Dr. Paul Messina, just like me, is a math and science geek. Paul is also an amazing example of a TJ graduate. He's very modest, but he has done incredible work in the field of computing and science research. He's worked at Cal Tech, JPL, and Argonne National Laboratory. His story about how he found TJ is also just as fascinating as his distinguished career. We talk about the early days of research and computing, TJ's impact on his life and career, and how one passes the time on a United Fruit Company boat from the US to Panama. (No surprise, the answer is books.)
[00:00:00] Matthew Troutman: [00:00:00] Thomas Jefferson school or TJ in St. Louis, Missouri is a unique place, a boarding and day school with a small community of students from all over the world. Our mission asks us as educators to provide the strongest possible academic background. Our mission also asks our students to desire to lift up the world with beauty and intellect.
Our graduates go on to wonderful careers after TJ and this series intends to capture the stories of our alumni.
This week, we get to talk to Dr. Paul Messina. Now full disclosure. Paul is a math and science geek. So am I, so we were meant to get alone. I think that'll come across in this conversation. Paul is also an amazing example of a TJ graduate. He's very modest, but he has done incredible work in the field of computing and science research. [00:01:00] He's worked at.
Jet propulsion laboratory at Caltech. I had Argonne national labs as a researcher, a distinguished fellow and professor. His story about how he found TJ is also just fascinating. In some ways, it's very similar to the stories that we hear from current students. And in other ways, it just speaks to a time that is no longer in existence.
I hope you enjoy the conversation.
Matthew Troutman: [00:01:26] Paul Messina, welcome to the TJ alumni conversation series.
Paul Messina: [00:01:31] Oh, my pleasure to participate in this map.
Matthew Troutman: [00:01:34] Great. And where are we finding you today?
Paul Messina: [00:01:37] I'm in my home, which is a condominium apartment in Annapolis, Maryland.
Matthew Troutman: [00:01:43] Well let's let's start by going back a ways. And if you could just talk a little bit about your background, which I know is a very unique one how you came about to find TJ and set the stage for, for that story.
[00:02:00] Paul Messina: [00:02:00] sure Matt. , I should mention you know, way back to when I was born. So I was born in Italy about 30 miles South of Naples. Of Italian parents. So it's not that we were American and went to first grade and second grade, I skipped to kindergarten there. And when I was almost seven, my family moved to Guatemala, city, Guatemala.
My parents were concerned , there was a cold war going on with Russia and that there'd be another world war. And they, if there were then Italy would be in the middle of that again. So they just want to get out. And my father was a physician and Guatemala was chosen because he was told that Guatemala would recognize his medical credentials.
So we took a ship. Took [00:03:00] over a month. It was a wonderful adventure for me as a young boy stopped in 14 ports. Just all of our base ended up in Guatemala. And my father then learned that his diploma was not recognized after all. Fortunately he was able to get a job in fact, setting up the first industrial health standards for the country of Guatemala, because he had taken on some post-graduate courses in things that we take for granted these days, I think in the machinery that can damage people. For example, what are known as dead man switches and, you know, guards over power saws. So, so it's less likely you chop off your fingers.
Matthew Troutman: [00:03:45] Right.
Paul Messina: [00:03:45] He applied to many places. And one of which was United fruit company, which is the Chiquita bananas. So two and a half years later, he was contacted and said, Hey, we have a job for you as a physician in [00:04:00] Panama on the Caribbean side.
We went, and so we going from Guatemala city, which is a substantial city into the jungle.
So another wonderful adventure. Of course in Guatemala. I learned Spanish because I was put in school. I was taught in Spanish and Panama. Learn English as well as continuing Spanish because United group company had schools for the children of their employees. And they were taught mostly in English.
So the school I went to in Panama was first through eighth grade and there were two rooms. So I'm Rohan was first through fourth and fifth through eight. So in a way that prepared me for, you know, small classes.
And yeah, the education I think was quite good. I must admit, I often was done with my formal [00:05:00] assignments early. And so I was allowed to go to the corner of the school room, the classroom that had encyclopedias. And so I usually would spot there on the floor and open encyclopedia at random and then start reading. You know, it's just fascinating to me.
So how did we find out about Thomas Jefferson from none of us ever having been in the United States? And then rather isolated the community? Well many of the kids who where I've employees who are American would go to military schools and religious schools in the South of the United States, So we knew about those, but my parents felt that their academic standards were not as good as they wished
by luck, there were two research physicians from the university of Virginia who spent several months in [00:06:00] our town, collaborating with my father on the study of tropical diseases. My father was a member of the Royal society for tropical diseases of the UK. So when my parents were trying to identify an appropriate school for me, they ask those people and they said, well, we've heard of the school Thomas Jefferson school and the outskirts of St. Louis because some of our friends had a child who applied there. He wasn't accepted, but we got the impression. It was very good. And, and so, in those days we wrote and indicated our interest and, and, and those days, and possibly now as well prospective students were asked to spend a few days at school.
