Medicine: Scientist's Scientist

One day last fortnight, at Chicago's Rubinkam Airport, a rugged old man with a brick-red face and steel-grey hair stood gazing at the sky. From a plane high overhead a dot detached itself; the dot unfolded like a white flower, drifted earthward. As the parachutist landed, the red-faced old man was waiting for him, to read the recordings of his breathing and heartbeat. The old man was Physiologist Anton Julius Carlson of the University of Chicago, the most colorful figure among U. S. scientists. Generations of students have called him "Ajax."

At Chicago's...