The Powerful Patroness
J. Hollingsworth’s article on institutional factors affecting scientific discovery and D. Coyle’s book discussing the role of coaching in the development of exceptional ability have me thinking about how connections with other people affect the discovery potential of the individual. In particular, they got me thinking about the Master-Apprentice model.
Physics Ph.D. training essentially follows a Master-Apprentice model with universities playing the role of guilds. Each guild (institution) dominates in its local region and specializes in certain styles (physics specialties) as well as techniques. The masters (staff researchers) have their own production agenda (research agenda) and apprentices (graduate students and undergraduates) join masters via recommendations and provided resources exist (places in the program and funding). Apprentices perform more routine tasks, at the direction of the masters, that help prepare work for those at higher skill levels. A journeyman, who started as an apprentice and has gained more skill and experience, undertakes intermediate tasks with less supervision, following the master’s agenda. Eventually, with continued practice and experience, journeymen become masters. Masters set the agenda and retain the most skilled work for themselves. Whether we are talking about the training of artists by guilds in the 15th century or the training of physicists by universities in the 21st century, the Master-Apprentice model still exists.
Furthermore, when thinking of Coyle, it highlights why the analogy came up. In one instance, this guild system produced a skilled hotbed for artistic invention—Renaissance art in Florence, Italy from the greats like Da Vinci, Michelangelo, Verrocchio, Donatello and others. Similarly, Hollingsworth’s paper suggests another discovery hotbed example, the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University in the 1950s, which produced an exceptional number of discoveries over a few decades.
I think this idea of institutional hotzones that produce famously skilled individuals will sound familiar to many. I’ve been both on the outside of such zones and inside such zones over the course of my life. Having been on the outside, I’m forced to ask myself, “what’s an outsider to do when you don’t have access to a discovery skilled zone? When no master or mistress will accept you as an apprentice?” Quite frankly, a large number of theories about how institutional skilled hotbeds arise and are sustained are informative, but the statistical truth is that most of us will either never have access to one or will not have consistent access to this option in our lifetime. So, what’s a dedicated mind intent on discovery to do?
An alternative strategy that has worked for me is what I call the “powerful patroness” model, in contrast to the “Master-Apprentice” model. I say patroness, as I’ve never had a patron in the sense I’m about to define, and I used “master” before because in my physics training, I’ve never had a “mistress” or a female supervisor.
A powerful patroness is an individual who involves herself in supporting the discovery capacity of another individual, even when the patroness and discoverer share no other common professional and discovery goals, by physically intervening on the discoverer’s behalf. This intervention can be a conversation, a recommendation, advocacy, or funding, to name a few examples.
I have had at least five powerful patronesses in my time and, as a result of their contributions, I have been able to move back and forth among institutional discovery zones in the physics system, and, on occasion, been able to break inside from outside. While it remains to be seen what impact this will have on my discovery track record in the long run, it is interesting to note that the most recent addition to my patroness pantheon is the late, great namesake for my current position as a Dame Kathleen Ollerenshaw Fellow.
Dame Kathleen Ollerenshaw was an astute mathematician and politician, who came of age in England during the World Wars. She was instrumental in the founding of the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester, devised an equation to solve the Rubik’s cube toy, and only recently passed away at the age of 101. All of which is only made more impressive by the fact that a viral infection left her deaf from the age of eight. The fellowships supported by a trust and named in her honor are not strictly field or research agenda specific, but are competitively open to a broad array of researchers. In a recent article on fostering discovery, it’s suggested that one way to support discovery is to support researchers, not research agendas, to allow for greater risk taking:
The sustained preference for conservative research, despite greatly expanded access… and the chance for greater rewards, suggests that institutional structures incentivize lower-risk research. For example, a young researcher pressured to publish frequently will favor incremental experiments more likely to be accepted by journals.
“If we want to push that risk, then we’ll have to change the recipe,” [James Evans, a study author] said. “We’ll have to reward at the group level, like Bell Labs did in its heyday, or fund individual investigators independent of the project, so they can intelligently allocate risk across their personal research portfolios.”
I am a proponent of multi-stream approaches, not just one mainstream approach, so I like the option of seeing all models at play – Master(Mistress)-Apprentice, powerful patron/ess, researchers and research agendas. It seems that in pursuit of discovery, sometimes people are your greatest resource.