For us it was not realistic. It was just too expensive to do that. So the alternative that was chosen by TJ was to [00:07:00] 1 cent, a standardized test to my teachers, you know, like your type tests, and then asked me to write an essay about myself and which I did. And and that's how I was accepted.
Matthew Troutman: [00:07:14] Oh, wow.
Paul Messina: [00:07:14] So in early September of 1957 we got on a banana boat, so shipped by of United fruit company because we got free passage landed in new Orleans, took a train to St. Louis stayed in a hotel for a couple of weeks while I got clothing. You know, for the winter, as well as, you know, spark coats and ties and proper shirts, none of which we'd used in Panama and made it to the school.
My parents stayed for a couple of weeks beyond and then left. And so it was our first experience in the United States. And, you know, there I was, I was [00:08:00] happy to be there because of the reputation I'd already heard of, of TJ. But also I must admit somewhat scared, not of being away from my parents, but how would I fit in socially and academically
Matthew Troutman: [00:08:16] Yeah.
Paul Messina: [00:08:17] And, and so I actually did well almost Jefferson and I made very good friends a number of which I'm still in, very close touch with act. So it's a long-winded way of answering the question.
How did we find out about Thomas Jefferson and sheer luck? But I'm delighted that it happened that way.
Matthew Troutman: [00:08:38] It's an incredible path to find your way from, from Italy, through central America, up to St. Louis and come to the campus for the first time and really dive into this new community. And yet there, there are some similarities to how we do things. Today. I mean, we do have students complete essays and we do [00:09:00] have standardized tests. Not every student is allowed to, or able to come to campus. And this year, of course, it's a little bit challenging for any visits. But we do encourage If you can make it to, to come and shadow for a day and really get to know the community to see if it's the right fit.
So it's, it's interesting to hear that despite their, a lot of differences in how you found the school, there are some similar themes that we continue to today. Talk a little bit about that social connection and, and some of the academics while you're at at TJ. And and how you remained friends. Cause I know that's an interesting story, too. How you remained friends with that group of classmates.
Paul Messina: [00:09:41] sure. One of my recollections is having versus some reason, especially there are a lot of interactions with other students, mostly in my class. And often we would gather in the room I was in . We spontaneously started for a while and [00:10:00] occasional evening discussion group about the Bible and.
More as a piece of literature than anything else. I remember fondly my first year I wasn't in the main building and Larry Morgan and for whom it was his first year teaching at TJ was the faculty member. Overlooking us in that hallway, in the third floor, I think, and I really enjoyed, or I guess comfortable with speaking with Larry, he was very approachable and you know, made me feel welcome in the classrooms.
I certainly do remember the the freedom to that we had. To be able to think and discuss and interject our ideas. I remember in particular, a geometry, which was thought by Ruth Potter, and that was [00:11:00] not one of my favorite courses because I had a strong affection for mathematics. And I remember a class in which I would be thinking about the answer while other students were.
Blurting out their answers. And then I came up with one and and after the class, Ruth Potter took me aside and said, see, appreciate, appreciated that, you know, the, the thoughtfulness that I had. So I use that as one of so many examples of teachers giving good feedback in an appropriate way. You know, as well as telling me, and in another case where I was trying to do something that had already been proven to be impossible and I thought about, you know, you can try, but you know, there's already a proof when cats do this particular thing in geometry.
I remember that some Friday nights, the faculty member, Marvin, Larry Morgan, and say, is anybody [00:12:00] interested in getting a hamburger and a shake at steak and shake, which was a couple of miles up the road in Bergen.
And to me that was a real treat. Yeah. Sometimes, you know, take orders and right in the car with him and pick up the food and bring it back to the TJ. So you know, in many ways, as you would imagine with high school, it, my experience with PJ really had a huge impact on my my development as a person and my career.
In college graduate school and beyond you know, because of the way that TJ is small, but the classes were discussion oriented. A lot of homework that one had to do on one's own know having to take responsibility for a one spans one time.
Matthew Troutman: [00:12:53] right.
Paul Messina: [00:12:54] And you know, those were certainly challenging. But you know, many [00:13:00] times I thought through my life about, you know, the excellent experience and skills that it gave me and, you know, one that I'll call them now, before I talk about my career is, you know, the extensive writing assignments
having to express myself in writing clearly and analytically, you got to have some reason for making a statement about a person and event its significance and so on. And you know, that turned out to be very important. Because you know, most of my life had been a scientist then. So I needed to be able to convey through presentations and in writing
Matthew Troutman: [00:13:49] right.
