Abstract

Prof. Isidore Cantor is a biochemist who became a cell biologist and works at a small university on tumorigenesis research. During a nightly visit to the toilet, he has a eureka-experience. His idea is that, because of some mutation affecting the production of arginine (an amino acid named after its bright, silvery-white colouring) certain proteins are suddenly able to move freely in and out of cells (cell membranes normally permit translocation only in one direction). To test the validity of his brain wave, he designs an innovative experiment with tagged proteins as radioactive labels and orders his post-doc Jeremiah (Jerry) Stafford to perform it. Cantor insists on Jerry’s complete availability for this research, for he believes it may bring them the Nobel Prize, but this commanding assignment puts substantial pressures on the latter’s relationship with girl-friend Celestine Price, a promising biologist, but also a muscular campus athlete who shares an apartment with Leah, a humanities scholar specialised in Bakhtin and dialogism. According to Cantor, to unravel the enigma of tumorigenesis would certainly be a Nobel-prize winning achievement, comparable to climbing Mount Everest or K-2 (p. 37). The analogy between scientific research and mountain climbing occurs several times in the novel and is a well-known trope (Collins 2011; Zwart 2011). Cantor sees his research field as a scientific Himalaya (83) and his project as a scientific Everest (p. 82), while Stafford is referred to as Cantor’s Sherpa (p. 37, p. 83). The Himalaya metaphor (with the Nobel Prize as the summit) reflects the dimension of verticality in academic research (Zwart 2014c).