How to win a Nobel Prize.(Kevin Hughes) “Are you kidding me?”

I smiled.

“No. You asked me how to win a Nobel Prize…and I told you.”

“It can’t be that easy.”

I smiled again.

“I didn’t say it was easy…I said it was simple. There is a huge difference there.”

She looked at me like I had grown the proverbial third eye, extra limb, or two heads. I took pity on the poor Science Reporter.

“Do you remember your Chemistry 101 Course in College?”

She looked startled.

“What? What does that have to do with winning a Nobel Prize?”

“Well, for starters, a lot of your First Year Chemistry Classes introduce you to a lot of Nobel Prize Winners. Do you perhaps remember the Henderson-Hassleback equation?”

She laughed.

“Doctor Timothy, I don’t even remember how to calculate a mole!”

I laughed.

“You don’t... you weigh them. They average out to about 100 grams. Some smaller, some bigger.”

She stared at me.

“That was a joke. A mole, as you were thinking of it, the mass of a mole, is simply its molecular weight (AMU) in grams. Water has an AMU of 18.015…so one mole of water would be: 18.015 grams. And that isn’t a joke…its a fact.”

This time she did laugh. She shook her hair like only young smart people can when they figure out you are smarter than them.

“Okay, you got me. I think you are making a point about how simple it is to determine a mole’s weight - living or non living- but how its not easy to come up with those numbers.”

I smiled a much broader smile. This woman was smart, she was already catching on. No wonder she was the Chief Editor of the most popular “Lay Science” magazine ever produced. I led her down the path her own curiosity was taking her.

“So, back to basic Chemistry. Henderson and Hasslebach formed an equation that says: Draw a line from point A Your starting material), to point B (the end product) for a chemical reaction, then draw a line perpendicular to that line - exactly half way from point A to point B. Anything to the left of that perpendicular line... will more resemble the starting materials, anything to the right of that perpendicular line... will appear more like the end product.

For example, if you start with burning paper, and end up with just ash, well, anything to the left will start out looking like burning paper (but less and less as it moves to the perpendicular), anything to the right…well, that would look more and more like ash until only ash remains. That, is the Henderson-Hasslebach equation in a nutshell. “

She laughed out loud. She had a nice laugh.

“That is so simple! I mean a three year old could come up with that!”

I smiled.

“Yeah, everyone, including me, says that. I got to meet both those good Doctors early in my Graduate Studies…and they both said the same thing:

'If its so easy, how come nobody thought of it until us?’ “

She closed her eyes.

“I think…I am beginning to see. Simple isn’t easy, but the best ideas are simple.”

I nodded. I like talking with bright people.

“So, how did you win your Nobel Prize Doctor…it sounds simple, but it couldn’t have been easy.”

I loved the way she twisted my words right back at me.

“Yeah, I simply worked off the best line of Logic I ever heard.”

She took her cue:

“And what, pray tell was this line of logic?”

“Ockham’s razor.”

She laughed.

“I know that one, the simplest answer, no matter how unbelievable, is most likely the most true.”

I nodded.

“So how did you apply that to winning the Nobel Prize for discovering "Thought Bubbles", the way that thoughts actually peculate through the brain and bounce off the blood brain barrier, until enough amplitude is gained to become a conscious thought. Like waves bouncing off a retaining wall in a closed space.”

“See, you have part of the answer right there. Thoughts, in fact all energy is some form of wave in an enclosed space. We have skulls. Like many people in my Field, I was taught the typical Neural Network set up, with dendrites, axons, cell bodies, and synopsis. I knew all about Action Potentials, gradients and ion channels. I, like many others, kept trying to find out how electrical, or chemical signals, sometimes both…turned into what we call: “thought.”

It was so complicated. Then there was the blood brain barrier, which, until my work, we always thought kept things OUT. My first breakthrough was to figure out that the blood brain barrier was to keep things IN!”

She stared at me again.

“How so?”

“Well, you said it yourself. Ever play in a wading pool, or swimming pool?”

“Yes, of course.”

“So you know as you jump around and splash the water gets more and more turbulent. The waves get higher, water sloshes out of the pool sometimes…right?”

“Right.”

“Well, I discovered that the energy released in any Neuronal situation, is just like that water in the pool. It starts to splash up against the container…your skull is as far as it can go, but the blood brain barrier bounces it back before it is absorbed into the skull. So all the little bubbles of chemical or electrical signals work themselves into a froth. A froth I called: Thought Bubbling.”

She laughed out loud.

“No kidding? It’s as easy as that? Thoughts boil away until they condense into a cogent sense of meaning?”

I winked.

“Simple…not easy. (She laughed). We were looking in the wrong direction. Keeping it all in your head is actually what the skull and blood brain barrier are for. From the outside - looking in - we mistakenly jumped to the conclusion that those two things were to keep the brain safe from insult, like hitting your head when falling, or taking a punch. It does do that too, but its real purpose is to keep those thoughts bubbling up and bouncing around until they form an idea, sentence, plan, or purpose. “

I waited a few seconds for that to sink in.

“So, Doctor Timothy, you are saying that by looking for Ockham’s Razor, instead of the complicated process and pathways that number in the trillions in a human brain, you discovered “Thought Bubbles” and won the Nobel Prize.”

I smiled again.

“Well, you asked me how you win a Nobel Prize. I told you. It’s simple….”

She interrupted me:

“…but not EASY.”

“Precisely.”

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