Free Zig Zag by José Carlos Somoza

Super Collider project in Waxahachie, Texas, aborting
construction on what would have been the biggest and most powerful
particle accelerator in the world, Blanes suddenly cut short his
honeymoon with the United States. His comments became somewhat
notorious in the American press shortly before his return to Europe.
"This country's government would rather invest in arms than in
scientific development. The United States reminds me of Spain, in
that it's a country full of talented people ruled by disgusting
politicians." Since he'd insulted both countries and their
governments equally in his comparison, his assessment managed to
offend everyone and please almost no one.
    After
concluding his U.S. tour, Blanes returned to Zurich, where he lived a
life of quiet solitude (his only friends were Grossmann and Marini;
the only women in his life, his mother and sister—Elisa admired
this monastic existence) and his theory took a real beating, since
people had stewed for ages and the results of their long-festering
ire appeared regularly in print. Curiously, some of the most vehement
rejections of his theory came from the Spanish scientific community.
Endless university experts came out of the woodwork to blast the
"sequoia theory," as it was being called at the time (in
reference to the time strings coiled within particles like the tree
rings within a sequoia's ancient trunk used to date them), claiming
that it was a beautiful theory but totally inaccurate. Perhaps
because he was from Madrid, critics there took a little longer to get
going, but perhaps for the same reason, once they did, they really
let loose. One famous professor from the Complutense even called his
theory "a fantastic pile of poppycock with no basis in reality."
Things weren't much better abroad, although at least specialists in
string theory like Edward Witten at Princeton and Cumrun Vafa at
Harvard claimed that it could still turn out to be an intellectual
revolution comparable to the one set off by string theory itself.
Stephen Hawking, from his Cambridge wheelchair, was one of the few
who came out in Blanes's defense (albeit not wholeheartedly) and
helped circulate his ideas. When they asked him about it, the famous
physicist would answer with one of his typical ironic quips, emitted
in the cold, inflexible tone of his voice synthesizer. "Though
many people want to chop it down, Professor Blanes's sequoia still
provides plenty of shade."
    Blanes
himself was the only one who kept quiet on the subject. His strange
silence lasted almost ten years, during which he ran the lab that his
friend and mentor Albert Grossmann (now retired) had left in his
charge. Due to its great mathematical beauty and fantastic
possibilities, the sequoia theory still interested scientists, but no
one could prove it. So it slid into the "let's see"
category that science so often uses to place ideas in history's
freezer. Blanes refused to speak in public about it, and many people
assumed he was embarrassed by his errors. Then, in late 2004, his
course was advertised—the first one in the world he'd ever give
about his "sequoia." He had chosen Spain, of all places, to
teach it: Madrid, to be exact. As a private institution, Alighieri
would cover all the costs and was willing to accept the scientist's
rather odd demands: that the course be taught in July 2005, in
Spanish, and that twenty places be awarded strictly on the basis of
scores on a rigorous international exam on string theory,
noncommutative geometry, and topology. In theory, they'd only accept
graduate students, though graduating seniors would be allowed to take
the exam if they had a letter of recommendation from their
theoretical physics professors. That was how people like Elisa had
been able to give it a shot.
    Why
had Blanes waited so long to give his very first classes about
sequoia theory? And why now? Elisa had no idea, but she didn't really
care, either. What mattered to her was that she was there. She felt
lucky to be