PREFACE

For the prospective scientist, engineer, and others intrigued by technical ventures, few guides are available to the pitfalls and rewards of scientific research, publication, invention, and commercialization. So, I offer this autobiography which spans seventy years of largely scientific pursuits as a primer on the life of a scientist, abundantly illustrated by photos, drawings, and examples.

My professional and hobbyist ventures were guided more by serendipity than design, sometimes more the rule than the exception in scientific endeavors. It was the breadth and scope of these ventures, and the unusual accomplishments along the way that led me to record them here. Nine of these accomplishments very likely were unique; six in the sciences, one in technology, and one each in musical composition and theater. Numerous others, like collecting rare helictites in Kentucky caverns, and college-level advanced science projects in home-basement laboratories at ages 13-16 were merely highly unusual.

I call this a "nuts-and-bolts" autobiography because I go into much detail that previous scientist-autobiographers did not include or experience. I also recount other details unlikely even to occur again with today's internet access. This is partly for the benefit of scientists early in their careers, beginning to submit research results and interacting with editors, reviewers, and entrepreneurs. Thus, I include many illustrative reviewer and/or editor comments about my submitted papers. Also included are some of my own comments as a reviewer, and much correspondence with editors, some of it rather unusual circumstances, as recounted in Chap. 11. I am unaware of the existence of any other source for such material.

Although the name "Kavanau" is known in several professions, few Kavanaus entered scientific, technical, or artistic fields. Jack Kavanau, an uncle, was a draftsman and civil engineer who had some association with upgrading the Brooklyn Bridge, beginning in the mid 1910s. His son, Barney, was into aircraft design and manufacture. Another first cousin, Dr. Lawrence Kavanau, an aeronautical engineer, joined Washington's aerospace community as Director of the Office of Defense in the Kennedy administration. It was he who assured President Kennedy that "we can do it, we can go to the moon and come back," said to have encouraged Kennedy's "we will put a man on the moon" speech. Second cousins, Dr. Margaret Kavanau, is a psychologist in private practice in New York City, and Ted Kavanau is founding senior producer of CNN and founding president of CNN Headline News. Lawrence's daughter, Laura Kavanau, is a well-known mystery novelist.

First seeing the light of day on Jan. 21, 1922, in Detroit, Michigan, scientific pursuits beckoned from early youth. These included a solo hitch-hiking trip to explore Kentucky caverns for rare limestone formations for the Cranbrook Institute of Science Museum at age 15. They extended to my recent probing into the origin and basic function of sleep, beginning in 1993 at age 71.

In the months preceding World War II, I studied mathematics and physics at the U. of Mich., with side interests in the 'origin of life' and chemical bonding. Expecting to be drafted upon graduation but not yet at risk, I undertook a two-man hunting and vertebrate specimen-collecting expedition in 1941 to the Southwestern U.S. and Mexico. But for that partly ill-fated expedition, I might never have visited and eventually relocated to California.

In 1939 I began to assist in several graduate-level research projects (spectrophotometry, neutron counters, electron microscopy) as a Research Asst. to Prof. O.S. Duffendack in the Physics Dept. An outcome of that work was my first unique scientific accomplishment. In 1940, at age 18, in recognition of that work, I was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the youngest to have been so recognized. In following months and years, beginning in mid 1943, after obtaining my B.S., I was engaged in war-related research. This began at the U. of Mich., assisting in designing and building an AC voltage stabilizer for the Ford Motor Co.

In late 1943, desirous of relocating to California, I was hired as a physicist at the Radiation Laboratory at UC Berkeley. There, I joined a group engaged in uranium isotope separation for the atomic bomb, using E.O. Lawrence's converted cyclotron. Ranking very low on the totem pole -- mostly a handyman -- I yearned for more challenging endeavors. Unable to achieve them at the Radiation Lab, I was fortunate to be able to transfer to Caltech in Pasadena.

There (including forerunners of the Jet Propulsion Lab), I found my niche. I became a Research Staff Member on a Naval war-research project developing and supervising field testing of aircraft-fired, spin-stabilized rocketry. With Pauling's approval, my first chemical-bond paper was published in 1944 in the Journal of Chemical Physics. Not having had sufficient time to obtain relocation approvals in advance, my Draft Board looked askance on my career shifts. Each new address was followed by prompt reclassification into 1A. But as long as my research was war-related, I was virtually an 'untouchable.'

The California legs of my wartime research brought me into close contact (in one case, conflict) with five 'then or future' Nobelists, three in Physics (Anderson, Lawrence, Fowler) and two in Chemistry (Pauling, Calvin). The close proximity of Caltech to the Santa Anita race track drew me into an early hobby that will be of more than passing interest to many readers. A comprehensive statistical analysis of multi-year, horse-race betting payoffs at all North American racetracks for several years prior to 1944 revealed that modest profits could be achieved without recourse to the assumptions and complexities of the fabled "Kelly Criterion."

The track's 'take' (ranging up to 15%) could be more than offset by exploiting the public's penchant for greatly excessive betting on 'long shots' (fueled by the same unrealistic optimism of today's miracle-seeking, lottery-ticket buyers). In a few select categories of races, this penchant sufficiently skews payoffs to make certain bets marginally profitable. Though to my knowledge, this was unknown previously, I don't regard this accomplishment as unique because, with insight into how to categorize races (taking account of more than just the odds), any statistician could have accomplished it. Though these findings are shared here, continued validity will depend on their not becoming common knowledge.

While at Caltech I also had time to undertake a hobbyist experiment on myself to answer the question, "how well could I (a complete novice) learn to play Beethoven's Waldstein Sonata in only a year or so?" In the eventuality I was able to obtain only a crude facility with easiest passages. It was sufficient, however, to impress my father and mother, and elicit a rare compliment.

Being overheard practicing in a small, poorly insulated studio led to unexpected benefits. I met two notable musicians and somewhat altered my initial goal. I took over a dozen lessons in piano and composition from them. My piano teacher, Frau Dr. (musicology) Marietta Werndorff was well acquainted with Arnold Schoenberg (who painted two portraits of her) and had premiered works by both him and his student Alban Berg. That occurred in Vienna in the first decade of the 20th century. My composition teacher, Calista Rogers, daughter of the New York and London music publisher, was a well known folk-lorist and singer, and Asst. Conductor in the Pasadena Bach Society.

My only composition, was a Ballade in D Minor. Marietta was so 'taken with it' that she wanted her friend from Vienna, the noted composer, Eric Zeisl, to see it. Zeisl also gratuitously played it for us. For a musician of his stature to play a composition by a 'composer' who couldn't read a note of music a year earlier, I regard as my second unique accomplishment, though admittedly it's on shaky ground.

My leaving Caltech at war's end in Jan., 1946, just before my 24th birthday was marked by yet a third unique accomplishment, this one on more solid ground. It followed an interview by Bill Barton, science editor of the Los Angeles Times, concerning my recent publication on "causal factors in the origin of life." To my great surprise, the lead article on the front page of the Times for Feb. 4, 1946, was headlined, "New Life Creation Theory Based on Earth's Rotation." Though Barton headlined the Earth's rotation, I had emphasized the influences of the 24-hr temperature cycling. I proposed that this increased the probability that favored molecular associations would persist and that non-favored ones would be eliminated. Of this first paper, A.E. Ruark, Chair of Physics and Astronomy at U. of N. Carolina, wrote:

It seems to me you stand in somewhat the same position as Klein when he wrote the Erlanger program. After 53 years the consequences of that single paper still serve as a current stimulus to research.

Since my theory on life's origin followed the book (1924) of the Russian pioneer, Aleksandr Oparin on the same subject by 22 years, and the British scientist J.B.S. Haldane's essay (1929) by 17 years, it was only the third such theory to fall into the "Metabolism First" (MF) category. But it was the first to suggest a role of intermittent or cyclic temperature changes or energy afference, since it preceded the Miller-Urey experiments (1953) by 7 years. Subsequently, "Replicator-Molecule First" (RMF) theories were all the rage, first proposing DNA and later RNA. I entered the fray in a 1960 Science letter, asserting that the "DNA-First" proposal 'put the cart before the horse.' Today, the MF theory is resurgent, with the RMF theory being seen as fundamentally flawed, essentially proposing a miracle.

That was the only time a scientific theory of mine made front page headlines of a leading newspaper. One can suspect that, unless Darwin's theory of organic evolution also made headlines in some major newspaper, it is, indeed, unique. Of course, headlines for scientific discoveries, as opposed to theories, are not infrequent, a notable one followed the first confirmation of Einstein's theory of general relativity.

My origin-of-life hobby had another almost immediate influence on my activities. I spent the early months of 1946 in San Francisco, commuting to Berkeley weekdays to audit courses. I consulted with UC Berkeley zoology Prof. Sumner Brooks about a further 'origin of life' paper in preparation. He invited me to give a departmental seminar on the topic. At first, I dared not entertain the notion of lecturing to a group including advanced researchers, such as Prof. Richard Goldschmidt, of "hopeful monster" fame. Eventually, however, I reluctantly agreed. Practically in a daze throughout the seminar, I apparently left a favorable impression.

Continuing my interest in chemical bonding as a graduate at UCLA (fall, 1946), 3 more papers, on C-C bond energies, orders and interatomic distances, were published. I also continued working on the origin of life and related topics. This led to two papers in the American Naturalist, in 1947 and 1949. Because of its length, the latter paper, a 44-page review and correlation of cellular phenomena, was published in two successive issues, which was and remains a precedent.

A rather unusual experience occurred at UCLA in a statistical mechanics course given by Edwin Macmillan. One day he announced, "I'm tired of giving all the lectures, will one of you please volunteer for today's assignment?" The students looked at each other in bewilderment at such an unprecedented request. But it was my practice to go over each text assignment in detail beforehand, so I didn't hesitate to accept the invitation. Not completing the assignment, I was granted more time to finish at the next session.

After taking courses in biology and the physical sciences at UCLA until 1949, I transferred to UC Berkeley as a pre-doctoral student in chemical embryology with Prof. William Berg, obtaining my degree in 1952. Experts researching in the same field were in Sweden at the Wenner-Gren Inst. in Stockholm. So, that's where I went for my NIH-supported postdoctoral studies, as NIH's highest-ranking Postdoctoral Fellow.

While at Wenner-Gren, I met the eminent developmental biologist, Prof. Paul Weiss, who visited briefly. He invited me to join his newly assembled research unit at the Rockefeller Institute in New York City, where I arrived in mid 1955. There, I made the acquaintance of a skilled Swedish machinist and engineer, Nils Jernberg, head of the Instrument Facility. Nils and I subsequently collaborated on several outside projects, designing and building laboratory equipment. In 1957 I was appointed an Asst. Professor at UCLA, my present academic home.

A fourth "unique" scientific experience or accomplishment awaited me in 1963, when my paper on structure and functions of biological membranes appeared in the British journal, Nature (subsequently also the topic of 3 books). This precipitated a virtual frenzy of interest, and 1,799 reprint requests, hundreds per day, at first. Those were times not long after the discovery of the DNA double helix, when molecular biology 'took off' and membrane structure and functions were (and remain) 'hot' topics. The countries of origin of the requests were worldwide and the numbers so great that they now possess historical interest. Alas,, though my proposed structure was ingenious, and seemingly supported by electron optics, Nature had chanced upon a better solution!

