Larry Gladney somehow knew from earliest childhood that he would be a scientist. He fixed upon physics, specifically, thanks to the tough kids in his hometown of East St. Louis.
When he would arrive early at Clark Middle School, because of his bus commute, he would hide in the library until class started. “It was the only safe place to hang out,” Gladney said.
While hiding out one morning from the kids with less academic pursuits, Gladney happened upon a book titled Life of a Physicist.
“It had the same effect of a religious epiphany,” Gladney said.
“It was like how life was set, how life was always meant to be for me.”
After a steady academic grind through Northwestern University and graduate school at Stanford University, Gladney now lives the life of a physicist. He does research physics, teaches physics and chairs the department at the University of Pennsylvania.
As an African-American scientist from East St. Louis whose pursuit of education in physics was anything but easy, he also makes time in his professional life for public education programs and community service.
It is in this capacity that he will return to his home metropolitan area for the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. holiday weekend.
On Friday, Jan. 15, Gladney will appear in a unique group of African-American physicists to discuss the origin of the universe.
The so-called Three Cosmic Tenors – which also includes Herman White Jr., a senior member of the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, and Sylvester James Gates of the California Institute of Technology – will speak at St. Louis Science Center at 5:30 p.m. on Friday, which would have been Dr. King’s 81st birthday.
“We will give three different perspectives on how the universe came to be what it is and attempt to predict what it will be like in the future,” Gladney said.
Gladney said their presentation also tries to model for the lay public how research physicists think and work.
“We go into the motivations for even asking such questions,” Gladney said.
“We have put a fair amount of effort into asking hard questions – so hard it is difficult to imagine that you can actually scientifically explore these questions and expect to get an answer. We talk about how we do that.”
But how do you even get to a mental space where you can do that, growing up poor in East St. Louis, with no examples of higher education in your immediate family?
“It’s a very difficult question,” Gladney said, with a sigh – as difficult, in its own way, as questioning the origin and structure of the dark energy in the universe.
Up from the East Side
“I grew up in East St. Louis, on 21st and Bond,” Gladney said. “It’s not exactly the kind of situation that breeds physicists.”
Gladney frankly described his elementary school, which no longer exists, as “a horror show.” Throughout his public education, he said, he encountered some teachers “who were just obstructive at various levels, incompetent – all the things that you hear about plaguing urban education.”
He considers it fortunate that the district still tracked “the top 10 or 20 percent” of students and groomed them into advanced academic opportunities, and that made all the difference for him.
He was able to attend classes at Southern Illinois University–Edwardsville while still a student at East St. Louis High School (where he graduated in 1975). State money paid for college professors to teach gifted public high school students and for their summer academic activities.
“Those were the things I took with me to college,” Gladney said.
He attended Northwestern University in the Chicago metropolitan area on an Illinois state scholarship. His future path was set more firmly when he landed a work/study opportunity in energy physics on the first week of classes – and stayed there until he graduated four years later.
“I spent four years in a real physics lab,” he said, his voice still filled with amazement and gratitude 30 years later.
From there he moved on to graduate work at Stanford University in northern California, competing against the smartest and best prepared students in the world. “It was a pretty heady crowd,” Gladney said.
The academic difficulties of the material and the intimidating setting made the self-starter from East Boogie question himself.
“A lot of times I doubted my ability and thought maybe people were right when they said I wasn’t cut out for this,” Gladney said.
“But if you are going to make it as a physicist, you have to have something within yourself.”
He had it. He has it. And, he said, it is not simply academic ability. “Ability didn’t have so much to do with it,” Gladney said.
“Succeeding requires a strong work ethic and a belief in yourself that supercedes any innate ability.”
Some kitchen wisdom from his mother, Annie Gladney (since deceased), came in handy.
“My mother told me to choose well the things you start, because you have to finish what you start,” Gladney said.
“You need to finish the things you start, despite if they become boring or really difficult. Those are things that must be set aside if you are going to succeed in the field.”
By the time Gladney was finished at Stanford University in 1985 with a M.S. and Ph.D. in physics, he came recommended by a Nobel laureate, Burton Richter, who was recognized in 1976 for leading a team that made a critical breakthrough in particle physics.
Gladney was recruited out of Stanford by the University of Pennsylvania as a post-doctoral student doing research full-time. He turned an appointment as assistant professor into a tenured faculty position and now also chairs the department.
“The fact that I am still here is amazing to me,” Gladney said.
On Friday, he will be in St. Louis at the Science Center (he distantly remembers visiting the Planetarium there once as a child).
“I’m gratified to have the opportunity to come to St. Louis and talk about physics,” Gladney said.
“It doesn’t happen often that I get to have some overlap with school kids and the general public.”
The Three Cosmic Tenors will present “How Did The Universe Come to Be?” at 5:30 p.m. Friday, Jan. 15 at the St. Louis Science Center, 5050 Oakland Ave. The event will be moderated by Dr. Darnell Diggs, and Nicole Adewale is host committee chair. This is a free program. Call 314-289-4400 or visit www.slsc.org.
