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Daniel Dunaief

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Abhay Deshpande with a group of students at Stony Brook University. Photo from SBU

By Daniel Dunaief

The American Association for the Advancement of Science recently named physicist Abhay Deshpande a Fellow.

Abhay Deshpande. Photo from SBU

Deshpande, who thinks big about small matter, has distinguished himself with his discoveries, ideas, leadership, innovation, and mentorship. The Director of Electron Ion Collider Science at Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) and SUNY Distinguished Professor at Stony Brook University will become a fellow as part of an online ceremony on Feb. 19.

“I was really pleasantly honored” to be a part of a group that includes so many leaders in science, including actor and science advocate Alan Alda, who founded the eponymous Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science at Stony Brook, said Deshpande.

Deshpande’s collaborators and scientific colleagues said Deshpande deserved the AAAS honor, which the society has given since 1874.

“Everything [Deshpande] has been doing is advancing science,” said Haiyan Gao, Associate Laboratory Director in Nuclear and Particle Physics at BNL.

Fundamental questions

A physicist who earned his bachelor’s degree from the University of Bombay, which is now called the University of Mumbai, his Master’s degree from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur and his PhD at Yale University, Deshpande has put his academic and intellectual talents to work answering fundamental questions about atoms.

In his research, Deshpande studies protons in the nucleus.

Inside protons and neutrons are quarks and gluons, which are fundamental particles. Gluons have no mass and bind the quarks together, which suggests that the mass of protons must come from quarks — except that it doesn’t.

“The surprise is that all quarks together only account for about one percent of the proton’s mass,” Deshpande explained in an email.

Researchers don’t know how the components of quarks and gluons and their energies contribute to the proton’s mass. At the same time, Deshpande wants to know about the origin of a proton’s spin. 

Quarks constitute about a quarter of a proton’s spin and gluon’s another quarter, which suggests that the remaining spin should come from their orbital angular momentum.

Deshpande never thought about the mass deficit until a few years ago because of his focus on a proton’s spin. “The same rotational motion of the quarks and gluons could not only explain the spin, but hopefully explain the mass,” Deshpande said. Such a solution to both unanswered questions would be “elegant,” he said.

EIC champion

A $2 billion Electron Ion Collider, which the Department of Energy awarded BNL in 2020, will take measurements that will study the origin of the remaining spin and mass. BNL will start building the EIC, which will take eight years to construct, in 2024.

Dmitri Kharzeev, Distinguished Professor and Director in the Center for Nuclear Theory at Stony Brook University, helped nominate Deshpande to become a AAAS fellow in part because of his work developing BNL’s EIC bid.

Deshpande “really played a major role in bringing this project to Long Island,” Kharzeev said. “It means a lot for BNL, and it also means a lot for Long Island as a whole. A lot of people will be hired to work on it.”

Kharzeev said Deshpande is the leader of the science effort at the EIC “precisely because of his status in the scientific community.”

Kharzeev said some of Deshpande’s papers are “among the highest-cited papers in experimental nuclear physics,” which is considered a reflection of the importance of the work.

Gao credited Deshpande and other key leaders in the community for preparing a “white paper which laid out the science in a very convincing and powerful way,” which helped make the EIC a reality.

In addition to Deshpande’s accomplishments as a scientist, Kharzeev lauded his colleague’s leadership. Deshpande brought together researchers from BNL and Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility in Virginia, which were originally competing for the rights to build the EIC. He helps researchers “put science first and scientific politics second,” which is a “spectacular achievement,” Kharzeev said.

Throughout his career, Deshpande has sought to find complementary strengths among his colleagues.

He is the founding director of the Center for Frontiers in Nuclear Science, which is a joint operation between BNL and SBU and is passionate about sharing the excitement of research with people who work outside science.

“The science we do, the excitement we feel, needs to be talked about to high school students, to college students, to their parents” and to others, Deshpande added. 

Decision-makers in the government need to understand the benefit of the research, as well as the general public, whose taxes ultimately fund future discoveries, he said, and believes communicating science requires connecting with a range of audiences.

Science communicator

Deshpande’s colleagues gave him high marks for encouraging productive collaborations. He is “able to make very good, easy connections with people,” Gao said and is “approachable and easy to work with.”

Ciprian Gal, Assistant Research Professor at Mississippi State and Visiting Scholar at the Center for Frontiers in Nuclear Science, was a graduate student in Deshpande’s lab from 2010 to 2014

While he appreciated Deshpande’s intellectual acumen and knowledge of physics, Gal admired his mentor’s accessibility and eagerness to share his passion for science.

“He’s always very open” to everyone, Gal said, including students of any age. During Summer Sunday events at BNL, Deshpande spoke at length with middle school students and their parents.

“He instills a desire to communicate in all of us,” said Gal, who also appreciated how Deshpande made himself available to the graduate students in his lab during off hours and on weekends.

Engaging audiences

While he was interested in science during his formative years in high school in Mumbai, India, Deshpande also participated in several dramatic productions that were in Marathi, his native language. Typically, the plays tried to convey messages such as the importance of literacy and education or against blind faith and misinformation. Deshpande sees a benefit to using the techniques of drama to engage the audience.

He believes the EIC will provide precise knowledge of properties of the proton and the nuclei. “I promise that we will learn lots of new things,” he said.

Kindergarten connection

The celebrated physicist is married to Arati Deshpande, who works at American Health Pharmaceuticals. The couple, who met when they were in kindergarten and now live in Miller Place, have a daughter, Pooja, who is a graduate student at the Gillings School of Public Health in Chapel Hill, N.C. and a son, Ameesh, who is in high school.

As for his advice to students, Deshpande urges them to “identify a good scientific problem and pursue it no matter the cost or time.”

 

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METRO photo

By Daniel Dunaief

Daniel Dunaief

A friend who is the same age as I am recently and suddenly died, leaving behind a wife and two daughters in college who are the same age I was when my father died.

I feel like I’m at the center of a prism, with light bouncing out in so many directions that it’s difficult to track each path.

I am devastated for my friend. I know he will miss many of the same things my father never got to experience. He won’t see his daughters graduate from college, develop their careers, and enjoy learning about themselves through relationships.

He also won’t get to wake up another morning and see his wife’s smile, make plans for the day, and make the kinds of decisions we take for granted, like where to go on vacation, whom to see over the weekend, what friend to call and visit, or how to brighten someone else’s day.

I knew him as a dedicated father, who beamed when he spoke of his twin daughters. Unlike so many other parents whose children play sports, he didn’t need his daughters to be superstars. His joy mirrored theirs. 