Reprint requests for this article give a synopsis of the geographical and institutional distribution of activities in molecular biology in the early 1960s, in specific countries, regions, and research centers. Such a synopsis would be very difficult to obtain otherwise, if even accessible. For example, Czechoslovakia, alone, was the country of origin of an unbelievable 96 requests. Of those from Czech Institutes, 11 were from Physiology, 9 from Pharmacology, 6 each from Human Nutrition, and Hematology and Blood Transfusion, and 5 from Physics and Pathology of the Eye.

The other 59 requests came from an astonishingly numerous 32 additional Czech research programs. These comprise a veritable 'Who's Who' of, perhaps no longer existing, 1963 Czech molecular biology research activities.

However, a putative record for greatest numbers probably isn't my only record for reprint requests. I very likely also hold the record for elapsed time after publication. In 1950, while a graduate student at UC Berkeley, my paper on enzyme kinetics appeared in the Journal of General Physiology. To my utter amazement, 54 years later, in 2004, I received a request for this paper from Russia, from Dr. I.S. Meilanov. My findings on influences of temperature on hydrogen bonding in enzymes of half-a-century ago apparently retain their relevance today. Although admittedly somewhat trivial, I rate this as a fifth 'unique' accomplishment.

Ranking second in elapsed time for a reprint request was one that came after only 38 years. It was for "Wheel-Running Preferences of Mice," published in 1966 and, coincidentally, also requested in 2004. It came from Prof. Raymond Huey of the U. of Washington, who wrote:

I read this paper almost 40 years ago as an undergrad at Berkeley in the mid-60s. I was really a pre-med at the time, but I well remember the impact your paper had on me....looking back after all these years, I'm certain that reading your paper was one of the key experiences that encouraged me to pursue a career in biology. Thanks!

Drawing on copious other correspondence, I have included reader comments received about several of my ground-breaking studies in animal behavior at UCLA, beginning in the early 1960s. They reveal differences in approach and interpretations by zoologists and psychologists studying animal behavior, as well as an aspect of the superficiality of both approaches.

In 1967, editor P. Abelson of the highly prestigious U.S. weekly journal, Science, extended an invitation to me to contribute a review titled, "Behavior of Captive White-Footed Mice." This ran to a record 17 pages and 19 figures. Many articles in Science run to 4-1/2 or 5 pages, rarely 6. I rank this record-length article in Science as my sixth unique accomplishment.

Some words excerpted from individual comments regarding it convey the sense of those received. They included:

.....extremely sophisticated....very highly impressed....an invigorating breeze ....remarkable....most refreshing general outlook....a superb piece of work.... brilliant....fascinating and thought-provoking....extraordinary research ....splendid article....exhaustive and highly impressive....most important....engrossing and new ecological subject....best paper I have read in a long, long time....really tremendous ....most enlightening....a most thorough work.

Today, there is little such feedback. Most readers merely download papers of interest. In an earlier publication achievement (1960-1962), five of my publications, in three different fields (origin of life, animal behavior, cytoplasmic streaming) appeared in sequence in Science. Eventually my publications in that journal numbered 23, the latest online in 2007.

In Charles L. Kutscher's 1971 volume, "Readings in Comparative Studies in Animal Behavior," this Science paper was reprinted, He commented as follows:

Perhaps Kavanau's work will stimulate some of these studies.....The field of animal behavior may be entering a very exciting period of growth.

However, Kutscher's words did not prove to be prescient. Although my laboratory continued to mount innovative studies of mammalian behavior through the 1970s, and unprecedented studies of birds in the 1980s (see Chap. 10 and below), no other research group followed in our footsteps (see below and Chap. 9: "Some 21st century techniques are 40 years obsolete.")

During my early years at UCLA, a leader in animal behavior (ethology), Prof. W.H. Thorpe, and his family from Cambridge, England, visited The Dept. for several weeks. I had been in contact with him before and volunteered to show his daughter the city. Having artistic talents, she reciprocated by pencil-sketching my portrait. Though my only experience at sketching was in biology lab notebooks (grades, B), I decided to return the favor. One thing led to another and soon I was sketching four former or current chairmen of the UCLA Zoology Dept. (Profs. Loye Miller, Bennet Allen, Boris Krichesky, and Theodore Jahn). I displayed the sketches in my office-lab, only to have them badly damaged in a subsequent fire, though still recognizable. Others survive.

In my earliest submitted papers in animal behavior, some reviewers justifiably admonished me for using anthropomorphisms (animal behavior interpreted in terms of human motivations) in describing responses of my animals. But such interpretations and, particularly, later ones with birds, eventually were recognized as leaving little room for doubt. In fact, partly influenced by my contributions, the pendulum has swung toward an even greater use of anthropomorphisms by behaviorists, today. Pertinent excerpts from a 1964 letter from Prof. J.F. Dashiell, U. N. Carolina (psychology), were:

....I do want to register in an impressionistic way the great pleasure that one reader has derived from your publications. For you have widened considerably the conceptual framework within which scientists and others are properly and fairly to understand animal life....I predict that your reports will have a liberalizing effect upon comparative psychologists, not to mention workers and thinkers in other fields.

In some correspondence with Konrad Lorenz in 1966, during which I chose my words conservatively, the same subject was touched upon. He wrote:

I don't think that what you term "anthropomorphic interpretation" is really anthropomorphic.....The phenomenon is anthropomorphic only in the sense that it is most marked in Man Himself....

