Catalyzing genius

This is a tribute to David Julius, half of the duo that won the 2021 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for identifying how, at a molecular level, signals responsible for sensing temperature and pain make their way from receptors in the skin’s nerve cells to the brain. It’s groundbreaking work that is helping unlock treatments to terrible bodily agony with which millions of people struggle. It’s also a tribute to Herb Isaacson.

Julius grew up in Brighton Beach, the grandchild of Jewish immigrants and the son of two Brooklyn College grads. A public school kid, David graduated from Abraham Lincoln High School. It’s a school that has three other Nobel Laureates (the city’s public schools in toto can claim 35 Nobel Laureates, more than all but four countries in the world), as well as esteemed alumni from Mel Brooks to Lou Gossett to Arthur Miller to legendary drummer Buddy Rich to Federal Judge Jack Weinstein and countless other accomplished people whose names are less well known.

Surely the homes in which those teenagers were raised deserve credit for the heights they climbed — but so do the men and women who dedicated their careers to teaching at Lincoln. Which brings us to Isaacson.

There is no fancy monument to him. He doesn’t have a Wikipedia page. He had a short minor-league baseball career, then became Lincoln’s baseball coach. He also educated youngsters in science and mathematics — and as Julius has put it, was “a superb and entertaining teacher” “who showed us how math and physics could be put to good use by solving ‘relevant’ problems, such as determining the equation of motion of a baseball.” He continues: “It was at this point that I considered a career in science.”

No Herb Isaacson inspiration, no David Julius aspiration. No David Julius aspiration, maybe no prospect of chronic pain relief for millions of people on this planet. Just as impulses travel through the nervous system, ambition and excellence courses through our public schools at their best.