Dr. Gordon's Serious Thinkers

By Anastasia Toufexis

The granddaddy of summer science seminars may be the best

Colby-Sawyer College in New London, N.H., has the look of a typical New England campus in summer session. Small groups of students sprawl on smooth lawns, chat in the green shade of old maple trees, and stroll among rosy brick and crisp white clapboard buildings. But this is no typical summer school. The students are somewhat longer of tooth and thicker of waist than the average undergraduate, and their chatter is about polymers and photoconduction, magnetic resonance and spectroscopy. They are participants in one of the Gordon Research Conferences, possibly the oldest and most eminent floating brain trust in the world.

From June through August, a different conference is held each week at Colby and seven other New Hampshire schools and colleges. The sessions attract elite government, industry and academic scientists who come to talk about a wide range of chemistry-related ideas. The information exchanged is often at the cutting edge of experimentation and a full two to three years away from general dissemination.

The meetings are the brainchild of a Johns Hopkins University chemistry professor, the late Neil Gordon, who was dissatisfied with the standard ways of transmitting scientific information: either through learned journals or at conferences organized strictly for academic or industrial chemists. Gordon wanted a small group of scientists to meet in a secluded and relaxed setting that would foster a free give and take. The first meeting in 1931 was a simple summer seminar open to Hopkins faculty and students, but the concept grew quickly. There are now about 100 Gordon conferences a year attended by more than 12,000 scientists. Sometimes as many as 500 researchers apply to attend a single meeting, though only about 100 are chosen. Nobel prizewinners often come, while about half the attendees are fresh new faces, presumably with fresh new ideas.

The topics are selected with a view to a sort of "critical mass" theory of knowledge: the notion that enough information on a particular subject has accumulated to explode into new experiments and discoveries. Says Drug Researcher Nathan Sperber, chairman of this year's meeting on medicinal chemistry: "We try to organize sessions in areas that are just about to break open. Ideally the person working on a particular project hasn't reported on his or her work elsewhere."

In 1973 an area that was just breaking was genetic engineering or recombinant DNA. That year, at a session on nucleic acids, researchers first voiced what was to become a national concern over the technology's possible dangers in creating new life forms. Among the most pregnant research areas taken up at this year's Gordon conferences: the structure and function of "endogenous opiates," pain-killing chemicals produced by the body itself, and the new field of bioelectrochemistry that is beginning to draw attention with the recent discovery that electric currents sometimes help knit stubborn bone fractures.

In keeping with Gordon's philosophy, formal sessions are held only mornings and evenings: afternoons are left free for tennis, sailing, swimming, golf, private study and, above all, talk. The most popular activities are canoeing and hiking, simply because, unlike most other sports, these allow one to talk and exercise at the same time. In contrast, many of today's scientific meetings are harried impersonal affairs attended by thousands of researchers and conducted amid the distractions of big cities or flossy resorts. Says Chemist Christopher Walsh of M.I.T.: "The best thing I get out of the Gordon conferences is a chance to talk to someone for a solid two hours."

There are more concrete results. Collaborations are fostered. After hearing the latest news, researchers often reorder their priorities or entirely redesign their experiments. James Florini, chairman of the biology of aging session at Proctor Academy in Andover, learned that a particular way of studying muscle structure in rats was unsuitable for his experiments. Says he: "That information probably saved us a year of work."

The exchange of information is freer because no pressure, no publicity and no need to publish is involved. Journalists are not allowed to attend actual conferences. No papers or reports by scientists come out of Gordon meetings. Tape recorders are strictly forbidden in order to encourage participants to indulge in broad speculations or predictions. Housing is spartan, at least in comparison with plush and costly conferences given at places like the Aspen Institute or the Las Vegas Hilton: a room with a bed, chest of drawers and, with luck, a reading lamp. No private baths, TV, telephones or air conditioning. This summer at Proctor, one scientist sleeping with his door propped open was consulted by a skunk on a nocturnal research project.

From the very beginning, in the interest of liberation, Gordon decreed that no jackets or neckties were to be worn. Today this is perfectly normal. In the early years, however, says Gordon Conferences Director Alexander Cruickshank, when the conferences were still small and could be held at the staid Gibson Island Club in Chesapeake Bay, the scientists' casual attire drew frequent complaints from correctly garbed patrons. Viewing the conferees strolling en deshabille along the lawn, one disapproving dowager remarked, "Who are those people?" "Oh," replied her companion, "those are Dr. Gordon's serious thinkers."

With reporting by Suzanne Wymelenberg

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