Opa Stories: Memories Over the Past Nine Decades

By Gert Volpp

Chance has played a large role in my life. When I was 15 working on a farm, I nearly fell 50 feet through a pile of hay covering the rafters of a barn. I instinctively reached out both arms and fortunately found a rafter under each arm. If either of the beams had been positioned 90 degrees to the left or right, I would have fallen down through the hay.On my examination before graduation in high school, had I gotten the question about Tirpitz that my best friend received, since I knew nothing about Prussian politics, I would have failed the exam. I drew a question about the American Declaration of Independence, however. It just so happened that I had read about the Declaration of Independence in a magazine and become very interested in it. I knew the introduction to the Declaration of Independence by heart in German, so after a few sentences, it was clear that I knew more than the examiners, and I did well on the exam.Riding my motorcycle on a wintry day, the tires skid and I was run over by a beer truck. If I had been three feet to either side of where I fell, the tires of the beer truck would have crushed me. However, the wheels were in a straight position, which means that I happened to fall right in front of the truck. It ran over me, but I was unhurt and the truck came to a stop with me lying on the ground looking up at the oil pan beneath the truck. I was able to ride away from the accident more or less unscathed.Going to Harvard to work with Woodward was another thing that happened because of chance - my mentor in Basel knew him and Woodward had a place open at the time. I almost didn't get an immigration visa, but the Vice-Consulate in Stuttgart came from Harvard, and despite a technicality that could have meant no visa, he wanted me to go to Harvard and made it possible.Where you find employment is very much a matter of chance. You may have an employer in mind, but they don't necessarily hire when you want the job. That was the case with Sandoz. Sandoz was paying me a full salary for a beginning chemist as a graduate student, with no other agreement than that I would interview with them after I finished. When I eventually looked for a job as I was leaving Harvard, I went to Sandoz in New Jersey and interviewed with them. They were re-organizing, however, and didn't want to hire. The averted disaster stories could go under one heading, "Learning the Hard Way." Other stories have to do with having a sense of values and not compromising. I have a willingness to admit that I can't do something. My favorite example of this was the mass spectroscopy story from when I was an undergraduate. I know that I'm as bright as the other guy, so if I cannot do it, others presumably cannot do it either. That almost all the students in the intro class on physics in Basel were cheating for five semesters - two and a half years - is almost unbelievable. To me, the miraculous thing is that my willingness to admit that I can't do something, in other words, my unwillingness to cheat, somehow ended up influencing my life trajectory. That is why Professors Tamm and Reichstein at the University of Basel did not have to worry about where they were going to send me.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 171800298X
• ISBN13: 9781718002982
• Release Date: August 2018
• Publisher: Independently published
• Length: 258 Pages
• Weight: 0.65 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.0" x 0.6" x 6.0"