Carolina Alumni Review - July/August 2008

being able to significantly improve the quality of the graphics that went up on the dome. He was in on every script meeting. He was literally managing every word of the scripts, in the control room, watching every step of the production.

“He said, ‘Kids deserve better than that.’ ”

“People ask me why I did that job,” Thorp said. “I just thought it was gonna be fun. And it was. But I also learned a whole lot about how the inside of a university works. I made a lot of the classic mistakes that people make in management while I was doing that, which in a way was a good opportunity to learn a lot about how to work with people.”

The Morehead — renamed the Morehead Planetarium and Science Center to reflect the branching-out from just astronomy — gave Thorp the chance to bring in not only Wilson to speak but Jim Watson, who co-discovered the DNA double helix, the breakthrough in genomics research. Before he was through with them, Thorp and a science publisher had gotten each of them to collaborate on the making of a film. Watson made DNA: The Secret of Life, which found its way to science museums across the country; and Wilson helped produce Life, which has been shown at the Morehead and was excerpted for a Nova episode on Wilson’s work. Thorp got to observe a reconciliation between the two great scientists, who had feuded famously over the introduction of molecular biology. “It was cool to watch Watson and Wilson come together and make peace after all those years.”

“[Thorp] thought in very big terms about the collaboration with Watson on the DNA documentary,” said Chuck Lovelace ’ 77, executive director of the Morehead-Cain Foundation, which shares the building with the science center.

Watson and Wilson get things done that other people think are too overwhelming to tackle. Wilson, for instance, has proposed an electronic encyclopedia with a page for every known species, and he’s baffled that anyone thinks it can’t be done.

Thorp seemed to echo these idols of his on the day in May when he first addressed what Carolina needs to do during his administration. He didn’t talk of reducing class size or building buildings or paying people more.