Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
All this effort required money. Grad students don't come free, and
computer time costs. Early in our efforts, we sent a proposal to the National
Science Foundation soliciting a modest grant to fund our study. Such grants
are peer-reviewed; about a dozen colleagues read each proposal (a document
about fifteen pages long) and rate it anywhere from Excellent to Poor on the
basis of the merit of the proposal, its significance, its practicality, and the
qualifications of the proposers. These grants are a bear to get—only about
15% are funded in any given year—so the competition is fierce. We submit-
ted out proposal with high hopes, because we had demonstrated (we
thought) the feasibility of our research program. Out went the grant, and six
months later it came back, rejected. The reviews were split. About half of
our judges were absolutely ecstatic at this new approach to an old problem.
The other half were equally certain that we were completely off base, that it
could never work, and that everybody knew what ammonite septa were for
anyway. The low ratings doomed the proposal.
Rejection in hand, we rewrote the proposal. Another six months went
by, and meanwhile the computer churned out numbers. Again a phone call,
again a rejection. But the section head at the agency within the National
Science Foundation to which we were submitting, a paleontologist named
Chris Maples, saw merit in our approach, and threw in a small, one-year al-
lowance that kept our machines rolling. He told us, however, that the am-
monite workers of the world seemed unanimous in their condemnation.
Leading this charge was none other than my research supervisor from Mc-
Master University, Gerd Westermann. In several apoplectic phone calls and
letters, he let me know that I must have gone mad or suddenly stupid.
As the model matured, we were able to ask new things. We built in
septa of many types and designs, and we varied shell wall thickness and sep-
tal thickness as well as septal complication and design. We varied the spac-
ing of the septa. Eventually we were able to subject the computer models to
attack by virtual predators and to vary the simulated attacks. More time
crept by; Tom's two infant daughters became little girls; Tom quit smoking.
And then in the spring of 1996, the most wonderful thing happened: Tom
received a phone call announcing that he had been chosen to receive a
