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Sound Mind Sound Body PHOTOS BY SOL GOLDBERG '46 • To keep themselves alert and strong for the mental exercise of scholarship, research, and teaching, Cornell professors show a devotion to physical exercise that completely belies the traditional stereotype of the watery eyed, stoop shouldered, bespectacled savant. Noontime faculty committee meetings have to be scheduled around squash games, swimming, running, basketball, and other activities that an army of teachers take part in, with Teagle Hall as their base. Whole departments turn up regularly at Teagle, and there are other groups of professors who pursue outdoor sports in season on nearby lakes and slopes. Each pursues his exercise and sports at his own pace and on his own schedule and few rankings or measures are applied to the individuals taking part. Yet among those who do take part a few stand out as particularly devoted, particularly regular, and particularly skillful. Among these, Professor Gold water-skiis frigid Cayuga Lake in mid-winter. 26 Cornell Alumni News
I " 1U A daughter snaps Gold on a garden tightrope . . . and climbing a 15-foot pole. few apply quite the determination that does Professor Thomas Gold, 46, director of the Center for Radiophysics & Space Research and chairman of the department of astronomy. Gold has hitched his academic star to the "steady state" theory of the creation of the universe, and his personal star to a steady program of exercise that even includes tightrope walking. He has been a member of the faculty since 1959, before and since which time he has achieved international fame for his outspoken advocacy of the steady state point of view. His neighbors in Cayuga Heights are accustomed to seeing him moving deftly across a tightwire or climbing nimbly up a fifteen-foot pole he has set up in his garden. "Tightrope walking is especially good for you," Gold comments. "It gives you balance." One Thanksgiving Day he startled passersby when he chipped away the ice from his seventeen-foot boat and went water-skiing on the frigid waters of Cayuga Lake. At 7 another frosty November morning eyebrows were lifted in a hotel lobby when Gold and visiting Australian astronomer Harry Messel sauntered out in bathing trunks and raincoats to go water-skiing. "I cannot fathom what the hotel people thought," the Cornell scientist said in recounting the incident. Gold is so devoted to exercise that he often runs from one building on the campus to another. He also shuns elevators and bounds up the stairs of classroom and research buildings two at a time, sometimes alarming slower moving students or colleagues. "You might as well get in some exercise," he says. "The average person gets little enough as it is." Leaning back in a chair with hands clasped behind his head, Gold looks more like a graduate student than a cosmologist whose views about the origin and nature of the universe have had a profound effect on contemporary astronomical thought. "I've always liked athletic things," he said. "As a boy I thought I'd like to become a ski professional." Instead he went to Cambridge University for more than ten years where as an undergraduate he was a long distance runner, pole vaulter, and high jumper. He came to Cornell in 1959 after two years as a professor of astronomy at Harvard University. "I think this is a great area," Gold says of Ithaca and the surrounding Finger Lakes Region. "It's not many places where you can be teaching in a classroom or be conducting an experiment and then be water skiing on a big lake in fifteen minutes or snow skiing in half an hour." His enthusiasm for skiing isn't confined to Cayuga's waters. He's also an expert snow skier and has participated in races on the slopes of Switzerland. He's also a familiar figure at Greek Peak, a ski area near Ithaca, as well as at centers in Vermont, Switzerland, and South America. What does a world-famous astronomer think about as he's skimming along a lake or streaking down a ski slope? "It's too demanding to think about anything else," he remarks. "One must keep his wits about him or he'll wish he had." Gold's Minnesota-born wife Merle and their three blonde daughters, Linda 17, Lucy 12, and Tanya 6, all share his love for exercise—especially skiing. The Austrian-born Gold drew international attention in 1948 when with Herman Bondi of the University of London and Fred Hoyle of Cambridge University he originated the theory of the continuous creation of matter, known, as the "steady state" theory. This theory holds that the universe has no beginning and no end and that matter is constantly being created, the new galaxies and star clusters formed within an expanding universe. This theory opposed that held by many other scientists that the universe had its origin as a result of a tremendous explosion between five and ten billion years ago. The latter theory is known as the "big bang" theory [NEWS, May 15, 1961]. Gold has also come to be known for his advocacy of a theory that many areas of the moon are covered with a soil made of finely pulverized rock. He says his vigorous physical activities are based on his conviction that a sound mind should be paired with a sound body. Gold's trim, muscular five-foot eight body is apparent proof his physical culture theory is working. May 1967 27
Page 1 and 2: May 1967 Cornell Alumni News
Page 3 and 4: General Motors is people making bet
Page 5 and 6: perpetuating existing injustices an
Page 7 and 8: Qornell zAlumni Howard A. Stevenson
Page 9 and 10: Announcing the New Cornell Alumni D
Page 11 and 12: ^ : : " • • ; & - • : ' " •
Page 13 and 14: Is this all you think of when you t
Page 15 and 16: Kodak advertises to the engineering
Page 17 and 18: Gentlemen: I am interested in caree
Page 19 and 20: the protection of balanced houses a
Page 21 and 22: Sproull on Undergraduate Education
Page 23 and 24: There is also a question of numbers
Page 25 and 26: guaranteed of this involvement, for
Page 27: works by others. One is the tremend
Page 31 and 32: uilding. Two neighbors who risked t
Page 33 and 34: awarded Woodrow Wilson Fellowships
Page 35 and 36: BOOKLIST: • A selected list of bo
Page 37 and 38: a man of any perception should pay
Page 39 and 40: Some new, one old, and others on th
Page 41 and 42: this generation of students is not
Page 43 and 44: the length of the rink to put the B
Page 45 and 46: Alumni Children Legacy percentage r
Page 47 and 48: Generations GRANDPARENTS Kimball, H
Page 49 and 50: THE FAMOUS CLASS OF 1912 RIDES AGAI
Page 51 and 52: Rink has paid off hugely in 10 year
Page 53 and 54: happy going to our club, playing br
Page 55 and 56: We looked around but didn't see Ear
Page 57 and 58: Lear Worth (Mrs. John H.), who spen
Page 59 and 60: 63rd St., New York, and wife are re
Page 61 and 62: un into some Cornellian, either her
Page 63 and 64: daughter Julia Hardin Foote to Alan
Page 65 and 66: ing the top spot in sales as monthl
Page 67 and 68: " 'Tug' was appointed to the World
Page 69 and 70: Class Reunions in Ithaca June 15-17
Page 71 and 72: a full report on Miss D'angers' dan
Page 73 and 74: frosts A Guide to Comfortable Hotel
Page 75 and 76: which took two of our children. We
Page 77 and 78: eth. Lorna (Baldwin) and Clarence T
Page 79 and 80:
Carolyn Spiesz, State College, West
Page 81 and 82:
esident engineer with the Calif, st
Page 83 and 84:
PROFESSIONAL DIRECTORY OF CORNELL A
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