So goes the life of a scientist, because such succinct conclusions are not uncommon. I have since known several other Ph.D. thesis conclusions requiring years of work to arrive at a simple answer. One such student spent years studying the size of a part of a protein, called the catalytic cleft. The catalytic cleft is kind of like the mouth on pacmantm. He discovered the size to be 1.8 angstroms in his protein. So, years of work produced the result of “almost 2.” Another woman was studying what genes were needed to support life in a kind of worm. She found that the worm could survive with 410 genes. Again, years of work discovering that the answer is 410. But for anyone doing or interested in doing Ph.D. caliber research, these results are not a disappointment. We can use such data to do other research and make other discoveries. For example, the 410 genes that were required for life in that worm may be important for other organisms including people. My “yes, maybe” answer has been useful to myself and other researchers studying creatine, creatine kinase and metabolism in many tissues. My recent research in the brain has been able to utilize information that was collected during my Ph.D. research. So those old data do not go bad and may be useful for future generations of scientists.

Between when I submitted my thesis and my thesis defense I had two weeks. During those two weeks I prepared my talk, which would be a longer and more complete version of the talk I gave to Bill Jacobus’ group. I also had to start assembling and packing stuff to ship to France as well as what I would be bringing on the plane. Several boxes would be taking a slow boat to Paris and a couple of suitcases were coming with me on the flight. Everything else was going into storage or staying with Ann. When Ann and I moved in together, I had put some of my things in storage and more of my clothes and other possessions would be going into storage now. It was both exciting and sad to be preparing to move to Paris, knowing it meant being separated from Ann. Ann offered to take the day off to attend the thesis defense and support me and I thought about it a lot. I asked her to not attend in the end because I would be too self-conscious with her in the room. She understood and I promised to call her as soon as it was over.

The two weeks before the defense flew by. I had so much to do it seemed I was always on the run. The inexorable march of time had brought me to a big benchmark of my professional career. It was the day of my thesis defense. My presentation was ready, the thesis committee had their copies of the thesis and there was a room full of students, faculty and staff waiting for me. The plan was for me to give a 45 to 50 minute presentation of my research, followed by about 10 to 15 minutes of public questions. I gave my talk and took questions from the general audience. The questions from the general audience were pertinent and polite, easy to field.

The general audience walked out and now the hard part of the thesis defense began. This is where the individual committee members asked questions from their review of the written thesis. The questioning started with Ron Myer. He got straight to the point. Dr. Myer had found an assumption that I made concerning some of my mathematical calculations. He said that the assumption was logical, but that no one had used that assumption when doing similar experiments without testing to see if it was a valid assumption. Other than testing it in the lab I could also prove it mathematically. I understood what he was saying, but could not understand why he didn’t see that the assumption I made was logical and “had” to be correct. The simple fact was that it was an issue I was not ready to defend because it would take several hours of work to prove the concept. I was stuck and felt I could not rebut the comment. It was hard to explain to the other committee members, but it was apparent that I would not be able to defend against Dr. Myer’s question. Because I had made an assumption and proved the assumption with math on another issue (see Chapter 12), it was felt that I should have done the same here.

We went on to the questions of the other members, which were generally straightforward. The conclusion of my thesis defense was that I needed to validate my mathematical assumption to pass. Three of my committee members felt that it was not necessary to do the re-write, but Dr. Myer was able to convince one other committee member and I needed four out of five members to sign off on the thesis. A re-write was needed. I needed to do more work to obtain my Ph.D. This is called a re-write and even though it is fairly common it was quite a disappointment for me.