Talent Dilution and Spatial Separation

The author received his graduate education in the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Washington in Seattle.   This was in the days before the proliferation of specialty departments and subsequent talent dilution not unlike that seen in professional sports teams (1,.2) and in business (3).   The basic concept there is that there is only so much great athletic talent; the point in the current exercise is that there are only so many really bright people (the author is not among this number but has been privileged to have met a number along the way).   In today’s academy, the five traditional basic science departments (anatomy, biochemistry, microbiology, pharmacology, and physiology) have subdivided into a multitude of individual enterprises separated in time and space such that meaningful collaboration no longer occurs; the protection of the individual fiefdoms by chairs protecting turf and overhead is a secondary issue.
The Department of Biochemistry faculty included Hans Neurath, the two Eddies (Fischer and Krebs – later Nobel laureates secondary to an intense discussion following a student presentation some thirty years previous). Milt Gordon, Don Hanahan, Earl Davie, Frank Huennekens, Bill Rutter, and Joe Kraut.  Joe Kraut was the resident crystallographer who soon moved south to warmer weather.   None of the graduate students chose to work with Joe, not because he was not a nice guy but you had be extremely clever in those days to do crystallography. The point here that I was extremely fortunate to have such a gifted faculty and to have close proximity to the other departments. If I wanted to talk to someone in Microbiology, it was a short walk down the hall.

Some 40+ years later I continue to be privileged to be associated with a fine university. I had the occassion last Friday to go from the hospital area the library (construction at this fine institution has made physical access to the library a bit of a challenge) and passed through what used to be a major hall intersection, now totally deserted. As with most major research universities. this one has undergone major expansion gaining in population (talent dilution), more centers and departments (minor league franchises) and physical separation. The casual interaction of the community which was common thirty or forty years ago no longer exists. One of the earlier leaders at the Rockefeller Institute moved the tables in the dining room together and, as result, saw some really meaingful collaborations develop. What seems to be a desire to establish relevance by independence leads to stagnation by intellectual and physical separation.

References

1.  Bradbury, J.C., What really ruined baseball, New York Times, April 2, 2007
2.  Zimbalist, A., Baseball in the twenty-first centure, in Stee-rike Four, ed. D.R. Marburger, Chapter 13, Greenwood Publishing, Santa Barbara, CA, USA, 1997
3. http://russelldavies.typepad.com/planning'2008/02/the-magnificent.html