Clutter goes a long way

JV Yakhmi

Edison had a messy desk, so had Steve Jobs. Geniuses have no time for keeping a desk tidy. Einstein once asked, ‘If a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind, of what, then, is an empty desk a sign?’

The first time I noticed the cluttered table of a reputed scientist was that of Ian A Campbell at Laboratoire de Physique des Solides in Paris, when I joined him on a fellowship in 1987. An expert in spin glasses, some of his work forms the basis of today’s spintronics, and the 2007 Physics Nobel Prize winner, Albert Fert, had done his PhD in 1970 with Campbell as research guide.

Campbell told me that I would share his room, and his table. As I sat on a chair opposite him, he realised that his table was filled chock-a-block with papers and files. He quickly cleared about a square foot of table surface in front of me, and told me to do the same, when I needed more space.

The table of C Manohar, one of my early mentors, was always cluttered. A very talented theoretical physicist, and a popular teacher, he was restless to design useful experiments. Essentially in the mould of Einstein — dishevelled and disorganised — he left anything, anywhere. A heap of files and books would cover the top of his table, drawers of which choked on sundry items, so it couldn’t be closed.

A genius, Manohar developed a school of studies in soft matter. Young researchers from research institutions in Mumbai came to him in droves for his guidance. He must have put on track the scientific careers of over 40 of them, before he died in 2020, at the age of 81.

The most cluttered table I ever saw was that of my friend, the late T Nagarajan, who was the head of the nuclear physics department, University of Madras. Very keen to work on frontline problems in experimental physics, he had set up several challenging experimental techniques in his lab successfully. Drawing inspiration from him, a large number of PhD students and post-docs worked in his research group.

During my first visit to his room, I was taken aback at the disorder in it. I sat on a chair opposite him, as he was reading the draft of a letter carefully. When finished, he called his secretary to bring me in, even though I was still sitting opposite him, but not visible to him owing to a mountain of papers, files and books on his table between us!

Once I asked him why he couldn’t organise his desk. He just laughed, perhaps because he revelled in status quo. I probed further: ‘How do you fish out any papers that you need from the heap on your table?’

He admitted that it was difficult for him, but also for a thief intending to steal anything from his desk!

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