Paul Messina: [00:13:50] And I needed to get funding for my research by writing proposals. And and so I was fortunately very successful in [00:14:00] having my proposals funded and and being able to communicate, you know, my ideas and accomplishments. So this is, you know, despite of course, TJ being mostly a liberal arts oriented curriculum.
But I believe that aspect of it is very important, no matter what one plans to do later, whether it's business medicine, science, teaching, whatever.
Matthew Troutman: [00:14:28] Yeah. The th the daily writing is commonly. Viewed as the thing that the students would love to get rid of the most. And yet if you talk with pretty much any any of our alumni, they would say that that is the most valuable part is the daily writing. The the experience with having to communicate your thoughts in written form, because as you said, it's, it's useful in nearly every field.
It's actually striking to me how similar the experiences [00:15:00] that you described and what we still continue today.
Daily writing a lot of independence having students choose what their, their afternoons look like and to, you know, to some success more than others. Sometimes there's some guidance needed, but just how those principles were. Have have continued for so long. That's just, it, it always amazes me.
When I hear, hear about the similarities and experience
Paul Messina: [00:15:28] Oh, the second thing that I would like to emphasize is that there was math every year. Since I ended up getting a PhD in mathematics, you might say I'm biased and certainly I am, but math is another important skill or, you know, background. And the, let me expand on that just a little bit. When I, I actually became very interested in chemistry because I think the one science course that I took at TJ.
[00:16:00] Happened to be chemistry at that time, there was an alternation of physics and chemistry, I think. And when I was going through it it was chemistry. And so I started college as a chemistry major at college of Wooster, which had a very good chemistry department. It turned out and but although I did very well in classes, I became bored with it.
And so there I was an ax because you know, the American university system is very different from the Italian one. And, and I just didn't have a context now, unfortunately, or a cousin of mine from Italy was getting a post-doc at the university of Chicago.
And he said, well, you think you'd want to stay in the sciences or math? And I said, yes. And he said, well, why don't you just take all the math you can, because no matter what you get into later, even biology, which taught me at the time, you will find mathematics is useful. [00:17:00] And so I did. And I ended up minoring physics and I'm majoring in mathematics.
Nowadays in addition to math, I believe an important part of one's complete education is knowing how to program a computer.
Matthew Troutman: [00:17:18] Right
Paul Messina: [00:17:19] not that one has to be able to, you know, model a black hole and the horizon, but but to understand what a computer actually is, as, as opposed to, you know, how to, you know invoke an application and touch a few parts of your screen and have something happen, which, you know, it gives you no more knowledge of it than you have when you turn the ignition key on your engine for your car.
And it starts that doesn't tell you anything about internal combustion engines. So I think it's part of the general education that people should have to understand. But a computer is and how it's program and why [00:18:00] is that important? Because computers are such an important part of our lives now.
And if we don't have some intuition as to when something is almost certainly wrong, there's some logic care and that computer program that somebody else wrote. And it may lead you into a bad conclusion, a bad decision.
Matthew Troutman: [00:18:24] Right.
Paul Messina: [00:18:25] It's a form of internal security as well as just general knowledge as part of our world these days.
My interest in computers came a couple of years after I left TJ. I would go home to Panama for the summer. Again, a free ride on a banana ship . Before getting on the ship, I wouldn't normally you know, go to a bookstore and look around and buy a book to read. I picked up a book on computers and I read it and I was just fascinated by it. [00:19:00] Cause to me, it was a perfect combination of math and physics. And, and so to my great luck, when I came back to college of Wooster in the fall, it had acquired its first computer, not for students, but for their business, but they would only use a nine to five.
And so after five if on want to do one was permitted to have a key to the perimeter was turn it on in those days you had to load the operating system. And so I, I applied to do that and I was given permission. And so I taught myself to program and did my senior thesis you know, based on, you know, programming, you know, basically a correlation of. To predict success in college based on various criteria,
Matthew Troutman: [00:19:49] Oh, wow.
Paul Messina: [00:19:51] the SATs their academic record in high school and a couple of other things.
Matthew Troutman: [00:19:57] What were your, what were your findings? When did you
[00:20:00] Paul Messina: [00:19:59] That the academic record, but it was much more important than the sat scores.
Matthew Troutman: [00:20:04] Wow.
Okay.
Paul Messina: [00:20:06] success where success is just measured by grades and college, you
Matthew Troutman: [00:20:10] Sure.
