Confusion, Champagne Fill Big Day

Georgene Herschbach, wife of Baird Professor of Science Dudley R. Herschbach, has spent a fair bit of her life around laboratories. But she didn't think she was sufficiently expert in chemistry to win a Nobel Prize.

So the Harvard administrator and former Currier House co-master was surprised yesterday morning when a reporter called her Holyoke Center office and congratulated her on winning the prestigious award.

"I guess they just got me confused with my husband," she said after the press conference Professor Herschbach held yesterday after learning he had become Harvard's 30th Nobel laureate.

But that wasn't the only confused phone call of the morning. The first call to the professor's office came from an Associated Press reporter who wanted to speak to the 1986 "Nobel Peace laureate."

On Tuesday the peace prize went to Boston University's Elie Wiesel, the Holocaust expert. Herschbach's secretary thought some errant journalist was searching for professorial reaction to Wiesel's prize, and she decided not to put the call through to the professor.

"I wasn't going to put the call through because it was before 11:30," said the secretary, Lysa Johnson. "The professor doesn't take calls unless their from family or something before 11:30."

When the caller said that maybe he wanted to know about the chemistry prize instead of the peace one, Johnson reconsidered and interrupted her boss.

But since Herschbach had not been told that he had won the award, it took him a while to figure out what the reporter was talking about, the professor said.

Let the Fun Begin

On his way in to face about 60 reporters and colleagues at 11:00, Herschbach remarked to one that while winning a Nobel Prize is "good fun," it's "not as exciting as the Red Sox comeback on Sunday."

Baseball was a consistent theme through the biggest day of Herschbach's life. He entered the Mallinckrodt Laboratories press conference remarking, "Now I know what it's like to be a baseball player."

Then, as in the Red Sox locker room last night, the champagne flowed freely. Harvard scientists, including five Nobel laureates on hand for the occassion, sucked bubbly and toasted Harvard's most recent superstar. President Derek C. Bok supplemented the alcohol on hand by sending over a vintage bottle of Laurent-Perrier. Attached was a note from Bok that read, in part, "good guys don't always finish last."

After answering questions from reporters and posing in front of his machines for the rest of the afternoon, Herschbach attended an evening party in his honor at the home of Erving Professor of Chemistry William Klemperer, who Chemistry Labs Director Donald J. Ciappenelli said would certainly have a television turned to the Sox game.