In his tentative acceptance of another paper on wheel running for the journal Behaviour in 1965, Editor W. H. Thorpe, a world-renowned leading behaviorist at Cambridge U., wrote,

....I have now looked through the manuscript "Compulsory Regime and Control of Environment in Animal Behavior which you submitted for publication in Behaviour. I found it both original and stimulating and it seems to me that you have opened up a valuable new technique for the study of volitional behaviour in small mammals.....

On the topic of reviewers, I also cite examples of egregious reviewer missteps. For example, a friend, Dr. Bruce Merrifield, a UCLA graduate, was asked by a journal's reviewers to delete his "regrettable" reference to the possibility of automating his new solid-state synthesis technique (369 reactions and 11,391 steps for ribonuclease), for which he subsequently received a Nobel Prize.

Included, also, are reviews of my seven books, and my reviews of the books of others. These and the reviews of submitted papers may be of interest to non-scientists as well. Scientific issues behind the scenes and the positions taken by some reviewers that impede efforts to advance techniques and disseminate new ideas, infrequently are aired in public.

Included is a rare instance where the Editor of Neuroscience, discounted an unfavorable reviewer's assessment of my invited Commentary. When queried subsequently by the Editor, I agreed to submit a revision if the unfavorable reviewer was excluded from further reviewing, a very unusual circumstance. That paper became a well received, 38-page, 1997 monographic Commentary on "Memory, Sleep, and the Evolution of Mechanisms of Synaptic Efficacy Maintenance."

I received a similar negative review a year later when I submitted a paper on dreams to Behavioral Brain Research. The two reviews from this journal show how subjective the review process occasionally can be. While one reviewer found the paper to be "clearly written and advances interesting hypotheses," the other found that the "manuscript is written in a language that is incomprehensible for neuroscientists." Faced with such a disagreement, myself, as an editor, I would at least have sought its resolution.

Not only different reviewers but also different journals and their editors may have radically different views on the value of theoretical papers. Thus, in 1999 I sought to bring my sleep studies to the attention of a more clinically oriented group than neuroscientists. To this end, I submitted a paper titled, "Illusory Dream Genesis: Clues to a Common Path to Many Mental Disorders," to Neuropsychiatry, Neuropsychology, and Behavioral Neurology. This paper was of the same genre as my prior and subsequent publications having to do with topics in neuroscience. But at this journal the paper fell on deaf ears. One reviewer found it to be a "very interesting, speculative, almost fanciful piece on theories of dreams and delirium," the other found it to be "an interesting flight of fancy."

What was this flight of fancy? I quote from the article's Abstract:

The neural pathologies underlying many mental disorders appear to exert their deleterious influences by inducing abnormalities in brain waves. The abnormal waves, in turn, fail to sustain dedicated efficacies in memory circuits, leading to mental malfunction.

Undeterred, I submitted the same paper retitled, "Sleep, Memory Maintenance, and Mental Disorders," to another clinical neuroscience journal. One of its reviewers found it to be "an excellent article, provocative, and heuristic," the other found that "the audience for this journal will be interested in these concepts but many will not be closely familiar with the underlying work." Both reviewers favored acceptance with revisions. The revised MS appeared as a Special Article in 2000 in the Journal of Neuropsychiatry and Clinical Neuroscience.

I also include correspondence with distinguished scientists whose paths I crossed. Most notably, in the early 1980s I corresponded with the world's all-time master of mathematical abstraction, the towering genius, Alexander Grothendieck. He averred that I had discovered "innumerable new worlds in that innocuous-looking Euclidean plane....with seemingly inexhaustible wealth opening up for inquiry." These findings occurred in the course of my founding a new mathematical discipline -- "analytical symmetry." The work included extending studies of inversive geometry into previously little-explored, but rich, domains. For one's studies even to be noticed by the great Grothendieck is no mean achievement. For them to be lauded, as above, ranks as my seventh "unique" scientific experience or accomplishment. Discovering "innumerable new worlds" and "seemingly inexhaustible wealth" are unique accomplishments for a geometer in any context.

These mathematical activities were the serendipitous outcome of jointly designing and building, with Nils Jernberg (who subsequently helped automate Bruce Merrifields's Nobel-prize-winning solid-state synthesizer), a programmable, non-harmonic laboratory shaker. This occurred while I was a postdoctoral researcher in 1955-1957 at Rockefeller. An analysis of the novel movements of this shaker led to the discovery of the analytical, quantitative treatment of symmetry. In this treatment, a curve's symmetry in a given coordinate system could be expressed quantitatively in terms of the degree and complexity of its equation.

In essence, this brought to light relationships that escaped the notice of mathematicians and physicists over the previous 150 years. For example, the Devil's Curve, long known and much exploited in math instruction, was of unknown derivation or affinity. Symmetry studies revealed it to be a simple construction from two of geometry's best known curves, the co-centered circle and equilateral hyperbola. Even with this knowledge, though, the construction would elude a modern geometer unfamiliar with my work. Both the fascinating curves traced out by movements of the shaker platform, and the transformation that produces them, were unknown to geometers (subjects of Chap. 5). In the German journal, ZAMP, a reviewer observed that, "one is astonished by the forms that are obtained."