I’m sorry for his wife, too, who shared two decades of experience with him and their two children. She went from being in an empty nest to being in an empty house in 18 months. Everywhere she looks, she will see reminders of her husband and the life they shared.

I relate to his daughters. I know how strange it is to be in college, surrounded by friends who suddenly don’t know what to say to them. If friends ask the girls how they are doing, will they tell them, leaving many of their friends without the tools, experience or words to respond?

Death leaves a hole in our lives. The friends they have in college, like mine decades ago, may not know about that hole and may not have even met the man missing from the center of their lives.

A week after I buried my father, I was back at school, finding it difficult to concentrate or even to care about upcoming exams or responsibilities. 

When I told a math professor about my loss, he went out of his way to tutor me, to ask me how I was, and to be patient, waiting for me to tell him when I was ready to take a midterm. He arranged for me to take an exam on my own. He made a point of looking for me after each lecture. I appreciated the support and, yet, I felt so weak and angry that I needed it.

I remember the first horrifying moment I didn’t feel the weight of the loss of my father. I was wracked with guilt. What kind of son was I that I had, even for a moment, neglected to mourn?

I also recall the first person I met in those turbulent few weeks who didn’t know my story, who treated me like everyone else and who didn’t say she was sorry for my loss. We had the closest thing to a normal evening, which, at that time, was extraordinary.

In the weeks, months and years ahead, my friend’s daughters will remember the great moments with their father. They will look back at their idyllic childhoods and remember the mom and dad who made that possible.

In the days ahead, however, they will feel a flood of emotions and have a range of thoughts. I hope that they find the kind of peace that comes from appreciating what they had and knowing that, no matter how much they might feel this way, they are not alone and that others share their experiences and care for them.

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A collection of tools found in Grotte Mandrin of both Neanderthals and modern humans. The pointier tools were made by modern humans about 54,000 years ago. Image from Ludovic Slimak
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A collection of tools found in Grotte Mandrin of both Neanderthals and modern humans. The pointier tools were made by modern humans about 54,000 years ago. Image from Ludovic Slimak
Nanopoint (about 10mm long) of the Neronian, technology of the first Modern humans in Europe. 1 :1 scale and enlargement. Visual scale : 1 eurocent. Photo Ludovic Slimak.
Micropoint (below 30mm long) of the Neronian, technology of the first Modern humans in Europe. Photo Ludovic Slimak
View of Grotte Mandrin overhanging the Rhône corridor. The Rhône is the second river of the Mediterranean sea after the Nile and the most important natural corridor linking mediterranean and continental Europe. Photo Ludovic Slimak.
View of Grotte Mandrin. Photo Ludovic Slimak
View of Grotte Mandrin overhanging the Rhône corridor. The Rhône is the second river of the Mediterranean sea after the Nile and the most important natural corridor linking mediterranean and continental Europe. Photo Ludovic Slimak.
View of the Rhône river at the latitude of Grotte Mandrin. The Rhône is the second river of the Mediterranean sea after the Nile and the most important natural corridor linking mediterranean and continental Europe. Photo Ludovic Slimak.
Vertical view of the Grotte Mandrin. Photo Rob Hope.
View of the excavations at the entrace of Grotte Mandrin cave. Photo Ludovic Slimak.
View of the excavations at the entrace of Grotte Mandrin cave. Photo Ludovic Slimak.
View of an in situ long blade of the Neronian of Grotte Mandrin, technology of the first Modern humans in Europe. Photo Ludovic Slimak
Marine Frouin drilling at the Grotte Mandrin to collect samples. Photo by Ludovic Slimak
This diagram shows how long ago the Neanderthal teeth were found in the cave and the crucial level at which a homo sapien tooth was found in the cave. (Ka stands for thousands). Image from Ludovic Slimak
View of the excavations at the entrace of Grotte Mandrin cave. Photo Ludovic Slimak.
Dr Ludovic Slimak, director of the Grotte Mandrin archeological project. Photo Dr Laure Metz.
View of the excavations at the entrace of Grotte Mandrin cave. Photo Ludovic Slimak.
Jason Lewis and archaeologist Pierre Andre in a nearby cave. Photo by Ludovic Slimak

By Daniel Dunaief

Two Stony Brook University researchers are helping a team of scientists rewrite the timeline of modern humans in Europe.

Prior to a ground breaking study conducted in the Rhône Valley in a cave called Grotte Mandrin in southern France, researchers had believed that homo sapiens — i.e. earlier versions of us — had arrived in Europe some time around 45,000 years ago.

Scientists had been studying the stone tools in this cave for close to 30 years that seemed inconsistent with the narrative that Neanderthals had exclusively occupied Europe at that point. Researchers found key evidence in this cave, including advanced tools and teeth that came from modern humans, that pushed the presence of modern humans back by about 10,000 years to about 56,800 years ago, while also indicating that the two types of humans interacted in the same place.

“This is a huge paradigm shift in our understanding of modern human origin expansion,” said Jason Lewis, a lecturer in the Department of Anthropology at Stony Brook University and Assistant Director at the Turkana Basin Institute in Kenya. “We can demonstrate that it was modern humans. We have a whole series of radiometric dates to shore that up 100 percent. Any method that was useful was applied” to confirm the arrival of homo sapiens in southern France.

Ludovic Slimak, CNRS researcher based at the University of Toulouse Jean Jaures, is the lead author on a 130-page paper that came out this week in Science Advances. Slimak has been exploring a site for 24 years that he describes as a kind of Neanderthalian Pompei, without the catastrophe of Mount Vesuvius erupting and preserving a record of the lives the volcano destroyed.

“This is a major turn, maybe one of the most important since a century,” Slimak explained in an email.

The early Homo sapiens travelers left behind clues about their presence in a rock shelter that alternately served as a home for Homo sapiens and Neanderthals in the same year.

“We demonstrate in our paper that there is less than a year, maybe a season (six months), maximal time between the last Neanderthal occupation in the cave and the first Sapiens settlement,” Slimak wrote. “This is a very, very short time!”

The scientists came to this conclusion after they developed a new way to analyze the soot deposits on the vault fragments of the cave roof, he added.

When modern humans arrived in the Rhône Valley, they likely turned to Neanderthals, who had occupied the area considerably longer, as scouts to guide them, Slimak suggested.

Homo sapiens likely traveled by boat to France at the same time that other Homo sapiens journeyed over the water to Australia, between 50,000 and 60,000 years ago.

