Recently, I mentioned to my Dad that I would be rejoining the Google Scholar team. Like many of us, I wanted to explain to him what I work on. I entered his name into Google Scholar to do a quick demo. The first result was a US patent, that he had developed with my uncle, for drilling within a spinal column (whew!). And a bit later was an article from 1968 on Acute Histoplasma Pericarditis.
I said, "Hey Dad, I didn’t know that you had published a scholarly article!” He didn’t answer, going noticeably silent--for several moments. Something about that search result brought tears to his eyes (though he would never admit this) and rendered him speechless. Well, nearly speechless. I think he said almost inaudibly, “I’ll be...”
As it turned out, this was a paper he had written with colleagues and had submitted to the Archives of Internal Medicine 40-odd years ago. He had then moved to Spain as an US Air Force flight surgeon. If the editors or his co-authors had sent him a note of congratulations on its acceptance, it never made its way across the Atlantic. He had long forgotten about it.
On behalf of the Scholar team, and after all these years, congratulations, Dad!
Posted by Darcy Dapra, Partner Manager