Though the shaker was the first of its kind, potentially of great use, assigned for production, and with advance purchase orders placed at exhibitions, it was never manufactured or marketed. It became the foil of an impractical perfectionist, the president of New Brunswick Scientific Co., Inc., to whom its manufacture and sale had been assigned. After 7 years of half-hearted effort, in which one or more of our shaker's novelties were incorporated into his own line, he failed to dynamically balance it (see Chap. 2). This was not a prerequisite for its manufacture, sale, or successful use. Its essential function is to shake samples anharmonically. Whether or not there also is some vibration of the mounting table is inconsequential. But his record was untarnished: all his other shakers were, indeed, dynamically balanced!

The shaker's mechanisms were sufficiently novel to be granted two patents. The complexity of one of these, a "universal plate" (the previously unknown 3-dimensional analogue of the well-known universal joint), was such that the patent examiner could not fathom its operation from drawings and description, alone. He first required us to present a working model, a virtually unheard of requirement in the twentieth century. An uncommon feature of this patent was that, to save money, as Nils and I had other 'irons in the fire,' I had prepared the application, all but the illustrations, myself. But my taste for preparing our own patent applications soon waned.

While my geometrical findings eventually filled three books, they are not yet among the armaments of most mathematicians. Though it was said that they would have created a sensation in earlier years, today's mathematicians seek the ultimate in abstractions, of which Grothendieck is the great master. But being of a concrete nature, and despite outstanding book reviews, the geometry findings have drawn little attention from most academic geometers. The Euclidean plane, you see, is widely, but mistakenly, believed no longer to hold any mystery.

Of more practical significance, I discuss the shortcomings I perceive in the teaching of grade school math. For example, I propose that the vague word "equation" be largely abandoned in teaching analytic geometry. It should be replaced with the more precise descriptive term to which every beginning student will be able to relate, namely, "construction rule."

Utterly fascinating curve-plotting problems from simple, easily implemented construction rules in bipolar coordinates (constructions about two point poles), could be assigned. Their captivating and intriguing nature might make a world of difference in subsequent student attitudes toward math courses. Dick Tata, reviewing my third symmetry book, "Structural Equation Geometry," in Mathematics Teaching in 1984 stated:

I began to agree with the author that this system [bipolar coordinates] could well be used as the one to which students are first introduced.

Another major advantage of bipolar coordinates is that, unlike rectangular (Cartesian) coordinates, they do not also introduce a second new concept, the use of "negative distances." My talk on this and related topics to a class of high school math teachers at UCLA led to a quite unanticipated response (see Appendix I).

Even my most successful invention (see Chap. 3) -- my eighth "unique" accomplishment -- first put to use while engaged in postdoctoral research in 1952-1955 at the Wenner-Gren Inst., and perfected in 1955 at Rockefeller, bears my name almost solely here. It is the method by which, for the past half century, many medicinals have been freeze-dried directly in tiny shipping and dispensing vials, subsequently to be 'taken up' for use in sterile diluent. Previously, many such substances were bulk dried in trays.

Development of my chamber-type laboratory freeze-dryer followed the adage that "necessity is the mother of invention." In my studies of amino acid metabolism in developing sea urchins, I desired a more reliable quantitative reference than total nitrogen. To achieve this I collected and processed my initial equal aliquots of stages of sea urchin embryos, on through to final assays, including freeze-drying, in the originally-employed small vials or ampules. Thus, no sample transfer was required.

This freeze-drying procedure now is in worldwide use in laboratories and production facilities for medicinals and biologicals. But by a twist of fate its invention is not credited to me. The company (The VirTis Co., Inc., of New York; actually its president) to whom I entrusted its production and sale almost immediately altered his interpretation of our contract, according to which the freeze-dryers were to carry my name, with royalties paid to me on all devices so named.

Advertised in Science, the freeze-dryer was a great success and an anticipated future 'goldmine.' After marketing the first model (VirTis-Kavanau Cryovaporator; cost $645) my name was omitted from all subsequent models, of which there were many (Duo-Dryer, Freeze-Mobile, Roto-Freeze, Centri-Freeze ($3,600), Unitrap, and Sublimators, the latter customized), and no further royalty paid. The president of VirTis proved intractable to any type of amicable settlement, perhaps influenced by the fact that I had moved from New York City to Los Angeles and probably could not seek redress. Meanwhile, VirTis moved from a small, two-man operation out of a tiny storefront with backroom shop in Yonkers, New York to a large new factory in Gardiner, and incorporated two new companies to speed up freeze-dryer production.

Only after 14 years of legal maneuvering, as the company sought to avoid accountability, and long after the procedure had become state-of-the-art, did we finally prevail. Even then, our success did not hinge on justice being meted out by the New York Supreme Court, but on the company's president 'shooting himself in the foot!'

His lavish spending on lawyers to counter our suit (hiring a former district attorney of the jurisdiction in which the initial trial took place, and hiring a former justice of the Supreme Court to argue their appeal before his former colleagues, etc.) became irrelevant, overnight. It was discovered that the president had developed and marketed a valuable new product through a new company, established surreptitiously by his son, rather than assigning it to the rightful owners (Central Scientific Co. of Chicago).

Thereupon VirTis also was sued by Central Scientific. Revealed to be, at best, untrustworthy, the value of the president's testimony, as the only defense witness, evaporated, so our 14-year-old suit was settled without further ado. Unfortunately, my original lawyer didn't survive. Divided four ways, the $75,000 settlement hardly compensated for endless frustrations in NY courts. Time and chance sometimes play greater roles than realized in determining scientific rewards.

At Rockefeller, in 1957, in collaboration with Paul Weiss, we published a mathematical model of growth and growth control. In 1962, in an American Scientist article, "Revolution for Biology," this study and other subsequent ones of mine while at UCLA were described by Prof. Talbot Waterman as one of:

the most impressive applications of theoretical and mathematical techniques to living things.

