NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: We all know the popular
image of artists: painters, writers, performers,
they're creative but undisciplined; and then
there's the scientist: analytical, methodical,
obsessed with accuracy.
But whether these clichés are right or wrong,
sometimes the artist and the scientist are
more alike than you think.
Check out this guy.
KARL IAGNEMMA (Artist/Scientist): "At the
sound of Marya's name, a shiver began in Henderson's
chest that scurried over every inch of his
skin.
He felt as though he had been heated over
glowing coals, then dunked into an ocean-sized
bath of ice water."
NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: Meet Karl...
KARL IAGNEMMA: Karl Iagnemma.
NEIL deGRASSE TYSON: Iagnemma?
KARL IAGNEMMA: Iagnemma, yup.
It's Italian.
NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: He's a successful writer
of fiction, but he's also the same person
who's been called one of the top 10 innovative
scientists of America.
How can he be both?
His father was Emidio Iagnemma.
Born in Italy, he came to Detroit, and he
raised his son to be just like him, an engineer.
KARL IAGNEMMA: I ended up following pretty
closely in his footsteps.
We shared, definitely, an interest and a love
for physics and math.
CATHERINE IAGNEMMA (Karl's Sister): I always
knew he had a mind like my, like my father.
They used to go to computer clubs together,
you know, exchange software, and he took drafting
classes.
NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: And Karl did some experimenting
when his father wasn't looking.
KARL IAGNEMMA: Friends and I would do various
experiments with combustion, but nothing too
serious, no felonies.
KATHERINE IAGNEMMA: He would, like, light
tennis balls on fire and throw them down the
driveway.
KARL IAGNEMMA: Uh oh.
I knew I shouldn't have given you her name.
NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: But all those experiments
clearly paid off because Karl went to MIT,
where he stayed on to earn his PhD in mechanical
engineering and is now a principal research
scientist.
And today, he's a top member of a team of
researchers who are designing robots smart
enough to understand their environment.
Their algorithms will make it easier for robots
to navigate through truly difficult terrain,
and enable NASA to explore parts of Mars scientists
can only dream of reaching today.
KARL IAGNEMMA: Robots right now are pretty
dumb.
They have a hard time understanding if something
is a bush compared to a stone.
For wheeled robots, the danger is always that
you're going to drive somewhere, think it's
a safe place to drive, and you end up getting
stuck.
And on Mars, you know, you can't call AAA
to tow you out.
PAUL SCHENKER (NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory):
As a researcher, I think Karl brings some
of the best qualities you look for.
NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: Paul Schenker manages
the Robotics Space Exploration Technology
Program, for NASA, at the Jet Propulsion Labs,
in Pasadena.
NASA awarded Team MIT more than a million
dollars for research overseen, day to day,
by Karl.
PAUL SCHENKER: He's very objective, patient,
thoughtful in framing his problems.
He also brings passion to his work.
NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: But which work?
Let's go back.
Meet the other Karl.
KATHERINE IAGNEMMA: Iagnemma; it rhymes with
dilemma.
NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: His mother, Patricia
Iagnemma, was an English major.
KATHERINE IAGNEMMA: My mother loved literature,
so we had books in every room—in the laundry
room, in the family room.
Karl would lock himself in his room and just
read and read and read.
NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: Karl could also write.
In fact, his minor at MIT was in writing,
fiction writing, which confused one of his
advisors.
KARL IAGNEMMA: He said, "Oh, I thought you
were studying friction."
NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: Hard to believe, but
true.
Also true is that Karl's short story won a
contest for fiction writing—not friction
writing—held by Playboy magazine, in 1998.
And while he was writing his PhD thesis, he
started to write his first book.
KARL IAGNEMMA: And I finished it the week
after I finished my PhD thesis.
NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: On the Nature of Human
Romantic Interaction is meant to sound like
a thesis, but don't be fooled.
It's an award winning collection of short
stories about characters—many of them scientists,
by the way—who fall in and out of love.
Karl proves wrong the old assumption that
science guys can only write science fiction.
KATHERINE IAGNEMMA: I always refer to him
as being whole-brained, using the totality
of his brain.
I see the dedication that he uses in science
applied to his writing.
STEVE ALMOND (Author, My Life in Heavy Metal,
Candyfreak): I just...I don't think I know
anybody who's, certainly, at that high a level
in both those areas.
It's rare.
NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: Now, it would be easy
to congratulate Karl for using more of his
brain than most of us, which he clearly does.
And it would be a little too easy to marvel
at how Karl has managed to succeed at two
professions that would seem to be complete
opposites: science and fiction writing.
But, as it turns out, some of the very same
skills Karl uses in scientific exploration
come to his aid in, well, making stuff up.
KARL IAGNEMMA: In each discipline, you start
with a blank page.
You start with an idea.
There are so many parallels between writing
and research.
I mean, I view each process as one of increasingly
structured creativity.
NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: Okay, so both a writer
and a researcher have to be creative, but
just ask any writer or any scientist, and
they'll tell you creativity is meaningless
without discipline.
Before you can stare at a blank page or screen,
you must get your butt to the chair, and Karl
does it day in, day out.
KARL IAGNEMMA: A lot of writing is just passing
the time until something good comes along,
and you don't know when that'll be.
So, to be safe, you should be in that chair
as much as you can, on the off chance that,
you know, a miracle will happen and the story
will be born.
ANKI IAGNEMMA (Karl's Wife): For Karl, it's
a lot about patience and discipline.
That's an important part of his process, I
think.
He does his hours whether he gets 10 pages
or one paragraph.
KARL IAGNEMMA: A lot of times, I'm in the
chair, in the evening or in the early morning,
with my earplugs in, so that I can hear all
the characters' voices, and just typing either
nonsense, or typing an outline of a story,
or typing dialogue that may be good, may be
not any good.
But when the story comes along, and when you
get that germ, that little spark, and you
feel it, and you know it, that's when the
actual story writing process truly starts.
STEVE ALMOND: He's really efficient.
He believes he's inefficient.
"Oh, it's takes me so long to write."
You write so quickly.
And I'm like, "Dude, I'm not going to a lab
trying to figure out how to get the machine
to go over the big rock on mars, okay?
I'm not even...I'm having difficulty unloading
the dishwasher, okay?"
ALAN LIGHTMAN (Author, Einstein's Dreams,
Good Benito and Physicist): Both writing fiction
and doing scientific research are pretty much
fulltime jobs.
They're jobs that occupy you 24 hours a day.
You're not a very good friend, lover, husband,
wife during this period of months that you're
consumed by a scientific problem.
You're not very much fun to be around.
ANKI IAGNEMMA: I definitely feel that Karl
is with me when he's with me, but I do think
that he thinks about his work all the time.
Since we moved in together, and definitely
since Sofia came, he has to be more structured
in his work, and he has to set aside hours
more.
And I think he does that really well, and
that's...and he does that in a very focused
way.
NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: But that structure, those
hours, that's a lot of time spent alone.
KARL IAGNEMMA: Solitude is something, as a
writer and a researcher, you have to be comfortable
with.
Writing is, you know, really solitary, and
research is, kind of, its little brother.
ALAN LIGHTMAN: When you're solving the equations,
you're usually alone weeks and months.
I mean, you will, you'll stop to eat meals.
STEVE ALMOND: The great untold secret about
writing is that it's incredibly lonely.
You cannot do it—I can't do it, anyway—with
other people around.
KARL IAGNEMMA: And you have to be okay with
that.
Some people could never be okay with that.
They just wouldn't enjoy the work, because
they would miss the human contact, or they
would miss various aspects of being out in
the world.
STEVE ALMOND: If I show up at my poker game,
and I've spent the day writing, or trying
to write, immediately my poker buddies are
like...'cause I'm like, "Hey, how are you
doing, guys?
All right, what are we...?"
And they're like, "Have you spoken to anyone
today?
You know, have you talked with anybody?"
They know that like, "Uh oh, crazy, lonely
guy...here he is."
NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: It's hardly a rational
way to live.
ALAN LIGHTMAN: Scientists are passionate about
their work.
They do it because they cannot not do it.
KARL IAGNEMMA: You get this little rush.
You enter into this state where the time just
seems to pass.
It's just the best feeling.
And that's why you want to go back the next
day and do it again, because of that feeling.
NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: But can that feeling
carry Karl through two intense careers?
Alan Lightman chose to give up his research
career in physics to become a successful novelist.
ALAN LIGHTMAN: Both the science and the fiction
writing are addictions.
At some point, if he wants to be a scientist
and he wants to be a novelist, one of those
powerful forces is going to conquer the other
one.
KARL IAGNEMMA: "They met as first year graduate
students at the Michigan Engineering Institute,
two aggressive young theorists who disagreed
about Marx and Irish beer, but agreed that
mathematics was a game, the most elaborate,
wonderful game, like puzzling out riddles
posed by God."
Right now, I'm happy doing both.
It's, it's tiring.
It's fairly exhausting, but it's satisfying.
It's kind of the feeling after, I imagine,
after a runner has completed a long run.
It's that pleasant satisfied exhaustion.
That's kind of my constant state.
Thank you very much.
NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: Exhausted and passionate,
disciplined and humble, Karl Iagnemma will
continue to write and calculate using his
entire brain.
But to his friends, he's just plain old Karl,
the walking algorithm for success.
STEVE ALMOND: If it were me, if I was doing
this stuff, I would be like, "Dude, I've got
a robot going to mars.
What did you do yesterday?
And that was before lunch.
Then I wrote a great short story in the afternoon.
Then I hung out with my beautiful Swedish
wife.
What'd you do?"
NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: If that's not enough:
the movie rights to one of Karl's short stories
have been optioned by Hollywood to be produced
by Brad Pitt.
