Touch of Gray - January / February 2007

Former professor a pioneerv
Model airplanes to historic ships

Former professor a pioneer
   When the American Physical Society and the American Institute of Physics, two leading physics organizations, decided to present an annual prize for the most significant contribution to the history of physics, the first person to receive that prize was Martin Klein, a resident at Carolina Meadows.

   The Abraham Pais Prize of 2005 cited Klein's "pioneering studies in the history of 19th- and 20th-century physics, which embody the highest standards of scholarship and literary expression and have profoundly influenced generations of historians of physics."

   Not many residents of Carolina Meadows are aware of Klein's distinction. He is a modest, pleasant man, easy to meet, and he obviously enjoys the variety of activities at "the Meadows" and friendship with congenial residents.

   Klein, or "Marty" as he is called by many of his friends, served a term on an advisory committee of the American Institute of Physics; there in 1965 he met Joan Blewett, who was the associate director for the Center for the History of Physics responsible for a national effort to preserve historical documents. They met from time to time over the years at professional meetings.

   Blewett and her husband moved to Carolina Meadows. Her husband died in 2000. Later Klein and Blewett married and Marty moved to Carolina Meadows. That was a happy day, but shortly afterward Joan was diagnosed with cancer, and after a brave battle with the disease she died. She herself had made important contributions to the history of physics by saving important records from destruction. Their marriage, though late in life, was a "marriage of true minds" of similar disposition.

   Before World War II, there were no departments and few professorships in the history of science in American universities, though a few historians and philosophers worked in this area. But the importance of science in the war and the ensuing enormous changes in technology caused scholars and others to wonder why and how this had happened.

   Understanding of the physical universe had changed since the start of the century with the development of relativity and quantum theory. Albert Einstein became the most famous person in the world. Many new "elementary particles" were discovered, and astrophysicists offered new ideas about the origin of the universe.

   This deep knowledge was difficult or impossible for laymen to comprehend, and many scientists harbored only vague or even incorrect ideas about its history. But learning from the past can help us move into the future.

   The aim of science is to understand the world of matter and energy as accurately as possible. Accuracy of description is the measuring rod of its discoveries, which are based on experiments, observations and abstract reasoning.

   Historians ask different questions about the world. They want to know about conditions in societies of the past in relation to the lives and personalities of scientists. They want to know how science shapes and is shaped by human beliefs and action. For this they need documents - diaries, films, newspaper articles, lab reports, personal and official letters, diagrams, lectures and scientific instruments. The knowledge gained from such records helps us to understand where we are and where we are going. This analysis and understanding has been the mission of historians of science.

   Klein, then a professor of physics at Case Western Reserve University with a specialty in statistical mechanics, became interested in the history and his research led him to look into the work of the physicist Paul Ehrenfest. The Ehrenfest family eventually gave him full access to Ehrenfest's writings, including diaries and private letters. This accident, along with an inherent interest in people and personalities, turned Klein from a physicist into an historian of physics.

   Ehrenfest was a respected professor at the University of Leiden, a friend of both Einstein and Niels Bohr. Ehrenfes brought the two together to discuss physics and they became friends. This direct engagement was fruitful for both, and though they did not meet frequently they kept in touch, often with Ehrenfest as a go-between.

   Fascinated by this situation, Klein wrote a biography of Ehrenfest (a two-volume project). The first volume "Paul Ehrenfest: The Making of a Theoretical Physicist" was published in 1970, and was immediately recognized as a model of its kind.

   By that time, Yale University had invited its author to become a professor of the history of physics, the first with that title in America. Klein accepted and turned his full energy to that subject. He soon became involved in many related activities, particularly the project to publish the "Collected Papers of Albert Einstein," in which he was senior editor for 10 years. Unfortunately there was never time to write the second volume about Ehrenfest. Readers of the first volume regard that as regrettable, but Klein has influenced the study of the history of science in other ways as the years passed.

