STS Alumni Speak

Abstract

> TWENTY-FIVE Science Talent Searches ago I was at a banquet very much like this one only minutes away from learning that I was to be one of the two top winners of that year. As I have talked to the winners over the past few days I have been asked many times what it was like then and what changes have taken place in the Science Talent Institute since. The people involved are very much the same. There are many members of SCIENCE SERVICE and Westinghouse who were with us then and are here again tonight and the winners themselves are a group very much like our own. But everything else is quite different. The first Science Talent Search was planned on the spur of the moment and announced only a few months before the end of our senior year, and the Washington trip was held in the middle of the summer when our college plans were already complete. I had already started as a freshman in the summer term at N.Y.U., and I had to take time off from college to be here. When we arrived in Washington we were met at the station by a bewildered delegation from SCIENCE SERVICE who looked as though they had no idea as to what to expect but were prepared for almost anything. The tests and judging were similar, but although most of us had done scientific work of one sort or another there were no formal projects as such. There would have been no time to get ready, and in any case, no place to put them. It was problem enough to find where to put us. Space was hard to come by in war-time Washington on short notice. We ended up staying at a very small and old hotel called the Martinque which we just about took over, but even so there was no room to spread out. Even beds were short and I had to share one with another winner. The entire Institute was supposed to take only 3 days which as you can well imagine was not nearly enough. After the awards had been announced there was still so much to do that the two top winners were asked to stay over for another couple of days. SO SCIENCE SERVICE wired my parents about the change in plans. Now at that time the Western Union station at home was in a back corner of a small store in the middle of the village and when the message was received it was read with great interest, judged to be in the public domain, and the news was quickly passed around to all present. In the resulting excitement no one remembered to deliver the message to its destination. Late the next morning when I called home the telegram had not yet been received and my father and mother were among the last to (Continued on p. 190) By LT. COL. P. E. TESCHAN,