The flowers appeared one spring morning in 1953.

A guard at the National Bureau of Standards in Washington, D.C., found them affixed to an iron gate.

Two dozen carnations in a white bow.

Was it somebody's birthday?

A thoughtful spouse remembering an anniversary?

No.

A card attached to the carnations announced a death of

sorts. It read, in memory of Dr. Allen v. Aston and the traditions of the National Bureau of Standards.

To be clear, Alan Aston was alive. Instead, the card was mourning the loss of Alan's job. He had been fired.

And more than that, it mourned the sudden death of scientific independence at the Bureau,

especially independence from political meddling. This independence had died in a duel between

Aston and a flashy con man named Jess Richie.

At the time, Aston was a bureaucrat, a functionary.

Probably not even 1% of American scientists could have named him.

But that was about to change.

Aston's firing would soon have every scientist in the nation fuming,

terrified that the very future of American science was in peril.

This is The Disappearing Spoon by Sam Keen, a topsy, turvy, sciencey history podcast, where

footnotes become the real story.

Jess Richie was born in Arkansas in 1909.

He dropped out of school at age 12, but he later bragged about that, about how he, like Thomas Edison,

had just a grade school education.

...