“We know that when Mandrin groups reached western Europe, Eurasian populations perfectly master navigation at the other end of the continent,” Slimak explained in an email. “It is then very likely that these technologies were at this time period well known by all these populations.”

Different tools

In addition to fossils, scientists have focused on the tools that Homo sapiens produced and used. Homo sapiens likely used bows or spears with mechanical propulsion, while Neanderthals had heavy hand-cast spears, Slimak explained.

The modern human technology was “very impressive,” Slimak added. They are exactly the same technologies we found in the eastern Mediterranean at the very beginning of the Upper Paleolithic in the same chronology [as] the Grotte Mandrin.”

The tools were small and pointed and looked like the kind of arrowheads someone might find when hiking along trails on Long Island, Lewis described. “It’s never been suggested or demonstrated that Neanderthals made bows and arrows or complex projectiles,” he said.

Once they discovered teeth of Homo sapiens, the researchers found the conclusive fossil proof of “who was there doing this,” Lewis said. “Even on a baby tooth, you can distinguish Neanderthals from modern humans.”

While researchers have excavated other caves in the Middle Rhône Valley region, they have not used such stringent methods, Lewis explained. “Mandrin is truly unique for the vision it gives us into this period of the past,” he explained in an email. He described Mandrin as more of a rock shelter than a cave, which is about 10 meters wide and eight meters deep.

The importance of timing

With the importance of providing specific dates for these discoveries, scientists who specialize in ancient chronology, such as Marine Frouin, joined the team.

Frouin, who started working in the Grotte Mandrin in 2014 when she was a post-doctoral fellow at the Luminescence Laboratory at the University of Oxford, looks for the presence of radioactive elements like potassium, thorium and uranium to determine the age of sediments. When these elements decay, they emit radiation, which the sediments accumulate.

Frouin likened the build up of radioactive elements in the grains to the process of charging a battery. Over time, the radioactive energy increases, providing a signal for the last time sunlight reached the sediment.

Indeed, when the sun reaches these grains, it eliminates the signal, which means that Frouin collected samples in lower light, transported them to a lab or facility in darkness, and then analyzed them in rooms that look like a photographer’s darkroom studio.

Frouin conducted the first of three approaches to determining the timing for these discoveries. She used luminescence on quartz, feldspar and flint and was the first one to obtain dates in 2014. Colleagues at the Université de Paris then conducted Thermoluminescence dating on burnt flint, while the lab of Andaine Seguin-Orlando at the University Paul Sabatier Toulouse 3 provided single grain dating.

The three labs “were able to combine all our results together and propose a very precise chronology for this site with very high confidence,” she explained in an email.

Frouin, who arrived at Stony Brook University in January of 2020, has designed and built her own lab, where she plans to study samples and advance the field of luminescence dating.

At this point, luminescence dating can provide the timing from a few hundred years ago to 600,000 years, beyond which the radioactive signal reaches its maximum brightness. Trained as a physicist, Frouin, however, is developing new techniques to find larger doses from grains that data at least over a million years old.

Journey to France

During this period of time on the Earth, the climate was especially cold. That, Lewis said, would favor the continued use of the cave by Neanderthals, who could have survived better under more challenging conditions.

At around 55,000 years ago, however, something may have shifted in the modern human population that allowed Homo sapiens to survive in a colder climate. These changes could include projectile weapons, more advanced clothing and/or social cooperation.

“These are all hypotheses we are dealing with,” Lewis said. “In this case, it seems like a tentative exploration by modern humans into Western Europe.”

The cave itself would have been especially appealing to Neanderthals or modern humans because of its geographic and topological features. For scientists, some of those same features also helped provide a chronological record to indicate when each of these groups lived in that space.

Near the cave, the Rhône River provides a way to travel. The cave itself is situated at a bottleneck through which groups of migrating animals such as horse, bison and deer traveled to follow their own food sources.

“It’s one of the most strategic points in Southern France,” Lewis said.

Indeed, Allied Forces during World War II recognized the importance of this site, landing in Provence on August 15, 1944. The progression into Europe mirrored the expansion of modern humans, said Lewis, who studies history and is particularly interested in WWII.

The site faces northwest in a part of the Rhône Valley in which the mistral wind, which is a cold and dry strong wind, can reach up to speeds of 60 miles per hour. During the glacial period, the wind blew dust that came off the tundra of northern Europe, filling the cave with fine grain sediment that helped preserve the site. Using that dust, scientists determined that Neanderthals had occupied that cave for almost 100,000 years. Around 55,000 years ago, modern humans showed up, who were replaced again by Neanderthals.

A resident of Stony Brook, Lewis lives with his wife Sonia Harmand, who is in the same department at Stony Brook and with whom he has collaborated on research, and their daughter Scarlett.

A native of Dover, Pennsylvania, Lewis decided to study evolution after reading a coffee table book at a friend’s house when he was 13 that included descriptions of the work of the late paleoanthropologist Richard Leakey. After reading that book, Lewis said evolution made sense to him and he was eager to participate in the search for evidence of the changes that led to modern humans.

His first field experience was in a Neanderthal site in France, where he also traveled to the Turkana basin in Kenya for a project directed by Rutgers University. Ultimately, he wound up working for Rutgers and has conducted considerable research in Kenya as well.

“After working at Rutgers, I came to Stony Brook to work for [Richard Leakey in a field school at [what would become] the Turkana Basin Institute,” he said. The combination of his earlier aspirations to join Leakey, his first research field experiences including time in France and Kenya, and his eventual work with Leakey and his role at TBI were a part of his “circle of life.”

Lewis is thrilled to be a part of the ongoing effort to share information discovered in a cave he called a “magical place. The satisfaction at being there is high.”

For Slimak, the years of work at the site have been personally and professionally transformational. After taking necessary breaks from the rigors of excavating on the cave floor, he is now more comfortable sleeping on a hard floor than on a soft mattress.

Professionally, Slimak described this paper as the culmination of 32 years of continuous scientific efforts, which includes a “huge amount of very important unpublished data” that include social, cultural, economic and historical organization of these populations.

The current paper represents “only the visible part of the iceberg and many important enlightenment and other fascinating discoveries from my team will be made available in the coming months and years.”

A tough beginning

A native of Bordeaux, France, Frouin had a tough start to her work at Stony Brook. She arrived two months before the pandemic shut down many businesses and services, including driving schools and social security offices.

When she arrived, she didn’t have a driver’s permit or a credit history, which meant that she relied on the kindness and support of her colleagues and transportation from car services to pick up necessities like groceries.

