- By
ERIK ELLIS for the Daily Camera
- October 13, 1994
 Bang! Off you go. Bang! Off you go." Igor Gamow, son of Big Bang
physicist George Gamow and professor of chemical engineering at the University
of Colorado, is describing his latest, collaborative invention: a running
shoe designed to mimic the graceful hop of a kangaroo.
Best known as the creator of the life-saving Gamow Bag, an inflatable
pressure chamber used to treat mountain climbers for altitude sickness,
Gamow has come up with a brainful of inventions. Their variety is mirrored
in the furnishings of his cluttered office.
A poster shows Carl Lewis preparing to sprint - in a pair of red high
heels. A sketch of the Himalayas anchors the opposite wall. A plastic primate
sits on a shelf. Atop a tall bookcase perches an antique ice ax.
If nothing else, these curios testify to the altitude of Gamow's imagination.
"You couldn't predict this," Gamow says of his success as
an inventor. "You just have to follow your nose a little bit."
Listening to him talk, you wonder if the Native American dream-catcher
hanging above his desk big as it is, might disintegrate under the force
of this 58-year-old's dreams.
His inventions range from the SUBA (Shallow Underwater Breathing Apparatus),
a deluxe snorkel that lets people descend 10 feet underwater, to the High
Altitude Bed, a fiberglass vacuum tube that lets athletes ascend higher
than 20,000 feet while they sleep, lowering air pressure and encouraging
aerobic-friendly red blood cells.
As he fetches "toys"- mementos and prototypes- from nooks
of his office, Gamow resembles Kris Kringle sans the bowlful of jelly. Although
there are no reindeer at his home in Canon Park he does own a snow-white
Arabian stallion, Pegasus, which he rides at midnight.
"Horses are somewhere beyond nature almost," says Gamow. "Horses
are the only animals that have a mane, a flowing mane. You know you have
zebras, who have stiff... what's called a mane. But a flowing mane. And
a flowing tail. And genetically born to be rideable. They're a magical animal."
Surely Gamow must have buzzed with creative energy as a youth, brewing
concoctions and gluing contraptions in his garage?
"Completely not," he says. "Up until the age of 50, there
was nothing in my laboratory that was practical."
Gamow says that as a young man he cultivated an ivory-tower
approach to science.
His father, George Gamow came up with the Big Bang theory of the creation
of the universe. He predicted cosmic background radiation 15 years before
its discovery.
He was less successful in dealing with his young son's playthings.
Igor Gamow's early memories of his father range from the eminent nuclear
physicist's "attempts to make a Lionel train go around the house -
it almost did once - to countless fruitless attempts to make a model airplane
fly more than once."
Before the younger Gamow collected three science degrees from CU and
joined his father on the faculty in 1968 (George Gamow died later that year),
he danced for five years in the National Ballet in Washington, D.C. His
father first saw him dance at a rehearsal.
"He thought I needed an oxygen bottle because I was puffing so
hard," Gamow says.
"When I was doing my pirouette and what
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not, there was sunlight coming through the window and the
sweat was coming off. He noticed a diffraction pattern that had a rainbow
effect, which is what Newton had first described. This is what a scientist
comments to his only son doing artistic dancing. Lack of oxygen and diffraction
in the sweat."
A comment from a teenage ballerina inspired Gamow to take up dancing.
He was 16, and the two had attended a performance by flamenco pioneer Jose
Greco.
"It was tremendously exciting," Gamow says. He stands tall,
straightens his back and starts dancing: "Ump-da-dadump-dump. Ump-da-da-lumpump.'
His companion wasn't impressed. "She said, 'I think men look silly
dancing.' And I, 'I'll show you.' "
He goes on, "Where you can do your best dancing is probably in
the rehearsal studio without a costume. Then you're free. During a performance
it's all very sterilized. You're not very adventurous, because you don't
want to fall on your butt in the middle of the stage with 2,000 people out
there."
Gamow has always tempered his science with art.
"You have to have both. You have to have your heart and you have
to have your head," he says.
Gamow pushes open the steel door to his Biological Altitude Testing
(BAT) laboratory. "This is really a nutty lab," he announces.
Oz. Shangri-la. Or perhaps a spruced-up Bat Cave.
A puffy, red-and-yellow kite in the shape of a hawk hovers near the
ceiling. Batman trappings are everywhere - a poster here, a sticker there,
a cape on a mannequin. A rubber hand dangles from a filing cabinet drawer,
and a sign announces "Gorilla Xing."
The prototypes littering the lab are tributes to Gamow's principle that
you "just have to follow your nose a little bit."
The first prototype of the Gamow Bag, an object that looks like a 19th-century
hot-air balloon, sits across from the compact, inflatable modern version.
The oldest model of the High Altitude Bed is a small, six-dollar mouse
chamber, constructed from material purchased at McGuckin's Hardware. The
latest model looks like a 21st century sarcophagus, and is spacious enough
to accommodate Dikembe Mutombo.
"It's very difficult to make a clear mistake," Gamow explains.
"Everything you do has some benefits. It's also very difficult to make
a completely correct decision, because everything you do has its down side.
When you get an idea you should just run with it and not worry about the
details."
He adds: "When I was a graduate student there were two professors
- an American and a German. The American professor had an idea, and he would
spend probably one full year ex ploring that idea. He would go to the library.
He would do all the research. And then maybe after a year it turns out that
he found some flaw and it wouldn't work." He pauses.
"The German professor," Gamow continues, "he just tried
things. He did what are called quick and dirty experiments. He just sort
of runs the experiment and he looks for a nibble. So, in one year he could
do 10 experiments and maybe get four nibbles, two of which really turn out
to be exciting."
Gamow surveys his lab like Santa surveying his shop.
"There are times," he admits, "when you have to sit down
and do the very uninteresting, grudgy, perspiring work.
"But there are other times when you get a brilliant insight into
something. And that's a tremendous high." |
