[Phys-l] A physicist and his background

["Laurent Hodges" <lhodges@iastate.edu>]

> Do children have rights? Do parents have the right to deny their children 
needed medical care? Do they have the right to prevent their children from 
learning knowledge, especially that taught by noted scholars? This is basically 
about rights. It is unfortunate that the constitution guarantees us the right 
to physical life, but says nothing about intellectual life. The former is of 
little use without the latter. 
>  
> Fred Bucheit       ~I think is the antidote to I believe~

A prominent physicist I have known for many years started in academia and later 
moved to science administration.  He was always the most kind and genial 
person, the one who lives by the injunction never to speak ill of anyone.  He 
never showed any anger that I can remember - except for this incident.

One day (long ago) we were chatting about various things and I asked him where 
he had grown up.  Minnesota.  Since I've been to many Minnesota communities 
(and listened for years to Prairie Home Companion), I asked him where in 
Minnesota.  He told me his story, getting progressively redder in the face and 
angrier thinking back on it.  He had grown up in one of the isolated Amish or 
Amish-like religious communities that prohibited contact with the external 
world.  His own curiosity and intellectual abilities had led him to make a 
traumatic break with the community and escape it, finding some way to get an 
education and eventually even a Ph.D. in physics.  He was so angry thinking 
back on his parents and the community leaders, and kept telling me this was 
serious child abuse, and a completely unconscionable crime.  

I was afraid ever to discuss his background with him again, and never did, but 
I remember his reaction so very clearly.  I'm sure what he said was a correct 
description, and I appreciated being forced to think about the fact that 
tolerance is not always a virtue.

Laurent Hodges