A resident of Port Jefferson, Frouin, who enjoys playing electric guitar and does oil painting when she’s not studying sediments, said it took just under a year to get her American driver’s license.

Frouin, who has an undergraduate and a graduate student in her lab and is expecting to add another graduate student soon, appreciates the opportunity to explore the differences between the north and south shore of Long Island. 

As for her contribution to this work, she said this effort was “extremely exciting. I’m doing what I wanted to do since I was a kid. We were able to answer many questions that maybe 20 years ago, we weren’t able to answer.”

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Pixabay photo

By Daniel Dunaief

Daniel Dunaief

At the same time that TV advertisements often frustrate me because I’d like to find out what happens next in the show I’m watching, I appreciate the messages people are trying to send.

Sometimes, the ad is such a loss for me that I figure I couldn’t possibly be the target audience.

There’s that ad for a chocolate bar that makes a woman float in a store. Right, because eating that specific type of chocolate creates such a trippy, LSD-type experience that she not only feels incredible and floats above everyone else in the store, but the other customers see her floating.

“Look, up in the sky. It’s a bird. It’s a plane. Nope, it’s just another person who ate the trippy chocolate bar that lets them float to the ceiling!”

Then there are all the ads for medical products that could cure something, but that have such severe side effects that the risks may not be worth the cure.

“We might cure your hiccups,” the ad suggests, “or we might cause you to have such trouble breathing that you should stop taking our medicine and see a doctor.”

That brings me to the ad for Truist.

Have you seen their ads, with the pile of soft stuff that looks like an old collection of the stuffed animals my children used to win at boardwalk games or receive for birthday presents?

This pile of soft things rolls along, helping people by recovering hats that blow off at the beach, bringing a spare tire to a man stuck on the side of the road, or delivering a flower to a girl waiting on a bench with her mother.

Being the OCD parent that I am, I would probably say to my daughter, “Don’t take anything from a blob that’s been rolling on the filthy street!”

I imagine the idea for the rolling blob that cares could have originated in a number
of ways.

“George” might have forgotten that he needed to come up with an ad while he was racing to wake his daughter for school. Seeing the pile of stuffed animals he was supposed to help clean up in her room, he thought, “Hmmm, if I throw this in my car, it’ll look like I cleaned up and maybe I can use it as a part of my work.”

Once he arrived at the office, he threw the stuffed animals on the table, hoping he wouldn’t get fired and, just as importantly, that he didn’t lose any of her treasured toys.

Or, perhaps, “Andrea” couldn’t sleep the night before she had to present an idea. At 3:21 a.m. she watched an old western. There, in between the John Wayne dialog and the crescendo to a gunfight, she found inspiration. Rolling across the screen was the ubiquitous tumbleweed.

“That’s it!” she thought, as she imagined Tumbleweed 2.0, the modern version of an iconic image of the Old West. Instead of a collection of dried out grass, the modern Truist Tumbleweed (at that hour, alliteration is awesome!) is composed of soft, plush stuffed animals. And, instead of being indifferent to the plight of the people it passes, the Truist Tumbleweed cares, lending a stuffed animal hand.

“George” and “Andrea” may have moved on to other jobs. Or, thinking outside the box, they may have gotten a promotion. They could use some of that extra money to buy risky remedies or trippy chocolate. And, hey, if they have any problems, the Truist Tumbleweed is ready to show it cares.

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Above, medical and quartermaster corps men in connection with the United States Army Hospital in Fort Porter, New York. Public domain photos

By Daniel Dunaief

[email protected]

At the end of World War I, Spanish Influenza caused the world to focus on the same kinds of measures that people have been using to protect themselves, including wearing masks and social distancing.

Back then, pharmaceutical companies couldn’t produce vaccines and boosters for the H1N1 flu virus which killed 50 million people worldwide, including 650,000 people in the United States.

A family and their cat during the Spanish Flu pandemic in 1918.
Public domain photo

History professors at Stony Brook University described a decidedly different period over 100 years ago and the reaction by the American people to the public health crisis.

The armistice to end the war was signed in the middle of the pandemic, said Nancy Tomes, distinguished professor in the Department of History at Stony Brook University.

“Our noble dough boys were coming back after having saved Western Civilization,” Tomes said. There was no finger to point to blame someone for the coming hardship. The American public recognized that this was an “ailment our brave boys brought home. It’s your obligation to take care of these soldiers.”

People who didn’t do their part to help heal members of the military and reduce the threat were considered “slackers.” When public health officials in New York asked workers to stagger the times they took the subway, people “were not supposed to kick up a fuss because this is war,” Tomes said.

During the Spanish Influenza, people didn’t express partisan politics about public health issues.“The idea was that there’s an epidemic and it’s all hands-on deck,” she added.

Contrast that with modern times, when an anti-federal government ideology has been developing for decades, said Paul Kelton, professor and Gardiner chair in American History at Stony Brook.

“That’s been brewing since the 1980s,” Kelton said. The COVID pandemic happened at a time when this distrust toward the federal government “reached its peak.” Today, “we have a national media culture where we focus on the federal government” and, at the same time, the country has an anti-federal government ideology that’s animating a large portion of the American population,” he said.

Kelton, whose expertise includes the study of Native American history, suggested that several tribes have embraced the opportunity to get the vaccine, in part because of the encouraging response among tribe leaders.

The Navajo, for example, who have a well-earned skepticism toward the federal government, have a high rate of vaccination because the tribal government has taken charge of this public health effort.

“When people are empowered at the state and local level, rather than the federal government coming in and doing it, it makes a difference,” Kelton said.

Indeed, the communities that have resisted vaccines and public health measures during the current COVID crisis include areas with high rural white populations.

To be sure, historians recognize that the specifics of each pandemic, from the source of the public health threat to the political and cultural backdrop against which the threat occurs, vary widely.

Recalling a saying in the field of public health, Kelton said, “if you’ve seen one pandemic, you’ve seen one pandemic.” That suggests that the lessons or experiences amid any single public health threat don’t necessarily apply to another, particularly if the mode of transmission, the symptoms or the severity of the threat are all different.

“The lesson from history is to expect the unexpected when you’re dealing with germs,” said Kelton. “Novel germs are hitting populations in different circumstances. We are living in different conditions than in the past.”

What pandemics generally do, Kelton said, is expose fissures in society.

Part of what the study of other pandemics suggests is the need for opportunities to live healthier lives among those who are impoverished or are feeling disenfranchised.

