Day of a Scientist 179 



biochemist, Tomomoto Yoshimo, who was going to speak 

 on "chemical stabilizers in biological codes." Bill had 

 worked in the same department with him some ten years 

 before when Yoshimo had a traveling fellowship and had 

 a very high regard for his industry and the originality of 

 his approach to coding problems. He was also very fond 

 of him as a human being, and he hoped the lecture would 

 go well. He was a Httle afraid it wouldn't, partly because 

 of the recondite nature of the subject and partly because 

 of fears about the intelligibiUty of Yoshimo's speech. One 

 could never be sure about the Japanese; all too often people 

 who sound perfectly relaxed and easy to understand in their 

 own labs become tense and virtually uninteUigible in formal 

 situations away from home. His anxieties proved ground- 

 less, however. Yoshimo had acquired a lot of confidence 

 and skill in English since Bill and he had worked together, 

 and he really had some fine work to talk about which helped 

 to explain the extraordinary stability of genetic information 

 over thousands, perhaps even millions of years. Although 

 most of what he had to say was concerned with the nature 

 of the chemical coding and was primarily of interest to the 

 physicists, chemists, and biologists, there was also quite a 

 bit about the significance of redundancy which served to 

 enlist the interests of the hnguists and mathematicians. 



Afterward about ten of the group, together with their 

 wives, came around to the Stones for cocktails and a buffet 

 supper. Yoshimo, who had come to the United States at 

 the special invitation of one of the big computer companies, 

 had brought his wife. This evening she appeared in classic 

 Japanese dress which ehcited much interested comment 

 from some of the other wives. The original impression of 

 feudal conservatism was quickly dispelled when it turned 

 out that Mrs, Yoshimo was actually a qualified psychiatrist 