As noted earlier, I employed ground-breaking instrumented techniques and experimental designs for highly fruitful studies of animal behavior at UCLA. At the time these were beyond either the technical capabilities or instrumental means of other biologists. Even now, over 40 years later, scarcely any of the techniques have been used again, though they could lead to additional discoveries. I employed virtually every known electronic and electromechanical technique for the automated remote-, proximity-, and contact-sensing and, in some cases, identification, of the locations and actions of the animals.

These included line-of-sight and reflective infra-red beams, ultra-sonic beams, capacitive, conductive, and ferromagnetic proximity- and contact-sensing, and very sensitive microswitches. With these devices and a 'catch-all' fine-wire grid, I was able to monitor and automatically record virtually every overt action of small captive animals. Among these were times and amounts of eating, drinking, urination, defecation, sleep, movements during sleep, location, entering and leaving nests, and wheel running, including speed, direction, non-stop session lengths, etc., and even social interactions. For direct real-time visual observations, closed-circuit, infrared TV was employed. Virtually all of these techniques were applied for the first time to study animal behavior.

The new techniques and experimental designs highlighted the existence of a critical disconnect between natural environmental conditions and the crude substitutes being employed by most researchers. They still (2008) employ the convenient, but inexcusably obsolete practices of simply turning lights on and off to simulate day and night, and use 'off-the-shelf' children's toys or the like, rather than natural materials and constructs, to simulate a complex natural environment].

One outcome of our studies was the surprising discovery that timekeeping mechanisms of many mammals, including small nocturnal primates, have extraordinary program-clock-like capabilities. White-Footed mice (WF mice), for example, sometimes repeat certain changes in running direction, speed, and session lengths in activity wheels on successive nights within seconds of the same elapsed times (but different clock times) from beginning activity.

Our first laboratory use of artificial twilights revealed that the middle-to-late phase of dusk has a great activity stimulating effect on WF mice. They usually begin to run at highest speed and gradually slow down as the light dims. During the early phase of dawn, they gradually speed up as the light brightens. The brighter middle-to-late phase of dawn has a strong inhibitory effect. Though the mice ran with ever increasing speed, they abruptly cease running at a sufficiently high light level. Contrariwise, when starting to run at a constant appropriate light level, the animals usually 'warm up' to top speed, just like an athlete.

Investigators turning ambient lights on and off had concluded that mice and other small mammals were particularly resistant to becoming synchronized to periodicities that differed by more than 3 hr from 24 hr. Our first use of artificial twilights revealed that this was an artifact of using abrupt on-off light level changes (even the alternated illuminance levels, themselves, were inappropriate). Using artificial twilights and ecologically appropriate 'day' and 'night' light levels, activities of many mammals can be stimulated or inhibited almost at will. This made possible the imposition of, and studies under, thoroughly unnatural periodicities ('daylengths'). Nocturnal mice could be readily synchronized to clear-cut 16-hr and shorter cycles for long periods.

Other results not only confirmed the powerful influences of changing light levels on wheel-running parameters, they showed that the influences are light-level specific. For example, on several 'nights,' the intensity of the artificial moon was cycled from dim to dimmer to dimmest, and sometimes to darkness, for 30-min periods, and was then returned to dim again. All running parameters deteriorated with each degree of stepwise dimming. The mice slowed down stepwise each time the moonlight dimmed, and ceased to run in darkness. They resumed characteristic fast running when the level was restored to dim.

An article on these studies in the British weekly journal, Nature, in 1968 ran to 7-1/2 pages with 13 figures. Articles in Nature that year averaged 3.1 pages and 2.6 figures.

Another finding confirmed what should have been almost obvious. The use of bright-dark (on-off) regimes in laboratory rhythmicity studies is ecologically inappropriate. Nocturnal rodents, for example, forage in dim light during the night, infrequently in the dark. During the day, they sleep in their nests in darkness, never in bright light. On the conventionally used bright/dark regimes they are forced to choose the 'lesser of two evils' for activity. Since they avoid bright light much more than darkness, they become active in the dark (a condition in which they normally would be sleeping).

On an ecologically more appropriate dim-dark regime, most small nocturnal rodents are active in dim light and sleep in the dark. These relationships were revealed in the 1960s. Yet, physiologists and workers in animal rhythmicity still (November, 2006) have not progressed beyond using regimes in which conventional light sources are conveniently turned on and off. It is unfortunate that the marvelously discriminative modern molecular biology techniques are being sub-optimally applied under 40-year-obsolete, and even harmful conditions. Rodents have no choice but to be active in darkness, when most normally sleep, with their highly-developed visual sense 'wasted,' and inactive in bright light, under conditions in which their visual cells would be destroyed if eyes were kept open.

Though this practice is manifestly inappropriate, its unqualified use was of little concern to the editors of two leading journals where the papers were published. They could not find space to publish 'letters to the editor' exposing and bemoaning such practices in 2006-2007. Finally, in 2007, I called attention to these deplorable circumstances in a communication to Medical Hypotheses (68:455-456).

The new studies further revealed that small, captive, wild mammals find it highly rewarding to exert control (by whatever means) over virtually any aspect of the environment. This applies whether the conditions being controlled are normally rewarding or are normally avoided. Contrariwise, if conditions are imposed arbitrarily or unexpectedly, even normally rewarding conditions usually are avoided. Among other implications, these circumstances have a bearing on the need for rewards in behavioral and learning studies. The opportunity, itself, for captive wild mammals to engage in many activities is its own reward. Accordingly, the use of external rewards for them (as opposed to domesticates) usually is superfluous, for example, in maze exploration.

