ABSTRACT
Scientists from three continents are gathered in Boulder, Colorado, for a three-day symposium, Frontiers of Soft Matter 2012. From May 16 to May 18 they’ve congregated to honor Noel Clark on the occasion of his 70th birthday. No one cares that this is a belated birthday celebration, tardy by about 1½ years. Speakers from North America, Europe, and Asia are in buoyant mood, interlacing their scientific talks with stories and photographic memories of their association with Clark. Lively lunches and dinners border the technical sessions. On Friday, the last day of the symposium, Tommaso Bellini is the final speaker. He’s a burly man, sturdily built with a full head of black hair and a beard. His presentation is warm and personal but methodical, beginning with the large body of evidence for the liquid crystal ordering of DNA and RNA oligomers. Over two dozen colorful slides show the progress of the research through increasingly subtle experiments designed to tease out the fine points of the modes of assembly of nanoDNA (and nanoRNA) and the condensation of liquid crystal domains. At the beginning of the slide show Bellini displayed a succinct overview of what was to follow. One line, without further explanation, read: Noel’s vision. Now the moment has come. Bellini taps his wireless clicker and a slide appears on the screen titled “night prophecy (3 a.m. Italian time).” On the left is a photograph of Clark giving a University of Colorado Wizards Presentation to educate and entertain several hundred children and their parents on a Saturday morning (Figure 12.1).1 He’s wearing the classic pointed wizard hat. Although his beard is a little short for your archetypal wizard, he attempts to make up for this with his zealous posturing. The main portion of the slide recounts a telephone call that
Clark made to Bellini. After many months of meditative thought, Clark had a startling insight that he felt an urgent need to share. One year after the talk, Bellini affirmed that the slide was not a joke. It was an accurate representation of what had occurred.2 It was Noel’s vision.
