website address: http://www.rosen-enterprises.com/