One night in 1946, Stanislaw M. Ulam, a mathematician and physicist originally from Poland, suddenly woke up with a terrible headache.
From his hotel room, he tried to call his wife, Françoise, but he couldn’t speak clearly—his words came out slurred, and he could hardly talk.
He tried using different words to say what he meant, but nothing made sense. What came out was just nonsense.
Right after that, Ulam suffered a serious brain episode.
He was rushed to the hospital, where doctors ran many tests over several days—brain scans, spinal taps, and others.
The brain scan showed something was wrong.
Finally, a surgeon named Dr. Rainey decided he needed to operate right away.
That decision probably saved Ulam’s life, since the surgery relieved the pressure in his brain that was causing all his problems.
After the operation, Ulam was in a coma for a few days.
When he finally woke up, the doctors said he was out of danger. But they told Françoise to watch him closely for any changes in his behavior or signs of the illness returning.
He had more tests, and the doctors guessed that a virus, likely encephalitis, had caused the problem.
Even though he got his speech back, Ulam worried that his thinking abilities might have been damaged.
One morning, Dr. Rainey asked him, “What’s 13 plus 8?”
Ulam was so embarrassed that he couldn’t even answer. He just shook his head.
Then the doctor asked, “What’s the square root of 20?”
Ulam answered, “About 4.4.”
Dr. Rainey said nothing for a moment, until Ulam asked, “Isn’t that right?”
Then the doctor laughed, clearly feeling relieved and happy, and said, “I don’t know.”
Another time, while Ulam was touching the big bandage on his head, the doctor warned him not to do that—he might let bacteria into the wound.
Since Ulam was a physicist, he remembered the idea of a mean free path for neutrons, and asked the doctor if bacteria had a “mean free path” too.
Instead of answering, the doctor told him a rude joke about a man on a country toilet and bacteria jumping out when he flushed.
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