Top Juniors

The 40 scientists had their heads in the clouds, but their feet were in bobbysocks and sneakers. They came from high schools all over the U.S. For five days in Washington, D.C., last week, they devoured lectures on molecules and atoms and cyclotrons. And every night, over bedtime milkshakes at the Statler Hotel, they held long bull sessions on genetics, Geiger counters, and oscilloscopes.

The 40 (average age: 17) were the pick of 3,161 junior scientists, finalists in the annual Westinghouse Science Talent Search. They were chosen after stiff science aptitude tests, and on the basis of recommendations from teachers, their scholastic records, and a 1,000-word essay on their private research (sample subject: Chemiluminescence of 3-aminophthalhydrazide). For two lucky ones, there were $2,400 college scholarships.

In one of the Statler's salons, they unpacked their special exhibits for the judges' inspection. One "young scientist had an ant hill; another brought a tesseract ("This is a three-dimensional representation," he explained, "of what a fourth-dimensional thing would look like, if there were a fourth dimension").

On the last day, Harvard's Astronomer Harlow Shapley announced the two big winners: Barbara Wolff, 17, of New York, and 15-year-old Andrew Kende of Evanston, Ill. As soon as she heard the news, Barbara, flushed and fluttery, rushed to a phone to tell her father. A quiet girl with shoulder-long hair, she spends her time at home studying the nonhereditary mutations of the fruit fly. Her father, a school principal in New York City, had already heard the news on the radio. Cried he into the phone: "Half the neighborhood's drunk already."

Andrew, born in Budapest and a resident of the U.S. for only seven years, was too surprised to make a thank-you speech. He had found three commercial substitutes for inflammable ethyl ether. Being the youngest of the finalists, he had not expected to win. Said he: "I bet some body a dollar I wouldn't, so I'd be sure to get something out of the deal."

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