In L.B. Slobodkin's review in Science (1968;159:416-417) of my chapter in Systems Analysis in Ecology, he wrote:

The behavior revealed by this arrangement makes the mice seem much more exciting than any animals that ever occupied a Skinner box or desperately leaped from an electrified platform....I am fascinated and delighted by any study which can unequivocally conclude that, "mice of the genus Peromyscus tend to react to the arbitrary imposition of a regime by opposition to it....Not only is this a promising foretaste of new problems that will be approachable only through highly automated data processing, but somehow it lends hope to the world.

After completing several years of the described studies, both indoors and outdoors (including both natural and simulated twilights and bright-dim cycles), with small nocturnal and diurnal mammals, similar programs were carried out with medium-sized mammals, including several primates, and other representatives as large as a red wolf, bobcat, coyote, and gray foxes. Among others, these studies led to unexpected correlations between visual-system adaptations and activity periods in captivity and in the wild.

This led to distinguishing between two 'activity types,' "visual" and "ecological." After I lectured on these studies at the San Diego Zoological Gardens, large activity-wheels were installed in several medium-sized mammal exhibits. The animals (foxes, monkeys, and fossas) took readily to them and sometimes ran in pairs.

Our animal behavior studies also established that the artificial daytime light levels used in all previous laboratory studies for diurnal mammals were far below the optimum, while the nighttime artificial light levels used for nocturnal mammals were far above the optimum (except darkness). This was largely another artifact of convenience, namely, of using readily available domestic light bulbs. Nonetheless, a much-cited "circadian rule" was established based on the prior studies. Following our findings, it is known to be incomplete, failing to extend into optimal light-level ranges.

Pioneering studies of reptiles were carried out in collaboration with Prof. Kenneth Norris. The activity and rhythmicity of snakes and lizards in sand-filled enclosures were determined for the first time by means of capacitance-sensing grids, detuned as a reptile burrowed in their vicinity. This study opened a new window into the subsurface lives of small reptiles.

I also contributed a few popular articles on animal behavior. The first was a lead article in Zoonooz, a monthly publication of the San Diego Zoological Gardens in 1970, and a second article in 1975, both with cover illustrations. The latter article was introduced by Clyde A. Hill, Curator of Mammals, who characterized the pertinent findings from my laboratory as:

.....a significant breakthrough in zoo exhibit technology that occurs about once in every decade.

Next came a lead article and cover illustration in New Scientist in 1976 and another article in 1977.

Another event of note occurred when material from an article by Prof. K. E. Watt on diversity, from Natural History (Feb., 1972), was read into the Congressional Record for the 92nd Congress in the United States Senate on Feb. 14, 1972. It appeared under the heading, "Environmental Diversity-A Necessary Quality for Survival."

....more carefully designed and measured research leads to the same conclusion. For some years, Prof. J. Lee Kavanau of UCLA has been conducting experiments on small mammal behavior in heavily instrumented cages. These cages are wired, enabling the animal to change its environment and recording every move the animal makes and every detail of the conditions in the cage. The animals learn to control their environment by pressing levers. Kavanau has discovered that animals will press levers to select other than optimal conditions. In other words, confronted with a choice of living constantly in an optimal world but being bored, or of living in a world that is only optimal part of the time and experiencing variety, even a small rodent will opt for variety. It is reasonable to assume that humans would opt even more strongly for variety rather than constant optimality. Perhaps diversity is not merely a luxury for us. It may be something we need.

A lengthy effort, only moderately successful, even after 30 years, began in 1964, the same year my book, "Water and Solute-Water Interactions," on the physical chemistry of water appeared. In an article in Scientific American, Max Perutz, Nobelist in Chemistry in 1962, wrote that certain amino acid side-chains "repel water as wax does." I wrote a 'letter to the editor' to the magazine pointing out that no substance repels water; all attract it, although many do so only very weakly.

In following years, I wrote intermittently both to editors of this magazine and Science, also submitting a 'Technical Comment' to the latter. But nothing was accepted and the same and similar misinformation has continued to be disseminated ever since.

I never succeeded in getting anything into print on this topic in either Scientific American or Science to correct their authors' frequently published claims about hydrophobic substances "repelling," "hating," "fleeing from," or "avoiding" water (a simple statement that water was "excluded" would have been much nearer the truth). I did, however, get more than a few "thank you" replies and unfulfilled assurances that my letters would be called to the attention of writers and editors, so that such misinformation would not be repeated. Even the misleading term "superhydrophobic" has come into use by chemists.

Eventually, in 1994, David Schoonmaker, Managing Editor of American Scientist published a corrective letter of mine, though it appeared under the "tongue in cheek" title, "Hydrophobic Effect (All Wet?)." Finally, in 2002, Nature published a communication, "Two Faces of Water," by Prof. David Chandler of UC Berkeley on the same topic. But the mischief had long since been accomplished! Many scientists still believe, and material is still published frequently, about how water is repelled by or repels certain substances.

Names, dates, fields of study, and findings of my fifteen doctoral students in animal behavior and/or ecology are to be found in Chapter 9. Space here allows mentioning only my outstanding student, Dr. Donald Perry. Don obtained his doctorate in 1983 in the field of reproductive biology within a neotropical wet-forest canopy, which included methods of access to the tops of tall trees. Popular accounts of his findings have appeared in Smithsonian, Scientific American, Encyclopedia Britannica, International Wildlife, and Yearbook of Science and the Future.

His television documentaries included Nova and National Geographic Explorer. Don's 1986 book, "Life above the Jungle Floor," was the basis for the film, "Medicine Man." His Automated Web for Canopy Exploration took first prize in the 1984 Rolex Awards for Enterprise. His greatest achievement is his revolutionary -- in final stages of preparation -- book on human canopy evolution titled, "The Descent: The Untold Story of Human Origins."