“If nothing changes and health care access [remains as it is],we are going to repeat that again,” Kelton said.

Basic access to better nutrition can help fight the next pandemic, reducing the disproportionate toll some people face amid a public health threat, he said.

“Things like making sure that homeless people can get into a homeless shelter and not infect each other, the nuts and bolts of keeping people healthy, we neglected,” added Tomes.

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Weather balloons were launched to gather radar data. Photo by Brian Colle, Stony Brook University

By Daniel Dunaief

[email protected]

The hours a few meteorology professors and some of their students spent in driving snow and whipping wind this past weekend amid the nor’easter may improve the accuracy of future weather forecasts.

Samantha Lankowicz, above, a sophomore at SBU, takes a photo of the multi-angle snowflake camera, which is the equipment mounted on the black tripod. It captures photos of the snowflakes as they fall from three angles in real time. Photo by Brian Colle, Stony Brook University

Even as other Long Island residents were hunkered indoors, Stony Brook University Professors Brian Colle and Pavlos Kollias were teaming up with scientists from several institutions as a part of a three-year NASA-led study called IMPACTS, for The Investigation of Microphysics and Precipitation for Atlantic Coast-Threatening Snowstorms.

The researchers and a group of their students launched weather balloons and gathered radar data from last Friday evening through Saturday night, as the nor’easter named Kenan dumped well over two feet of snow through parts of Long Island.

Stony Brook students helped launch weather balloons every few hours, while NASA sent an ER-2 high altitude airborne plane and a Lockheed P-3 Orion plane into the storm.

“Everyone brings their tools to the sandbox with respect to looking at these storms,” said Colle, who collected data and managed students for over 24 hours.

At 4 a.m., Colle was driving on a road where the lanes and other traffic had disappeared.

“I kind of enjoyed it,” Colle admitted, as he maneuvered along the snow-covered roadway where the lanes completely disappeared.

Colle is in the second year of an IMPACT operation that started in 2020 and was put on pause last year amid the pandemic.

The purpose of the study is to improve forecasting in a one-to-two-day time horizon.

An improvement in the accuracy of localized forecasts over a shorter time can help municipal authorities determine when to send out plows.

“The models can hone in on those features and provide what we refer to as ‘nowcasting’ or short term forecasting,” Colle said. “There’s a big emphasis within the National Weather Service of providing decision support to emergency managers.”

Part of what makes forecasting these storms so challenging is the difficulty in predicting the timing and location of snow bands, which drop large amounts of snow in short periods of time.

In addition to information from the weather balloons, scientists throughout the area gathered temperature, wind and moisture data in places like Brookhaven and Albany.

Researchers ran a few different radar systems probing into the clouds to get more details about how these precipitation bands formed. 

During the storm, Colle said the wind shear or the change in wind speed at different altitudes was dramatic, with 10- to 20-knot winds near the ground and 50-knot winds only 500 meters above.

“I was surprised by how strong those winds were, right above our heads,” Colle said.

Colle suggested that the students who participated in gathering data amid a driving snowstorm had the opportunity to apply their textbook learning to a real-world situation.

“The students learn about these measurement approaches in class” but they truly understand it differently when they gather the data themselves, he said.

Student experience

A second-year student in the PhD program at Stony Brook, Erin Leghart, who lives in Farmingdale, worked from 6 p.m. to 2 a.m., which included launching six balloons in about six to eight hours.

Leghart said this was the first time she experienced winds like this in a winter storm.

She was well-dressed for the weather, as she invested in an ankle-length winter coat, snow boots, thermal long johns, Patagonia under armor and ski goggles.

Leghart said the excitement about the storm built about five days before it arrived, as it presented an opportunity to “do a live experiment.”

A sophomore at Stony Brook, Samantha Lankowicz, meanwhile, was excited to join her shift from 7 a.m. to 1 p.m.

“I got to do hands-on science with other students,” she said.

Lankowicz, who loves snow and was hoping for a chance to study a nor’easter this year, was pleased that one of the balloons made it all the way to the stratosphere.

Lankowicz has been to other balloon launches where a snow band turned into rain, which was “not as fun, standing in pouring rain when it’s 34 degrees.”

The only time she felt cold was when she had to take off her ski gloves and put on thinner gloves to handle the balloons.

Also a sophomore, John Tafe, who is from Salem, New York, was fascinated by weather early in life. When he was four years old, he saw clouds on the horizon and predicted a thunderstorm, which not only came later that day, but also knocked out power.

Tafe, whose hands also got cold from handling the balloons, was excited to contribute to the effort.

“To be in such a major storm that hopefully will provide valuable data is exciting,” Tafe said. “I hope that the data we collected will help advance the science.”

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Pixabay photo

By Daniel Dunaief

Daniel Dunaief

We are stuck in a headline and news cycle rut. Please find below some fantasy headlines, and the sources or unlikeliest of sources, for those news flashes.

— “Kardashian women decide not to show any more skin” – People Magazine. In the interests of encouraging people to dress appropriately for winter weather and to draw attention to their ideas rather than their bodies, the Kardashians decide that revealing less of their over-exposed bodies will aid society.

— “President Biden had a great day” – The New York Post. Granted, President Biden hasn’t exactly created a stellar track record in his first year in office – the withdrawal from Afghanistan clearly could have gone better – but the The New York Post seems intent on providing a steady stream of stories excoriating him for everything.

— “Former President Trump tells the whole truth and nothing but the truth” – The Washington Post. Fond of fact checking the former president, the Washington Post would certainly attract attention with a fact check that suggests the former leader of the free world was being honest.

— “Senator McConnell itching to approve Biden’s Supreme Court pick” – The New York Times. Using unnamed sources, of course, the Times could break one of the biggest stories of the decade if McConnell somehow signaled that he was eager to give a liberal Supreme Court nominee the benefit of the doubt and his full support.

— “Giants and Jets get A’s for effort” – New York Daily News. It seems obvious and easy to pick on losing sports teams, particularly those that haven’t delivered for rabid fans for years. Hometown papers could recognize the effort, even if the results aren’t there.

— “We don’t really know, but look out your window” – the Weather Channel. I give weather.com credit for calling last weekend’s nor’easter well. About five days before a single flake fell, they knew that a big storm had the potential to form and dump tons of snow in the area. They were right. Then again, all of that technology doesn’t always play out scenarios accurately. It’d be funny and fitting if they said on the air, “big storm could be coming our way. Or not.”

