by Janet Basu
The first call came at 4:15 a.m.
"We tried ignoring the phone, but it kept on ringing," physicist Martin Perl would explain to reporters later that day.
Perl's wife, Judy Finer, finally shook off sleep in the early hours of Oct. 11 and picked up the receiver. On the other end of the line was reporter Catalina Ortiz of Associated Press.
Finer could not believe what Ortiz was saying, so she challenged her: "What are your sources?"
Perl came on the line and Ortiz read him the opening words of a press release that had been wired from Sweden: "The Royal Swedish Academy has decided to award the 1995 Nobel Prize in physics for pioneering experimental contributions to lepton physics, with one half to Martin L. Perl, Stanford University. . . for the discovery of the tau lepton, and one half to Frederick Reines, University of California, Irvine. . .for the detection of the neutrino."
Ten hours, two dozen phone interviews, several photographers' sessions and one press conference later, Finer sat down next to her husband in his modest office in the research building of the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, where Perl is chair of the physics faculty. She gripped his arm and shook it gently.
"Reality check!" she said with a wide grin. "Guess what happened to you this morning?" He smiled back.
"It's strange," he said. "The strangest thing of all is hearing your own name read out on the radio. You hear other people's names, but never your own."
It was 2:30 in the afternoon, and Martin Perl was only partway through his first day in his new role as a Nobel laureate. If his experience is any indication of what would-be Nobelists can expect, they should be advised that a brilliant scientific discovery is only the beginning. To make it through the first few days of notoriety, he or she also will need grace enough to appear only slightly nervous before a bank of whirring cameras, tolerance enough to answer the same questions over and over, a well-toned set of smile muscles and a strong dose of stamina.
Perl started his Nobel Prize morning in San Francisco, where he lives with Finer, an artist and entrepreneur. By 6 a.m. he had fielded phone calls from AP, three national radio networks and CNN television. There was barely time to don a blue-striped shirt, khaki slacks and a green tie before a newspaper photographer showed up at the front door. They toasted bagels for breakfast; Perl ate his with non-fat cottage cheese. At 8:30, after receiving more press calls and the first wave of congratulations from friends and family, Perl and Finer drove to the Stanford campus for a digital radio link with BBC in London.
It was noon by the time Perl and Finer reached his office. Notes from colleagues plastered the doorway. A stack of faxes from around the globe included more congratulations, including one from Hazel O'Leary, secretary of energy.
With press calls flooding his answering machine and overflowing to the SLAC press office, Perl spent several hours in his office answering requests for interviews. He talked physics with the reporters from the New York Times science page and from Science magazine. He gave the Jewish Bulletin a bit of family history, about growing up as the son of immigrants in Brooklyn. He stopped all incoming calls to talk to Stanford Daily reporter Rachel Marshak and editor Elizabeth Goldman, both daughters of physicists.
For Perl, the overnight impact of being a Nobelist is that he is no longer a man waiting for a Nobel. Rumors of his possible nomination have circulated for more than 15 years. For his co-laureate Reines, the wait was nearly 40 years. "There is only one prize, and many people deserve it, and [the question of who gets chosen] is very complicated," Perl said.
"You have to be careful that you don't become obsessed," he added. "Some people do. October has always been a nervous time, but otherwise for me it has been OK. I didn't need the prize to realize that the tau work was good."
Since Wednesday, he said, "it's different, because some things are resolved. You don't have to think: Will you get it? Should you get it? You've got an answer."
He said the greatest relief is that he'll now be able to choose when and where he wants to travel to meetings, selecting only those that are important to him and those where he can have an impact. He was quick to add that he will travel anywhere to talk to the few scientists experimenting with searches for free quarks, for example, and even quicker to point out that he will not have to attend some international meetings just to see and be seen.
"You have to make sure [the Nobel committee members] don't think you're dead," he said, only half-joking about the waiting game.
On about the 100th time that someone asked him, "how do you feel?" Perl replied, "It feels like a stage play. You've seen it happen to other people. You know this time it's happening to you, but it's hard to believe that. It's like a stage play that gradually becomes real."
#
Janet Basu is a science writer with the Stanford University News Service. Excerpted from an article in the Stanford Report, October 18, 1995.