Nikola Tesla Books
CHAPTER Two Back in my office I opened the file, unclipped the documents and arranged them on my desk. As I sorted through the papers I began to experience a feeling of excitement and anticipation. It was a recollection of something which must have happened in the past. I realized that it was the smell and feel of these papers which had brought memory flooding back. I was a young man, sitting in a university library with a typed manuscript on my knees. This was my first day of scientific research and a few hours ago I had faced my professor. He had simply handed me the manuscript and said: 'This is a thesis of one of my students; take it away and read it. It's quite an interesting problem so think about it and see what you can come up with.' - I left his office with the papers in my hand and no clue as to what I should do next. The interview had produced no explanations, no suggestions or directions: I was simply to be left to my own devices. That afternoon as I sat in the library with the thesis before me I was filled with fears and doubts but at the same time a curious exhilaration â what if I was unable to understand the thesis? What if I could not think of a new approach? Was my career in science to end that very day? I realized that I was now on my own, that in one sense I had become linked to the scientific community and, like the great scientists in the past, I too was faced with a problem whose mysteries I would fight alone. All my life I had been fascinated by science. Born in Liverpool a few months before the outbreak of the Second World War, my earliest memories are of explosions of lights in the sky over Liverpool and journeys in the middle of the night across our tiny garden to the air raid shelter. But there is a stronger memory. It is of visits to my aunt and uncle's house away from the bombing; visits which included books full of exciting pictures, of stars and planets, volcanoes and 16