— “Inflation totally under control” – CNBC. Despite evidence to the contrary at the gas pump, in the supermarket and just about anywhere people have to pay for goods or services, wouldn’t it be great if inflation somehow, magically, came under control, giving the Fed the chance to stay on the sidelines for an economy still recovering from the pandemic?

— “Fauci appreciates the respect and support of Senator Rand Paul” — Reuters. Okay, so, this may be among the least likely of the headlines, but, wouldn’t it be nice/ shocking if the two doctors somehow were on the same page?

— “Spirit of bipartisanship sweeps through Washington” – Politico. Yeah, sure, we can dream. Dems and Repubs aren’t seeing eye to eye on anything. In fact, they seem to be energizing their bases by attacking the other side. Still, the day such a report came out would indeed be a chance to celebrate.

— “Children rediscover books” – Apple News Spotlight. Disenchanted with electronics, children around the world left social media for a day and enjoyed interacting with characters like Horton, Mr. Tumnus, Meg Murry, Alec Ramsey and Emma Woodhouse.

— “Hero scientists behind life saving vaccines” – Fox News. Despite some members of conservative media taking vaccines to protect themselves and their families, they and their guests sometimes praise those who resist vaccines and question the legitimacy of the vaccines for others.

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Photo from Facebook

By Daniel Dunaief

Daniel Dunaief

Even when I’m squinting through a deluge that floods my front windshield, I can see sprinklers on timers, throwing water on lawns drenched with rain.

That image captures the sometimes feckless nature of the routine and periodic token efforts we engage in and that reflect our modern reality.

To that end, I thought I’d share similar similes and phrases to capture the moment.

Like a pencil on an airplane. Sure, pencils are helpful when doing crossword puzzles. On a plane on the way to another country, though, pencils serve no purpose in filling out the necessary paperwork to enter customs. When my family travels, I pack black and blue pens in my carry-on bag.

Like a mask worn around the chin. Exhausted from wearing masks, people have dropped these potentially protective pieces of equipment to their chins, even after they are done eating or drinking. These masks, while visible, are only effective at hiding double chins.

Like a concerned automated voice on a customer service line. I have been on far too many calls where it’s clear the company has no interest in allowing me to speak to an actual person. After pushing 18 buttons and waiting through music that makes Kenny G sound like a symphony, a sickly sweet voice tells me how important my call is to “us,” which sounds suspiciously like a corporate version of a dystopian leadership. If my call were truly important, I wouldn’t have to wait over an hour for someone to pick up the phone, tell me she can’t hear me, and suggest I call back later.

Like an expired coupon. Sometimes, I think the coupons I get in the mail have either expired before they arrive or, like a message to Ethan Hunt in the Mission: Impossible movie franchise, will self destruct in five seconds. That way, I’ll get the offer for something that piques my interest, like half off a turkey sandwich, and then I’ll have to pay full price as sympathetic store clerks tell me they’d be happy to throw the expired discount in the garbage, which is really the most they can do.

Like another set of incomprehensible instructions. Do you ever struggle with the directions to assemble something, staring at pictures of objects that often look nothing like the assortment of pieces assembled in front of you? These instructions use vocabulary that doesn’t make sense for objects that aren’t in the packaging.

Like someone else’s garbage when I’m carrying dog poop. My big dog makes huge poops that rival the stink of a train or airport bathroom amid extensive weather delays. While holding my nose, I pass my neighbors’ garbage cans on the street. Tempted as I might be to drop the double-knotted bag into their can, I carry the prized stink bomb back to my own garbage can.

Like a phone going off in a forest. Unlike the question of whether a proverbial tree makes a sound if no one in a forest hears it fall, I’m convinced I would hear a phone going off in a forest, especially if I were in the middle of a nap or about to write the best phrase of my life that the electroshock sound would delete from my rattled brain.

Like another chat with “Jeopardy!” host Ken Jennings. Is it me or does Jennings seem anxious Amy Schneider may threaten to eclipse his record win streak on the show? His conversations with the contestants seem especially stilted and awkward. In an answer that borrows from the game’s format: the adjective Jennings most often uses when he doesn’t know what else to say and he’s run out of forced laughter. The answer: What is “fantastic?”

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Camila dos Santos. Photo courtesy of CSHL

By Daniel Dunaief

Pregnancy and lactation can alter genes in specific mammary cells, which may have implications in a defense against cancer.

In mouse models, mice that became pregnant at a young age have so-called epigenetic changes that survive for the animal life span and some of those are linked to a decrease in breast cancer.

In a recent study published in Cell Reports, Cold Spring Harbor Associate Professor Camila dos Santos and her graduate student Amritha Varshini Hanasoge Somasundara found that a protein involved in mammary cells in mice, called CD1d, boosts the immune system after a full pregnancy cycle, protecting it against breast cancer.

“Our research demonstrated that increased levels of CD1d in breast cells serve as a signal to recruit higher numbers of specialized immune cells” called natural killer T-cells, or NKT, “to come and reside within the breast tissue after pregnancy,” dos Santos explained in an email. These NKTs are part of mechanisms that reduce breast cancer risk after pregnancy.

Dos Santos would like to understand the molecular changes that occur from pregnancy and hopes one day to adapt them in the form of a vaccination or pill to decrease the risk of breast cancer.

To be sure, numerous questions about the process of using the immune system to prevent cancer remain, which means that the development of such a preventive pill requires considerable additional research.

Dos Santos has spent the last eight years developing model systems that allow her to discover pregnancy-induced changes that could lead to preventive strategies.

Enhancing the communication between epithelial and immune cells could represent a way to decrease breast cancer development and even treat cases of developed cancer.

To get to that point, dos Santos, the members of her lab, and her collaborators plan to make discoveries like this one to understand the dynamic interaction between the cascade of molecular interactions from pregnancy and the genetic and immunological reactions.

Humans have four CD1 genes, which all play a similar role in immunity. Additionally, there are several types of NKT cells, and each of them has a different immunological function, which means that any prevention or treatment that tapped into this system would need to bring the right CD1 molecule and the right NKT cells.

It is not yet clear whether enhancing CD1 signals protect women who might have a predisposition to breast cancer. Dos Santos is currently exploring this question in animals.

While dos Santos is focusing specifically on pregnancy-driven changes in the mammary gland, she acknowledged that altering CD1d levels in other organs might also decrease other types of cancer.

Dos Santos described pregnancy as being akin to turning on a light. First, during the course of gestation, pregnancy brightens that light to the top. After birth, the dimmer goes to the middle, leaving the system in a different state, which is not only more prepared for the next pregnancy but also to defend itself against alterations like cancer.

In most pregnancy mammary cells in mice, the scientists found a 10-fold increase in the abundance of NKT cells when compared to cells from an individual who had never been pregnant.

When the researchers removed the CD1d protein in mice, they found an association between the absence or low expression and the development of tumors in the breast.

Dos Santos and Hanasoge hypothesize that this protein is recruiting immune cells to monitor breast cells after pregnancy. If the epithelial cells develop cancer, the NKT cells may kill them, preventing the development and advancement of cancer.

In addition to working with mouse models of pregnancy, dos Santos is collaborating with Northwell Health to study cells from healthy women who are undergoing cosmetic surgery. They are analyzing that data, which wasn’t in this paper. 

Dos Santos is investigating several questions, including how the age at pregnancy influences breast tissue. She is creating organoids, which are three-dimensional models of breast cells that react to change in their environment

Joining a family

From left, Amritha Varshini Hanasoge Somasundara and Camila dos Santos

Amritha Varshini Hanasoge Somasundara, who has been a part of dos Santos’s lab for over two years, explained that she felt comfortable and supported instantly when she arrived. She described the atmosphere as extremely collegial and felt as if she were included in a scientific family.

Joining dos Santos’s group was “possibly the best decision I’ve ever made,” said Hanasoge. Dos Santos’s lab is a “really special place” where lab members often have lunch together and support each other’s research.

Hanasoge was drawn to Dos Santos’s mentorship and the overall lab dynamic. Scientifically, she was also interested in the immunology project, exploring NKT cells. Her main project has involved trying to characterize NKT cells further. 

Hanasoge sees plenty of opportunities to address additional questions in this field. “We don’t know if the process of lactation is causing more CD1d and increasing expression,” she said. “We are still trying to characterize what T-cell receptors are being expressed after pregnancy.”

A resident of Syosset, Hanasoge enjoys reading and said she was fascinated by science when she was growing up in Mysore, Kamataka in India. She asked her parents for a microscope when she was around seven and used it to looked at flower petals and leaves. That toy microscope, which her parents purchased from a science museum in Mumbai, is still in her parent’s house.

Hanasoge is eager to combine basic and translational work and hopes her research has a clinical benefit. She is looking forward to the next steps in her research in dos Santos’s lab.

“I learn from her every day by watching how she interacts with people she mentors, both inside the lab and out,” Hanasoge explained in an email. “Her passion and commitment to being a good mentor and her drive to ask the right questions in our research are inspiring.”

 

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Richard Leakey at the Provost's Lecture Series: "Living Off the Grid with Good Access to Energy and Water". Paleoanthropologist, politician, explorer and environmentalist, Richard Erskine Frere Leakey is chairman of the Turkana Basin Institute (TBI), and Professor of Anthropology at Stony Brook University.
Famed paleoanthropologist, conservationist and SBU professor Richard Leakey leaves a lasting legacy

By Daniel Dunaief

A revered scientist, conservationist, Kenyan, and faculty member at Stony Brook University, Richard Leakey died on Jan. 2 at the age of 77.

Leakey made several significant human fossil discoveries, wrote books and ground breaking journal articles, appeared on the cover of Time Magazine in 1977, and saved elephants and rhinoceros from poaching.

Leakey, who received honorary degrees from numerous institutions including Stony Brook, was also a professor in SBU’s Department of Anthropology in the College of Arts and Sciences and the founder of the Turkana Basin Institute in Nairobi, Kenya.

“I considered him my brother,” said former Stony Brook President Shirley Kenny, who had helped recruit Leakey to join the university and developed a close relationship with him over the course of over two decades. When she learned of his death, she was “devastated.”

The Stony Brook connection

Leakey was visiting Manhattan in 2001 when he met with Kenny and Lawrence Martin, who is the director of the Turkana Basin Institute (TBI). Eager to make a good first impression and “nervous about asking this great, incredible man to come and give a lecture,” Kenny got a manicure before the meal. “He wouldn’t have noticed if I had nails,” she laughed.

When Kenny learned that Leakey was in town to find new leg prosthetics after he lost his legs in a 1993 plane crash, the Stony Brook President asked if he had health insurance, which he didn’t. 

Richard Leakey examines fossils at the Turkana Basin Institute.

“Jewish mother that I am, I said, ‘Richard, you have to have medical insurance.’ We arranged for him to be this faculty member at Stony Brook, who came for a certain amount of time each year to give lectures and work with students, to have students work on his digs,” Kenny recalled.

Leakey, who didn’t graduate from college, was proud of his role at Stony Brook and relished the opportunity to teach, several friends and faculty members recalled. Audiences appreciated the opportunity to hear about the most recent discoveries into human origins, especially from someone with Leakey’s world-renowned reputation.

He was just a  “spellbinding public speaker,” said Martin, who first met Leakey when Martin was a graduate student in 1979. 

“When [Leakey] got an honorary degree, he had two to three minutes to make an acceptance speech,” Martin said. “There was not a sound from the moment he got up. It’s one of only two occasions when the entire student body rose to their feet and gave him a standing ovation.” The other was when famed physicist C.N. Yang received an honorary degree.

Leakey was such a draw that he gave some of his bigger talks at the Staller Center for the Arts, which had to accommodate overflow space for the audience demand.

Patricia Wright, Distinguished Service Professor and founder of a research station Centre ValBio at Stony Brook, recalled how a primate conservation class responded to him.

In his provocative style, Leakey would come in and say something “totally outrageous,” she recalled. The students, who might have otherwise been starstruck and been inclined to write everything he said, felt compelled to speak and would respond, saying, “Wait a second, it shouldn’t be like that.” The class would then discuss a conservation issue with Leakey, which opened up an effective dialogue.

“They loved him because he was so charming and was able to turn their minds around,” Wright said. “I loved those classes and watching him with my students.”

In the world of conservation, Leakey took unconventional approaches that proved effective. In 1989, five years after the landmark discovery of Turkana Boy, a 1.5-million-year-old fossil of one of the most complete early human skeletons, Leakey arranged the burning of 12 tons of ivory tusks in Kenya, signaling that they belonged on live animals.

“We can absolutely say that there are elephants and rhinoceros that are alive today that wouldn’t have been alive if it weren’t for Richard Leakey,” Wright said.

Words of wisdom

In addition to leading by example, Leakey dispensed valuable advice, often over food he prepared specially (more about that in the None of the Above column in this issue).

