Artist of the Month

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February 2005: Sidney Perkowitz

Sidney Perkowitz, Charles Howard Candler Professor of Physics at Emory, Prepares Feb. 13 Theater Emory Reading of Play Glory Enough

Physicist Dramatizes Nobel Prize Injustice for Scientist Rosalind Franklin

Sidney Perkowitz is an extraordinary man. Like Leonardo da Vinci, he is that rare blend of scientist and artist -- a whole-brain thinker. A physics professor at Emory University with over 100 published papers and books on the properties of matter, he is also the author of the performance-dance piece Albert and Isadora and the stage plays Friedmann's Balloon and Glory Enough, which is being presented as a semi-staged reading on February 13, 2005 at 1:00 and 3:00 p.m. in the Math and Science Center Planetarium, 400 Dowman Drive, Emory. Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., and with a Ph.D. and M.S. from the University of Pennsylvania and a B.S. from Polytechnic University, New York, Perkowitz has published the popular science books Empire of Light and Universal Foam, which addresses the foam in a cup of cappuccino as well as the foam on which the galaxies rest. He has written for The Sciences, Technology Review, the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, and other media. He has appeared on CNN, National Public Radio, and the BBC and other European radio and TV, as well as at the Smithsonian Institution, the Museum of Natural History (New York) and the NASA Space Flight Center. His newest book is Digital People: From Bionic Humans to Androids (National Academy Press/Joseph Henry Press, Washington, DC, 2004).

Glory Enough tells the story of Rosalind Franklin, the young English scientist who contributed to the discovery of the structure of DNA in the 1950s. That discovery earned a Nobel Prize but no glory for Franklin, whose role was suppressed. The play portrays this injustice, mingled with snapshots from her short life (she died at 37), and raises questions about scientific ethics and male views of women in science. Vincent Murphy of Theater Emory directs the two readings. Karen Ellis, a New York- and Boston- based stage and TV actress plays the role of Franklin. Following each performance, the cast and Murphy, Perkowitz, and Professor Lynne Elkin (Professor of Biology Emerita, California State University, Hayward), who has made a special study of the Franklin story, will be available for an informal Q&A with the audience.

As artist of the month, Perkowitz took time from his busy pre-production schedule to answer some questions about the play and his work.

Q: What gave you the idea of writing Glory Enough, a woman-focused piece?
A: I think of the play as mostly about injustice, but for Rosalind Franklin, the injustice seems related to her gender, so it’s about women in science, too. Like other physical scientists, I’ve been raised in a professional culture with few women. This does not seem the best way to produce human and humane scientists of either sex, and the play expresses my frustration with that. There’s a personal element as well. After working on the Franklin story for another project, and seeing many photos of her, she became a real person, a woman I would like to have known.

Q: And as a scientist, why did you make a play out of this story and not, say, an essay in a science magazine?
A: The Franklin story is inherently dramatic: a complex and intriguing central character, conflict among those involved in a major scientific discovery, and undertones about ethical standards in science. This all seemed highly stage-worthy. Also, approaching Franklin through a play rather than an essay was more personal for me, giving me the chance to understand her.

Q: What do you bring to playwriting from your work in physics?
A: If my science background can be merged with good writing, it can lead to unusual kinds of plays. Science plays are a hot ticket these days, following the success of Michael Frayn’s Copenhagen, but we can’t ever do enough to bring science and scientists to the public. However, there’s a drawback. A background in science tends to foster a literal, fact-laden writing style. When I write, the hardest thing is to find the right mixture of imagination and facts that does no harm to the facts.

Q: Do you see any similarities between writing a play and conducting an experiment or performing some other task related to your work as a physicist?
A: Not many similarities, except in doing careful research for a work about real people (which all of mine have been) -- and I’m very glad of that! I enjoy playwriting partly as a way to exercise a different set of muscles in my mind.

Q: When and why did you start writing plays?
A: I’ve done nonfiction science writing since 1990, but always felt I’d move towards fiction, too. Short stories, however, are hard to do well, and I didn’t want to try a full novel. A one-act play seemed the perfect size to begin thinking like a writer of fiction and dialogue. My first play, Friedmann’s Balloon, was presented by Theater Emory in 2002. I’ve also written a dance performance piece, Albert and Isadora, presented by a New York dance company, in which the dancer Isadora Duncan and Einstein meet (they were almost exact contemporaries) and explore relativity together.

Q: What is your next project?
A: Several things. The greatest effort is going toward a book about how science is used and misused in the movies, tentatively titled Hollywood Science. I’m starting research for a third play about a real scientist, Alan Turing, who was seminal in computer science and whose story has tragic elements. And I’m doing an essay entitled “Black and White,” about the meaning of these opposing concepts. It would begin with visits to the blackest place on earth, deep within a mine, and the whitest, a huge salt flat in Australia.

Interview by Nancy Condon
Communications Coordinator
Arts at Emory, Schwartz Center for Performing Arts

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