Shoulders of giants
Rice University professor fatally hit by train explored the universe for the rest of us.
“If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.”
Isaac Newton was not the first to express this sentiment, though he was perhaps the most brilliant. But even a man of his stature knew that he peered further into the secrets of our universe only because of the historic figures who preceded him.
Those giants still walk among us today. They work at the universities, hospitals and research laboratories that dot our city. They explore the uncharted territory of human knowledge, their footsteps laying down paths that lead future generations.
Marjorie Corcoran was one of those giants. The Rice University professor had spent her career uncovering the unknown — the subatomic levels where Newton’s physics fall apart. She was killed after being struck by a Metro light rail train last week.
Corcoran’s job was to ask the big questions about the fundamental building blocks and forces of the universe. Why does matter have mass? Why does physics act the way it does?
She worked to understand reality and unveil eternity. To the layperson, her research was a secular contemplation of the divine.
Our city spent years of work and millions of dollars preparing for the super-human athletic feats witnessed at the Super Bowl. But advertisers didn’t exactly line up to sponsor Corcoran — and for good reason. Anyone can marvel in a miraculous catch. It is harder to grasp the wonder of a subatomic world, the calculations that bring order to the universe, the research that hopes to explain reality itself.
Only looking backward can we fully grasp the incredible feats done by physicists like Corcoran.
“A lot of people don’t have a very long timeline. They’re thinking what’s going to happen to them in the next hour or the next day, maybe the next week,” Andrea Albert, one of Corcoran’s former students, told the editorial board. “No, we’re laying the foundation so that your grandkids are going to have an awesome, cool technology. I don’t know what it is yet. But it is going to be awesome.”
Houston is already home to some of the unexpected breakthroughs of particle physics. Accelerators once created to smash atoms now treat cancer patients with proton therapy.
All physics is purely academic — until it isn’t. From the radio to the atom bomb, modern civilization is built on the works of giants.
But the tools that we once used to craft the future are being left to rust.
Federal research funding has fallen from its global heights. Immigrants who help power our labs face newfound barriers. Our nation shouldn’t forget that Albert Einstein and Edward Teller were refugees.
“How are we going to foster the research mission of the university?” Rice University President David Leebron posed to the editorial board last year. “I think as we see that squeeze, you look at the Democratic platform or the Republican platform or the policies out of Austin, I worry about the level of commitment.”
In a competitive field, Corcoran went out of her way to help new researchers. In a field dominated by men, she stood as a model for young women. And in a nation focused on quarterly earnings, her work was dedicated to the next generation.
Marjorie Corcoran was a giant. The world stands taller because of her.