Leakey “left me with a huge gift, the gift of being confident in what I’m doing, as long I’m doing it with principles,” said Sonia Harmand, Associate Professor in Anthropology at Stony Brook. Leakey urged Harmand not to be “scared of breaking boundaries” and trying something nobody else had tried, she said. “Have faith in what you think you want to do. Never be afraid of being judged.”

Richard Leakey and Joe Biden in 2017 at the Stars of Stony Brook gala at Chelsea Piers. Photo from SBU

Harmand made a significant archaeological discovery, for which she received some skeptical comments. Leakey suggested that she consider such questions a point of pride and a reflection of the value of the work.

“You start to have enemies when you start to be famous and important,” Harmand said Leakey told her. It made her think she should be pleased that people were scrutinizing and criticizing her work. 

Wright, meanwhile, appreciated how Leakey gave her the strength to live life the way she wanted. He urged her to put in the time and effort to work on politics and networking.

Several people suggested that Leakey, who battled physical challenges throughout his life without complaint, also inspired them. “He really taught me about courage and strength,” Kenny said. “I had the kind of courage that let me take on paths I didn’t know if I could handle. He taught me physical courage.”

Indeed, Leakey displayed the kind of physical courage and belief in his convictions people typically associate with a character from a Tom Clancy novel.

In 1967, Leakey was on a Kenyan flight that had to divert because of a dust storm. Despite earlier reports that the land in the Lake Turkana region was volcanic, Leakey thought he saw sedimentary rock, which could contain fossils. He rented a helicopter and landed with only seven minutes of extra gas to spare for the return trip. When he got out of the helicopter, he found fossils. He quickly appeared at a National Geographic meeting, where he urged the group to fund the search on the east side of Turkana.

The chairman of the society told him “if you don’t find fossils, don’t bother to come back to National Geographic,” Martin said the chairman told Leakey. The findings were more than enough for the group to continue funding Leakey’s research, including on the west side of Lake Turkana, where he discovered Turkana Boy. 

Life-altering contact

For several of those who knew Leakey, the interaction was life-altering.

When he was a high school student in Nairobi, Isaiah Nengo heard a talk Leakey gave about plate tectonics and evolution.

“I was completely blown away,” said Nengo, who is now Associate Director at the Turkana Basin Institute.

As a second-year student at the University of Nairobi, Nengo attended an evolution lecture by Leakey. At that point, he was hooked, deciding to become a paleoanthropologist.

Nengo, whose parents’ education stopped around fourth grade, wrote to Leakey after he graduated from college, not expecting to hear back.

“It goes to tell you what kind of person [Leakey] was,” Nengo said. “This kid from the University of Nairobi out of nowhere writing him a letter, and he wrote back.”

Nengo, who said he heard similar stories from others in Kenya, including some who are currently colleagues at TBI, volunteered for a few months, until he got a fellowship.

He said Leakey helped fund a post-baccalaureate one-year program in the United States.

“The best gift you could get is the gift of knowledge,” Nengo said. “From [Leakey], I got the gift of knowledge, which changed the trajectory of my life.”

Like others who were prepared to change their lives after interacting with Leakey, Harmand had been in a comfortable job at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in France when Leakey suggested she join Stony Brook and the Turkana Basin Institute in 2011. “I’m not sure I would have taken” the job, but for Leakey. The work was only supposed to last a couple of years, but she never left.

“He marked my life forever and my career forever,” Harmand said. “We also had a very deep friendship” that extended to the next generation, as her nine-year-old daughter Scarlett has forged a connection with Leakey’s granddaughter Kika, whose mother Samira is the daughter of Richard and Meave Leakey.

With three daughters, including Louise Leakey, who conducts field research at Turkana Basin institute, Leakey was a strong advocate for women.

Women are “equally capable as men and for him, this was not even a question,” Harmand said.

A passion for Kenya

In addition to being pleased with his connection to Stony Brook University, Leakey, who accepted the ceremonial key to a French city in his first language of Swahili, was a proud Kenyan. He set out to employ, train, include and inspire Kenyans in research projects and encouraged the children of staff members to come see the fossils, Martin said.

Leakey also helped raise money from people who traveled to Kenya to support educational fellowships. He contributed to the construction of maternity clinics on either side of Lake Turkana so women could give birth in safe, sterile conditions with electric light, Martin added.

Kenyans recognized Leakey when he traveled and appreciated his contribution to the country.

“We were driving to his farm, when we got stopped,” Martin said. “Everybody knew him and wanted to shake his hand and say hello. He was a local hero who was seen as a Kenyan doing things for his fellow Kenyans,” Martin said.

Harmand recalled one of the last times she spoke with him; he reiterated his passion for his home country.

Leakey made it clear “how important it is to involve Kenyans in what we do,” Harmand said. “We are training the next generation of human origin scientists in Kenya. He is the son of Kenya.”

A passion for science

While Leakey had a genuine interest in a variety of fields, he was, at his core, a scientist. Nengo called him a “polymath” who knew a great deal about a wide range of scientific subjects.

In one of her final conversations with Leakey, Wright said he took her aside after a meal she described as “exquisite” and asked her about bones she’d found in Madagascar.

The conventional wisdom about human origins in the island nation was that humans had come from Borneo 2,000 years ago.

In the middle of Madagascar, however, Wright had found bones from hippos and birds that had cut marks from humans that dated back 10,000 years.

Leakey told her that she “had to find those people,” she recalled. “You will be letting down all of Madagascar if you don’t find their origins.”

Wright said that conversation, which had its intended effect, was “emblematic of his burning desire to know and to learn about hominid history and the burning desire to collect and assemble pieces of history.”

Birthday presents

Leakey, who gave so much of himself to so many people, didn’t like receiving gifts, Martin said, but he welcomed receiving cheese, wine or cooking tools, including pots and pans.

When Leakey reached his 70th birthday, Martin asked him what he planned to do to celebrate. He had scheduled a sailing trip, but he wasn’t sure if he could pull together a crew. Martin offered to be a part of his crew for a journey that lasted over a week aboard a 38-foot catamaran.

Leakey’s daughters Samira and Louise joined Martin as deck hands, giving Richard Leakey the opportunity to take the helm during his journey along the coast of Kenya near his home in Lamu.

“When he was steering the boat, it was the only time he wasn’t challenged by his disabilities,” Martin said. “He didn’t need his feet. Driving wasn’t particularly easy. When he was sitting in the catamaran, it didn’t heel; it went fast, and he could steer the boat. Watching him, I had the sense that he felt completely free.”

 

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