Milk and Lemon 
Steven Shapin
- Don’t You Have Time to Think? The Letters of Richard Feynman edited by Michelle Feynman Buy this book
Should you win the Nobel Prize in physics, a lot of people will get in touch. Some of them will be former students (wishing you well); some will be colleagues (saying they wish you well). Presidents and prime ministers, who have no clue what it is you’ve done, will write, expressing the nation’s gratitude for whatever it is you’ve done. Childhood friends will write, saying they knew that nerdiness presaged Nobelity. Old schoolteachers will write, basking in reflected glory and taking their share of credit. The in-laws will write, implicitly retracting their former low opinion of their child’s choice. From all over the world complete strangers will write, requesting photographs and autographs and asking for validation of a totally original unified field theory that somehow escaped Einstein’s attention. Fathers of miserably lonely adolescent geeks will write, wondering whether it will turn out all right. And so too will the adolescent geeks themselves, asking what you were like at their age and whether you think they’ve got a genuine vocation for science.
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Steven Shapin is the Franklin L. Ford Professor of the History of Science at Harvard. The Life of Science: A Moral History of a Late Modern Vocation will appear in the autumn.
Other articles by this contributor:
Hedonistic Fruit Bombs · How good is Château Pavie?
Guests in the President’s House · Science Inc.
Tod aus Luft · The Rise and Fall of Fritz Haber
The Great Neurotic Art · Steven Shapin tucks into Atkins
When Men Started Doing It · At the Grill Station
Don’t let that crybaby in here again · The Manhattan Project
Dear Prudence · Stephen Toulmin
I’m a Surfer · What’s the Genome Worth?
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