Michael Jackson and science

by Aditya Mittal (Delegate/India, Seoul Summit 2006)

In an impassioned obituary, biological scientist Aditya Mittal tells us how the phenomenal singer's music moulded his science and scientific temperament.



I grew up in the city of New Delhi in India in the environs of the North campus of Delhi University. The music of Michael Jackson was a core part of my childhood and an inseparable part of my teenage. So much so, that while earning a diploma in Indian classical music during my teenage years, I could not allow myself to miss owning the latest song or even video release of Michael Jackson. Even with a financially humble background, the value of Michael Jackson's music in solving problems in my mathematics course was recognized by my mother, herself a senior teacher of mathematics. I was the proud owner of every single video cassette of MJ that came to the Indian market.

His music provided the rhythm to my problem solving and played a key role in my merit certificates in the National Mathematics Olympiads. Then MJ came to India in 1996. I was a proud owner of a concert ticket, seated in very close proximity to the stage, to the right of my music God. I still remember losing my voice for four days after the concert because of all the "singing" that I tried to do with him. His one handed hanging act on a ramp that extended right over my head during the performance of the Earth Song still holds the true meaning in my life for 'looking up'. I still have my head band from that concert and the concert ticket laminated with me.

After completing my high school and college, still with MJ as a core part of my life, I went to the US of A for my graduate studies. There I made American friends; my age group, some a little older to me too, but all from a generation for whom MJ had the same value in their life. I remember discussing membrane biophysics, ecology, turtles, mating rituals of bees over rounds of beers and whiskey with these friends while playing pool in different pool halls of Philadelphia.

I also remember several overnight discussions in one of the Irish pubs in the neighborhood on multi-parameter fitting of kinetic data on membrane fusion. I remember MJ's music being an important common ingredient in all those discussions. Here I was with people who had become very close to me, who had grown up in a totally different part of the world than I had, but who shared MJ in their roots as much as I.

Then I went to the NIH for my post-doc. It was in a 'Russian' group. Within a couple of months our group became well known in the 11th floor of building number 10 for having one of the most fun atmospheres in the lab. We used to play MJ on high decibel levels while working on our viruses and fibroblasts. Even HeLa, Jurkat and NIH3T3 fibroblasts seem to respond to the music of MJ. Our annual laboratory retreats, weekend getaways to discuss our science in form of posters on glass windows dropping straight down into a river valley, were heavily fueled by the music of MJ and our attempts with the white glove and the moon walk on the carpeted floors. Again, these were my friends who had grown up in yet another part of the world with MJ in the roots of their upbringing.

Science has a very close relation with music. Music has indeed been an integral part of, at least, my thought process during my science. And for my generation of scientists, the music of MJ has been one of the foundation pillars. Even today the passion invoked by 'Dirty Diana', or the accompanying of failed experiments with 'Stranger in Moscow', or the tears that can be brought out by the 'Earth Song' or just the jamming with 'Beat it', 'Jam', 'Keep it in the closet' – the list can go on, form the core of my identity as a scientist. The music in a way reflects my own relationship with science.

Today, I woke up to hear that MJ's gone. I immediately called my American friends from grad school. They had also been thinking about me while feeling the loss of MJ and, of words. It has been hours since I heard the news; there is an emptiness. However, MJ's music is still with us. He was a phenomenon of nature. And we do not even need to worry about his music mutating for any number of years like we have to worry about HeLa cells. His music will live with us. And it will keep pushing our science.

The author is an associate professor in the School of Biological Sciences at Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi.