|
Twenty Questions with
Gil Zalman
Upper School physics and math teacher Gil Zalman was the first
person in his family to go to college. That accomplishment is only
one of many obstacles this fearless turtle (see question
20) overcame
in his quest for broadened horizons and adventure. Staff writer
Jeff Stanley spent a few minutes with Zalman last week in the Upper
School science lab office surrounded by beakers, chemicals and
computers to get the inside scoop on the quiet and unassuming mathematician
with the top secret past.
1. What classes do you teach?
I teach math and physics. My fingers get dirty from the whiteboard.
2. Yeah, I think you’re the only Upper School math teacher
who also teaches science. How many years have you worked here?
I started working here in January of 2003.
3. Where did you go to high school?
We recently watched that film A Long Way From Home and
one of the questions on the survey afterward was about what school
you went to and what it was like. I went to Brooklyn Tech. It changed
my life. Also, it was a springboard into CCNY. If it had not been
for Brooklyn Tech I probably wouldn’t have gone to college. I was
the first person in my family to go to college.
4. Did you always want to be a teacher?
After CCNY I was teaching engineering at NYU, the old uptown campus,
where I got my master’s at NYU. I wanted to do PhD research on
computers, which was a new field at the time. My thesis advisor
had no idea what I was talking about. He wanted me to do a paper
on balcony girders instead. I respectfully declined.
5. So did you get the PhD?
No, I got a summer job with an engineering consulting company
called TAMS. We did a lot of international projects. I worked in
some pretty bizarre places. I worked with the Army Corps of Engineers
putting in Nike missile bases around Niagara Falls. I always thought
it was a fantasy because if someone attacked Niagara Falls a missile’s
not gonna do anything to stop it. But it was the height of the
Cold War.
6. That must have been a pretty intense job.
I also worked on the design of a one-hundred mile railroad in
the wilds of Quebec, going north to the Arctic. For some strange
reason we weren’t figuring the necessary work for building every
one hundred feet of the railroad. As a result, the project was
rejected when presented four days before deadline and we were in
a jam. I figured out a way to solve the problem accurately and
we successfully completed the project in three days. The following
year, after graduation, there was a major downturn in engineering
and no jobs were available. But TAMS hired me fulltime because
of what I had done the previous summer. It was 1958 and computers
were in their infancy but TAMS started a computer division and
I was selected to be part of that three-member team. The computer,
made by Bendix, was the size of a refrigerator and was housed in
an air conditioned, glass walled room. The bigwigs would always
come around taking important guests on tours and show off this
computer that just stood there like an inert lump. So, I wrote
a program for it that just blinked the lights. Then when they brought
someone to look at it they’d see all these lights blinking and
say, ‘Wow, what’s it doing?’ And we would describe a bridge design
that it was working on.
7. Sounds like you got the working man’s Ph.D. in computer
science after all. Did you stay at TAMS?
No, next I worked
for Ammann & Whitney. Othmar H. Ammann had
worked for the city during the building of the George Washington
Bridge and had been chief engineer of the Bronx-Whitestone Bridge. I
worked for a department called Special Structures. It was all top
secret. I had top secret clearance.
8. Wow, can you talk about what you did now?
I worked on the tracking telescope at Arecibo, Puerto Rico. I
also worked on antennae designs for the Radio Liberation Network,
in underground silos that protect our missiles, and other such
projects.
9. Radio Liberation? As in propaganda?
We were broadcasting jazz and all kinds of music into the USSR
and they were trying to block it. Voice of America, all
that stuff. Then one year some friends introduced me to skiing.
10. We’re taking an unexpected turn here. From Cold War
psy ops to skiing?
I liked it so much we formed a club. The trouble was, the next
year there was no snow. But I had a friend who worked for Sabina
airlines and we were chartered a 707 jet and flew into Zurich,
Switzerland to ski and spend a final weekend in Paris. That was
some trip. The travel bug bit me. So I started to work in consulting
that would let me travel. Pretty soon I had my own company called
Great Destinations. We chartered planes and ran trips to Peru,
or a week in Egypt. The traveling Tutankhamen exhibit helped with
the marketing of the Egypt trips. And when Sadat offered peace
to Begin that really helped.
 |
11. Did you offer trips anywhere else?
My next travel company was called Safari World. I ran it with
partners, including my wife Jane. That’s when you could see huge
elephant herds. For 28 years we ran safaris in Kenya. Just pictures,
not guns. No shooting. We did gorilla tracking trips in Rwanda.
South Africa kept offering us things but we wouldn’t touch it,
not until after apartheid ended.
12. Sounds like you’d gotten really far from math and science
at this point? How’d you come full circle to now teaching it?
I retired from the travel business in 1995. I had done okay. But
there was civil war in Rwanda. And the US government was trying
to force the Kenyan president to run an election and he wasn’t
running elections. Next I did a stint for three years working for
Carl Icahn, he was a corporate raider. The stadium on Randall’s
Island is named after him. And then I kind of relaxed.
13. Just like that you kind of relaxed? You don’t strike me
as the kind of guy who can relax.
I was getting bored stiff. All my friends were going off to golf
and I hated golf. And so my family said why don’t you take up teaching?
And so I did.
14. So there’s your wife Jane and who else in your family?
We have three daughters. Hollie, Salome and Sara.
15. Don’t you find life at BFS a little, I don’t know, uneventful,
compared to your past adventures?
I like teaching, I like it a lot. It keeps you on your toes.
16. Now for the tough questions. What three things does a former
G-man, expedition leader and corporate player need if he’s stranded
on a desert island?
A case of wine. A cork to put a note inside one of the empty bottles.
And matches to build a fire. And a good book.
17. Very resourceful but that’s four things.
Sorry. I’m a glutton.
18. I’ll let you slide on that one. What’s one thing that’s
always in your fridge?
There’ll always be some kind of cheese. Some white wine and cheese.
19. You did it again, that’s two things. Now try really hard
on this next one. What’s your favorite restaurant?
I can’t answer that. I used to have three favorite restaurants
but they all closed. Can’t I just say a Big Mac?
20. Fine. Last one before you head off to your next class.
What’s your sign?
Please, I don’t believe in that stuff. I do have a motto that
I read somewhere once. ‘Behold the turtle. He gets somewhere only
when his neck is out.’
back to current 20 Questions interview
|
