I seem never to have blogged this, but in the June Penn Gazette I have an article about biophysicist Britton Chance, sailing, and deep play. As I explain in the article, I met Chance when I was a graduate student and writing about a laboratory building that he helped design:
He was in his seventies, but still published dozens of papers a year, advised students, and was able to keep several conversations on completely different topics going at once. And as if that weren’t enough, he was also a world-class sailor who had won a gold medal in the 1952 Helsinki Olympics.
I was impressed and intimidated. I had trouble finishing my weekly reading and doing the laundry, much less excelling in two completely different fields. I didn’t have the nerve to ask how he managed to do so much, or how his lives as a scientist and sailor might have built on each other.
Years later, though, when working on my latest book, , I discovered that Chance’s dual life was far from unique. His life still seems extraordinary, but not quite as mysterious, and it offers some lessons that even a young graduate student could absorb.
