Until recently Dr. Andrew Lange had been the chairman of the division of physics, mathematics, and astronomy at the internationally acclaimed California Institute of Technology. The noted cosmologist's untimely death last month was mourned on both coasts, from the Cal Tech campus to the small town in Connecticut where he grew up.
During the 1990's Dr. Lange co-led (along with Paolo De Bernardis of Rome's La Sapienza University) an experiment called "BOOMERanG," which was short for Balloon Observations of Millimetric Extragalactic Radiation and Geophysics. As a result of their findings the internationally esteemed team of scientists concluded that, contrary to what had previously been believed, the universe was flat. Not only that, but according his obituary in the New York Times, Dr. Lange and his colleagues uncovered evidence that, "...not only suggested that it (the universe) would expand forever; they also provided crucial support for a bold theory that the universe had undergone an explosive expansion, called inflation, when it was only a fraction of a fraction of a second old."
I can't pretend to understand Dr. Lange's work. In fact, I couldn't even figure out what he and most of the rest of the kids were doing when we were in physics class together during our senior year of high school.
I began my formal education one morning in September of 1962 at Samuel Staples School in Easton, Connecticut. Andy Lange started his academic career a few hours later, since kids on the north side of town did their half-day of kindergarten in the afternoon.
The two of us attended many of the same classes through Grade 8, and quite a few more after we moved up to the regional high school in neighboring Redding. In addition to sharing a first name, each of us was the oldest of three children. We both played Little League baseball. We attended the same birthday parties. We were about the same size and build, and both of us had a one-syllable last name that ended with a "G' sound. Sometimes during the first week of a new school year teachers would wonder aloud about how they'd tell the two Andys in the class apart. But it never took them long to figure out which of us was which.
When our class's test scores (in any subject) were plotted on a bell curve, Andy Lange's always appeared on the lower left-hand side. Mine was generally found at the extreme right. A significant reason I was tolerated in high school was because my classmates knew that as long as I was around none of them had to worry about being worst student in the classroom. During the years Andy was class president I was class clown.
Andy Lange achieved international renown as a cosmologist, but as a kid in Easton he was always something even more significant: a truly nice person. As a teenager he was universally liked and admired by everyone at Joel Barlow High School: faculty, honor students, jocks, musicians, cigarette smoking rebels, and everyday Joes and Janes. His always-inclusive manner featured a unique and impish sense of humor; he was never haughty or condescending. He had no discernable mean streak, which then as now was unusual for an adolescent male. He never flaunted his considerable cerebral talents, and treated everyone with respect. Whatever the opposite of an elitist is was what Andy Lange was.
Apparently he hadn't changed in that regard. In the days after his death the "Cosmic Variance" blog at Discover Magazine's website was flooded with laudatory messages from shocked and grieving posters. Many were from people who knew Dr. Lange personally, and praised him as much or more for his qualities as a human being as for his being a brilliant scientist. A story by Janette Williams that appeared in January 25th edition of the San Gabriel Valley Tribune quoted Lange's colleague, Professor Marc Kamionkowski, as saying, "He was the best possible scientist and person." Another article noted, "His friends and colleagues described Dr. Lange as a warm man who always had a sparkle in his eye." The mother of Lange's sons, Dr. Frances Arnold, said, "He cared immensely about other people and not enough about himself."
Whoever said, "It's nice to be important, but it's important to be nice," must have been thinking about Andy.
Were I to have learned of Dr. Lange's death in 2050 at age 92 and subsequently read his obituary in the New York Times, I'm sure that reviewing his remarkable life and awe-inspiring accomplishments would have left me looking back fondly, awash in emotions that would be equal parts admiration and nostalgia.
But when I learned of Andy Lange's all-too-early death last month the only feeling I could muster was sadness.
Andy YoungReturn to main page
Font size: