An odd side aspect of the pandemic: the many images of chest X-rays in science articles/ tweets, makes me think daily of my dad. He was a respiratory specialist & his study was always full of MD magazines, article reprints, books w/pics of (and actual!) chest X-rays. :)

Frankly, when I was a kid, looking at pictures in my dad's medical magazines (lots of photos of internal body parts and complications of various chest diseases) was more terrifying than watching The Twilight Zone. Xrays were kind of comforting and B&W boring by comparison

I used to like to go sit and talk to him at night in his study, while he looked at his little mini-xray reproductions contained in his vast slide collection, as he prepared his slide carousel for a university lecture, or a talk somewhere. This was a regular nighttime occupation.

When I was small, he sometimes took me to work at Stanford Hospital, if he needed to pop in to read xrays. I loved the narrow xray viewing room. Especially because a real human skeleton hanging from a stand was in there. Named Max. With a cigar in its mouth. Max did not scare me.

Now and then he left me sitting on a chair next to Max while he went off to do something. Or in a waiting room, with a copy of Highlights (the kids magazine doctors & dentists always had). Then we'd go look at the new babies in the baby viewing room, alongside the new dads.

I mean, can you imagine? No one batted an eye at leaving a 5 year old in a room with a skeleton, and other doctors looking in to say hello or view their xrays. Different era. But I LOVED going to the hospital with him. And the grown-up library too. Sure miss him.

A few more little additions. Here’s my copy of my dad’s textbook. X-ray cover edition! First edition published in 1965.

After dad died, mom gave each of us a copy of his book. I wanted this one, which he’d given my grandma in 1965 — mom’s mom — as I was also very close to her. Two years later, she’d have been Agatha Lillington —his stepmom — as she married his dad! (thus I’m my own cousin)

Dad also did his own drawings for the book — much nicer than the xrays. He was a good artist. I always thought he might pick up drawing again in retirement but he ‘retired’ into smoking research, Emeritus clinical prof at Stanford & patient ombudsmen, before dementia crept up.

Dad gave me my love of reading, esp classics & sci-fi; of opera; of politics, of Star Trek NG; of classic Hollywood films; of the Marx Bros (he’d sneak me out of bed to watch them on TV); of mad parties with dear, funny friends; and of at least always trying to do the right thing

One of my greatest treasures is a DVD one of his former students, & by then med school colleague, made for his retirement from UC Davis, where he taught (how he loved students & teaching). Someone video’d his opening lecture to first year med students on some premise that year.

I’d filed it away. After dad died, I dug it out. Made me cry just to hear my smart articulate funny father again, who’d not been able to speak well in years. I’d begun to forget what he sounded like. Students file in, chatting — within moments, captivated by dad. THAT was dad.

I’ve no doubt many of his students are now frontline clinicians, consultants and researchers into this dire virus. If so, that’s a great legacy and one he’d be so proud of. He cared for HIV and tuberculosis patients, so he knew the tragedy of epidemics.

There's another curious branch of some of this story that I've written about before. Dad's textbook was groundbreaking in that it was structured to diagnose diseases not by giving the the disease and listing symptoms, but by offering symptoms and suggesting the possible disease.

Some of you computer science folks might recognise this as the way one branch of computer science and artificial intelligence systems are structured. A Stanford CS PhD noticed this, and he and dad worked together for a while. In the 1960s. HP were interested.

Fledgling expert system! In the 1960s! This resulted in my dad meeting with Bill Hewlett, in his famous office at HP. Dad told me Hewlett was one of the smartest people he ever met.

And a twist to this is that as a result, as a child, I got to play hangman with the Johnniac mainframe owned by Rand Corp in Santa Monica, Ca when my dad and the Stanford guy were there working on a project (obvs an expert system prototype). Will post a few links later.

Here's a piece I wrote in 2004 about dad and his book, playing hangman with the Johnniac, and @ComputerHistory (which now has that Johnniac in its collection in California): https://www.irishtimes.com/business/going-back-to-the-future-with-computer-memories-1.1145409

And another I wrote in 2012, when I was ready to write something about Dad after he died. This piece was included in the Irish Times yearbook for that year: https://www.irishtimes.com/business/technology/technology-nurtured-my-special-bond-with-my-father-1.1066056. I was thinking of this one this week, with the new release of Microsoft's Flight Simulator :)

Dr Ginsberg told me one other story about some of von Neumann's fellow researchers who secretly set the Johnniac up to auto-type a morning greeting to him. He got very excited, calling everyone in. He thought it was gaining some AI! He was furious when he found he'd been pranked.