Except for my sensational 1978 review, "Who Shall Review the Reviewers?" for the Los Angeles Theater Alliance" in Neworld magazine, my hobbyist experiences in the arts were not in the limelight. As an Alliance board member (and the representative of the Santa Monica Playhouse), I was the logical person to author the review because I was immune to possible professional retaliation by those reviewed.

Picked up by the media, the review "put Neworld on the map," said its editor, Fred Beauford, and "lit up its switchboard" with congratulatory phone calls from theatrical groups around the country. Alliance board members had felt that such an article was long overdue to provide communication between reviewers and live-theater personnel and performers. The review also seemingly eventuated in Beauford's accepting an attractive position back east. Last I heard he was managing editor of the Beachwood Voice, and had written six fairly well-known novels.

This was my ninth "unique" accomplishment, such a review having not been either anticipated or repeated. I was urged to make it a yearly affair, but it would have been too time consuming. It wasn't Broadway, but producing the Review involved interviewing the artistic directors and/or owners of every "waiver" (99-seat-or-less) theater in Los Angeles and environs, concerning approximately three-dozen reviewers.

My personal artistic accomplishments (portrait sketches, piano, a musical composition), though not overlooked, were not of great note. Some friends and associates in theater arts, however, were of more than ordinary accomplishments and interest. One of several possible examples, was the well known ballerina, choreographer, and poetess, Minsa Burri Craig. She was co-artistic director and owner of the Pilot Theater for the Arts (of which I was vice president). But she also was the wife of the legendary Italian "junk artist," Alberto Burri.

Upon Alberto's death, she became embroiled in international intrigue over his art bequests. Although death also overtook her after her retirement in France, a dispute over the family's multi-million-dollar art treasures is still (2006) in the Italian courts. The case resembles the recent, now settled, disputes between the Getty Museum and Italian authorities concerning national historical art treasures, inasmuch as Burri's works are regarded as national heritages.

Praise and appreciation for my teaching and empathy with students, conveyed in course evaluations, have survived only adventitiously, mostly written on a restaurant menu from a class dinner. Five student comments were:

.....thank you for a unique and interesting learning experience....Lee, I had a great time, I learned a lot, and I like your style of teaching....Lee, that was nice having a professor who also was a friend.... to a truly unique person....the experience with your personality and what you have to offer were enriching and valuable

Most pertinent records were accidentally discarded with much else during office relocation, upon my retirement from teaching in 1990. But the surviving menu testimonials, and comments in unsolicited letters from former students (now professionally established), are representative.

Recognition, other than thirteen invited (of a total of 26 published or in press) journal reviews, editorials, book chapters, encyclopedia entries, an online 2007 eletter in Science, and popular pieces for post-1993 advances in the fields of the evolution and ultimate function of sleep awaits the critical scrutiny of evolutionists. They rarely concern themselves with such matters as sleep. Indeed, my own interests were almost entirely adventitious. Most of my principal target audience -- sleep researchers -- are too enmeshed in sleep's medical aspects and are 'out-of-the-loop,' evolutionarily speaking, to 'come to grips' with the larger evolutionary picture.

Lastly, in my breeding of small parrots for behavior studies, I discovered remarkable, unknown relict reproductive behaviors that cast new light on avian evolution. Because of the highly conservative nature of vertebrate brain evolution, functional neural circuitry for these primitive behaviors remains preserved to this day. The behaviors can be elicited by exposing the birds to appropriate ancestral conditions at certain times during breeding cycles. Founded largely on clues from these elicited responses, gained through 7 years of painstakingly close study, I have proposed a radically new outline of main-line avian evolution, described primarily in terms of lifestyles and reproductive practices.

Instead of having to base this outline on chains of hypothetical phylogenetic inferences, I was able to ask pertinent questions directly of the birds. I confronted them with breeding conditions they no longer encounter in Nature, but that called for definite choices. They always gave unambiguous responses. Some of these were currently adaptive; others, though now fatal to offspring, were highly adaptive for anciently encountered conditions. In essence, this gave me a head start of several years on other students of avian evolution, who could draw only from conventionally-derived data. A book about these studies, "Lovebirds, Cockatiels, Budgerigars, Behavior and Evolution," was very well received in 1987. Some comments were (full citations in Chap. 10):

unique, exhaustive laboratory study.....must reading for all interested in behavior and breeding in birds.....a wealth of information and ideas.....of interest to all evolutionists. E.C. Olson, UCLA

enormous amount of information....very important contribution to the study of behavior of parrot birds. K. Immelman, U. Bielefeld.

congratulations on completing this monumental effort. J. Diamond, UCLA.

monumental in scope....much fascinating reading....many intriguing subjects.....enormous project. Bird World, 1987

vast amount of information.....work that serious breeders and aviculturists will use almost daily. American Cage-Bird Magazine, 1987

filled with fascinating observations and hypotheses.....thought provoking and stimulating..... Brain, Behav. Evol., 1988.

reasonable hypothesis for the evolution of some aspects of reproductive behavior in birds. The Auk, 1988.

a must for anyone seriously interested in avian evolution and should be in every major library. Wilson Bulletin, 1989

Since many pertinent, exciting discoveries have been made since 1987, the avian evolutionary aspects treated in this book have been brought up to date. The new work, "Roots of Avian Evolution: Clues from Relict Reproductive Behaviors," appeared in August, 2007, in Scientific Research and Essays.

J. Lee Kavanau, 2008.