   At Carolina Meadows, Klein recently gave a lecture "On Becoming an Historian of Science." Nearly 200 Carolina Meadows residents attended, and the applause at the end was long and loud. -- Herbert S. Bailey, Resident

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Model airplanes to historic ships
   In 2006, Bill Teulings moved to Carolina Meadows from Fearrington Village. He brought with him an unusual talent that has added much of interest and panache to his new home.

   Most boys make model planes in elementary school. For an exciting end to a youthful hobby, Teulings, 78, finally threw his planes, on fire, out an upstairs window. Years later (1975) Teulings spotted, in a Chicago hobby shop, a $30 kit of Santana, a simple fore- and aft-rigged German Schooner. This rekindled his thrill of scale-model building. However, upon getting to the sixth instruction, "plank the hull," he was stymied. Five years later, after buying a how-to book that resolved the problem, he finished the model.

   There are three levels of scale-model shipbuilding: entry, intermediate and advanced. Teulings admits his hobby is not for everyone.

   "It takes motivation, time, patience, concentration, practice, dexterity and the ability to visualize from historical records and plans," he said.

   He is firmly into the advanced-kit level. He clearly differentiates between kit builders and quality scratch builders who do not use kits but work from historical records and plans.

   As you step out of the elevator in his Carolina Meadows apartment building, you see on display Teulings' sensational advanced model, La Renommee (The Renowned). It is a 36-gun French frigate captured by the English in 1747. Noted for its maneuverability and stately lines, it inspired the English to build a whole series of heavily armed frigates. The 33-inch-by-27-inch model frigate is displayed in a Plexiglas case. The latest and most expensive of his accomplishments, it consumed 756 work hours from March 2005 to September 2006.

   Teulings works in a little room next to his living room where he can create and leave a mess. Carefully organized miniature tools abound. Size and difficulty dictate the tools for shaping and carving. He uses exacto knives, a jeweler's saw, drills the size of a pin, sanding tools, tweezers, miniature clamps and hemostats. A magnifier makes an eighth of an inch look twice as big.

   Spiling, the technique of tapering planks to fit curving bow and stern hull sections, is just as tricky on models as it was for early shipbuilders. That explains his problem with cryptic instruction, "plank the hull."

   An anthology on whaling given to him by resident Vince Freimarck, a long time Chapel Hillian, tied right in with Teulings' Charles W. Morgan, his fourth model that is displayed in his living room. On this whaler model, one side is completed; the other shows the interior rib construction.

   In 1990, Teulings completed his second model in 585 hours, an entry-level kit of a Grand Banks schooner, Blue Nose II. The modern full-size replica still sails in Canadian waters and participates in Tall Ships events. It is a copy of the famous 1921 Nova Scotia schooner, Blue Nose, lost on a reef near Haiti. Twelve years later, he completed his 11th model, Blue Nose I, in 494 hours (logged faithfully in his record book).

   Teulings has completed 12 sailing ships altogether. Nine of those have been given to appreciative daughters, nephews and grandchildren.

   His youngest daughter, Laurie Knight, lives in Cary. She recalls, "When my 3-year-old son John used to visit his grandfather, he was fascinated watching him build a model in his cellar."

   Teulings called his workroom the Viper Pit. John was delighted when grandpa gave him the 10th Teulings' model, Rattlesnake. When asked, how you entrust a fragile model to a 3-year-old, Laurie said, "His grandfather mounted it inside a Plexiglas case where his now 6-year-old grandson treasures it."

   Males have long monopolized model shipbuilding. When asked if her inherited DNA might tempt her to take up ship modeling, Laurie replied, "I think I'll be too tied down to child raising to ever find that kind of time. Of course, we are delighted to have Dad so involved and these are our most treasured family heirlooms."

   Teulings' older daughter, Linda Thompson, lives in Asheville and has received four of his ship models. Nova Scotia nephews John and Ken Grant also have four. Alec Grant, while in college, actually sailed on the Blue Nose II, taking tourists around Halifax harbor. Now a qualified sea captain, he presently serves as first mate on a Canadian research vessel.

   Teulings shares with Gov. Mike Easley a similar family tradition of giving gifts made with one's own hands. Easley says, "You are giving a big part of yourself and it's there forever." -- Dick Ballard, Resident

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