I walked into the Institute at 9:55 on a fine crisp autumn day in 1953. I was wearing my conservative gray suit with the pencil skirt with the low hemline, my high necked silk blouse, and the glasses that made me look serious. My red hair was pulled in a tight chignon. I was on my way to see the director of the Institute.

Dr. Jonathan Zimmerman’s office was on the second floor, so I walked up, my inch-and-a-half heels tick-tocking up the stairwell.

The gatekeeper was a blond gal in her thirties, in a green tweed suit, with a friendly face. When she looked up from her typewriter, I immediately liked her.

“I’m here to see Dr. Zimmerman.”

“He has an appointment now, Miss…”

“Kessler. I’m E. D. Kessler.”

Her face brightened. “The math fellow.”

“That’s right.”

“Well! I’ll tell him you’re here.” She hit the intercom with the eraser end of a yellow pencil. “Dr. Zimmerman, E. D. Kessler is here.”

“Show him in.”

I put my finger to my lips and winked at her, and she grinned.

I walked in, the oriental rug deadening the sound of my heels.

My eyes swept the room. The furnishings were much more sumptuous than the average professor’s office. On an oak and chrome hat stand hung the most famous porkpie hat of the twentieth century. In 1949 the Journal of American Physics had a cover photograph of that hat hanging on the Berkeley cyclotron. No person in the picture, but everybody knew whose portrait it was. The walls opposite were covered with sheepskins, mostly honorary. And then there were the photographs, grin and grab shots, Zimmerman with Truman and Eisenhower, with Nehru and Eleanor Roosevelt, with Ronald Reagan and Marilyn Monroe and Joe DiMaggio. Set apart was an enlargement of a good-looking brunette on a thoroughbred taking a jump. That would be Charlotte, his wife.

Zimmerman was seated in the middle of a huge oak desk, obviously antique and costly. Papers and journals covered it. There was a mahogany cigarette box next to a lead crystal ashtray, which held his pipe.  His head was buried in a file folder, so he didn’t see me immediately. He was dressed in a beautiful and expensive looking tailored suit of dark gray serge with a burgundy tie that was noticeably very good Chinese silk. I thought of that saying a few years ago that Truman merely knew how to sell men’s clothes, Zimmerman knew how to wear them. That’s when he had first entered the post-War Washington scene as an advisor in our national security.

Still not looking up, he reached for his pipe in the ashtray. Then he looked up, dropped the pipe, and did a double take. His reading glasses jumped down his nose, and he slid them back up, puzzled. I could see his eyes were really extraordinarily blue, just like the reports.

I stuck out my hand. “I’m E. D. Kessler, Dr. Zimmerman. I recognize you from the newsreels.”

Immediately he was on his feet. I watched his face try to compute what I’d just said. He grasped my hand firmly. “Well…Miss—Kessler…”

“You can call me Eddie. Everybody does.”

“Eddie Kessler.”

“In person.”

“I had no idea…”

“No, nobody does.”

“Oh, please, have a seat!” He gestured to a thickly upholstered wing chair, then bolted around the oak behemoth, and held it for me. He then crossed back to his side of the desk. “Your documentation says nothing—well, this is a surprise!”

“Good, I hope.”

“I’m just--We don’t have many female math fellows! Actually, we don’t have any.”

“I hope that’s not a problem for you.”

“It’s a delight.” He leaned back in his office chair, and crossed his legs. “Have you heard of Cassandra Travis, the physicist?”

“The Zimmerman-Travis approximation?”

“One of my first graduate students at Berkeley and one of my best.”

“That’s good to hear.”

            “Your file is amazing. Everyone on the board thought so. Your credentials, the recommendation from Stanford. The work you’ve done with….differential equations….well, the thought is that it’s revolutionary. Pascal-level revolutionary. My question is why…” Here he dropped the geniality, and got serious. “Why am I not speaking to Doctor Kessler?”

“ABD.”

“That sounds like folderol, Miss Kessler.”

“How about department politics? I was not as lucky as Cassandra Travis to have a broad-minded advisor.”

“How are we to remedy that?”

“What is your suggestion?”

“I say we get you over to the University and get you to matriculate. You can get your docorate through them. A dual appointment. Transfer your records from Stanford…” here he made a note on a piece of paper “…I’ll talk to Gallaher myself, he’s the head of mathematics over there, you produce a dissertation for them, you produce brilliant postdoctorate work for us, everybody is happy. Can you do twice as much work?”

“Is it true you went through Harvard in three years and got your PhD in eighteen months?”

He grinned and hit the intercom, “Myrna!”

The blonde opened the door on the two of us smiling like Cheshire cat bookends.

“Get Gallaher over at the University and set up an appointment for Miss Kessler to see him. We need to find you housing. Normally fellows share rooms, but since you underemphasized certain personal details on your application…”

“I found her a room,” chirped Myrna.

“Excellent!” He raised his arms in benediction.

We shook hands, and as I turned to leave I saw the blackboard with the equation. He saw me see it, and commented, “That’s a little piece of physics. What do you think?”

“Hmm. Seems a little…top-heavy here.”

“Top-heavy.”

“From a mathematical standpoint.”

“Well, E. D. Kessler, how would you balance it?”

I picked up the chalk and started to work. It took me about five minutes.

He lit his pipe and came over to look at it. He nodded. “Yes. But is it elegant?”

“It’s a little busy. Maybe…”

I erased part of it and tried it from another angle.

He turned to me suddenly, “I’m sorry. Where are my manners? Would you like a cigarette?”

“I’d love one. I always think better with a smoke.”

“So do I.” He offered me a cigarette from the mahogany box on the desk, and lit it with a silver lighter, the one I’d seen in photographs. We turned back to the board.

“Oh!” I said. I picked up the eraser again. “We don’t need this.” I took out a couple of lines.

“No, we don’t.”

“How…about….that?” I stepped back triumphantly, and looked at him.

His eyes swept over it, and he nodded and the beginnings of a smile glimmered on his face. “Where are you going to be at three-thirty this afternoon?”

“I don’t know. Getting settled, I guess.”

“Dr. Gallaher is on the line, Dr. Zimmerman,” called Myrna.

“I want you to come to tea. Bring that!” he indicated the blackboard.

“The blackboard.”

“The equation. It’s time for the Institute to meet you.” He started to steer me to the door, then stopped. “Take it down!”

“I’ll remember it.”

He smiled again, and shook my hand. “Welcome aboard, Eddie.”

“Gentlemen, I’d like to introduce E. D. Kessler, our new math fellow.” Two dozen male eyes were on me as I stepped into that room, and I thought, Daddy and Terry would be proud of me.