I recently finished reading The Soul of a Chef by Michael Ruhlman (see previous post for more). I was actually so eager to see how it ended that I woke up at 4 am to make it through the final section, "Journey Toward Perfection" about Thomas Keller.
I was fortunate to attend a Mechanobiology "retreat" at NUS. I can't write too much about that, since it was a closed meeting and I was present only due to an e-mail mix-up, but it was quite a thought-provoking experience. For instance, what would be the ideal research institute. Are there parallels with Thomas Keller's utopian vision of the ideal kitchen, as transcribed by Ruhlman?
In his ideal kitchen -- and since he always strives to fulfill ideals, he truly hopes one day to make this happen -- there is no head chef, no sous shef, no brigade. There are only five or six cooks [...] who share similar notions of perfection. Each day they will come into the kitchen and cook, just cook. There will be no plan. They will cook as the are inclined. Each cook, equal with all others, will be utterly free to experiment, to let his or her own individual personality and creativity truly propel him or her. The key element in this scenario is this: shared standard of perfection. [eloquently written examples from the culinary world.] In is ideal kitchen all that effort -- which depletes and enervates you, and yet that can be the main work of the day -- will vanish, and with the shackle gone, he believes, a kitchen could really cook.
That passage really struck me when I considered how much time professors spend dealing with bureaucracies, meetings, and inter-personal problems (e.g. different expectations for research than a student), rather than actually doing experiments. My adviser slept less than four hours a night for the past week due to an overlapping of classes to teach, grant proposals to submit, paperwork to fill out, and so on. It also made me ponder the effect that the personality of the professor can have on the group, a theme that Ruhlman also described:
...one notices the effect of the chef's mind on the staff. As the personality of a powerful CEO of a small company, a school principal, or a theatrical director permeats the entire operation over which that person presides, so a chef's mind and personality permeate a kitchen, determine absolutely not only is standards but also its tone and tenor. The people who work there are succesful in durection proportion to their willingness to embrace, to be infused with, the chef's personality. In a strong chef's kitchen those who resist the personality leave or are fired. The weaker the chef, the more nebulous this dynamic becomes.
Based on my research experience so far, I believe that the same can be said about research labs. I have seen how a grad student who thinks on the same wavelength (to use a physics analogy) as his professor can get several major papers published and move up in the academic world, whereas others with conflicting personalities may switch advisers, even after several years.
I also see similarities between how Thomas Keller sees food and how Prof. Osheroff at Stanford sees his experimental apparatus. To Keller, the key to great cooking is understanding every single step of your recipe and according to Osheroff (and countless other scientists, I'm sure) is understanding every single step in your procedure.
I could continue to elaborate on Ruhlman's observations, but I am worried that this is getting out of control. For instance, a recent post about offals on his blog sparked a craving for kway chap (see photo), which then escalated into a 36-hour exploration of Singaporean's culinary offerings (cuttlefish kangong, yong tau foo, tim sum, bao, ice kachang, and bak kut teh). My stomach is a wreck, but I felt that I got a deeper look into Singapore than provided by the standard shopping mall experience.
I'm very curious about this fellow now. I'm going to read more about him. Just browsing your blog but am thoroughly enjoying it so far. Very thoughtful words.
Posted by: TheElementary | March 25, 2008 at 03:44 AM