Paul Messina: [00:20:11] GP thing.
So, yeah, it was pretty straightforward stuff, but so I got me into computers and as I was about to graduate, then I wanted to look for a job and I found that although I was offered some jobs they, weren't very interesting and. I figured out that in those fields, you really needed to go to graduate school.
So I thought, okay, I'll see if I can get a.
Admitted to a master's program. Cause I thought PhD was too much, but but I really enjoyed that and to do what I really want to do. I need to get a PhD. And so I got a PhD in in mathematics but all along, I was doing things with computing. And together with mathematics.
So [00:21:00] I was very interested in computing, the, the functions and, you know, basic computations, like fast Fourier, transform exponentials, and to be able to do that very reliably and portably, because especially in those days, the arithmetic units of the hardware were very different. And so if you ran on a certain brand machine, you.
With the same program, you'd get different results. You know, only in maybe in the last few digits, but, but, but they would be different. And for some scientific calculations that related, it does matter. And so I was fascinated by that and I be reading articles from all over the world. But in particular, there were many from a laboratory outside of Chicago called Argonne national laboratory, which was run by the university of Chicago.
And it was the [00:22:00] outgrowth of the Manhattan projects, metallurgical lab, or Enrico Fermi had done the first controlled nuclear reaction. And right after the war, 1946, Fermi established that lab. To do research and peaceful uses of nuclear fishing, mostly nuclear energy. And so this lab was set up.
And of course, when you want to do those kinds of things, you need that chemistry department. So there was the chemistry division of physics division, high energy physics division, and an applied math division. And the people in the applied math division were publishing all kinds of papers on, on the miracle computation.
And so when I was finishing my PhD, I applied for a job there. Just before I was making my last decision to go actually to college of William and Mary, with a joint appointment at NASA Langley [00:23:00] research center argon reached out to me and said, Well, we had a hiring freeze, but now it's off.
So we've been waiting to be able to contact you. And so I, I went and of course was delighted to get a job there. In my career, I've focused on computing and applications of computing. So must much of my research has been multi-disciplinary. With chemists, the physicists with mechanical engineers.
And so I had many collaborations w which was wonderful because I would get to see the benefits of science combined with computing to frankly, help humanity in many ways,
Matthew Troutman: [00:23:49] Yeah.
Paul Messina: [00:23:50] medicine you know, more efficient, you know, batteries. Early in the 1980s I turned out [00:24:00] to be head of the research group at argon for applied mathematics and I learned about parallel computing.
So parallel computing is something that nowadays everybody has to do, but then it was quite new. And why would you need to do computing in parallel? The reason is any one computer can only be so fast. And even though we think I'm going really fast, there are so many applications that require much more speed than a single computer can do.
And so what do you do? You try to marshal a number of computers to work together to get the answer. So yeah, similar to the Liam building, you don't have one bricklayer building a building, they have a bunch of brick layers, and then you have specialized ones. You know, I have plumbers who also participate in, they stage their activities with each other.
So that's feral computing. I [00:25:00] decided very quickly that was the future of computing because you know, there would be a limit to how fast computers would be individual ones. And so there would be only way to get more powerful ones that make come more and more parallel. So, so now, you know, computers have many millions of processing units that act as one huge computer. And so I guided our research search in that direction because that was the future. And in 1986, I organize a workshop on those topics and invited people from around the country that were deleters. One of whom was from California Institute of technology, Caltech as it's commonly called. And so I gave a talk and he gave a talk and other people gave a talk and.
After a words, but still during the workshop, the fellow from Caltech took me aside and said, you know, what you talked about in your vision. That's what we're trying to do at Caltech. Would you be [00:26:00] interested in coming to Caltech? The answer was yes.
And so I went to Caltech, which is wonderful. I also had a joint appointment that a jet propulsion laboratory, which is a NASA laboratory responsible for the majority of the exploration of the planets and the solar system. So a larger, wider too, and you know, the Mars explorers all of those. And so that gave me a.
A foot into space science, because I was also, I had the title of a manager of high-performance computing and communications at jet propulsion lab. So my career, you know, it's been delightful because I like to learn things and I like to be able to contribute to the advancement of you know, most of the sciences and, and society. [00:27:00] And I wasn't able to do that. I wasn't in the right place at the right time type of thing.
Matthew Troutman: [00:27:04] I mean, all the way, all the way back to the, the book you found on one of the trips to Panama, right? The, the computer, the book on computers started in some ways started at all.
Paul Messina: [00:27:14] it did yeah, for, yeah, it really fascinated me. It explained the, what computers were and what one could do. And I wish that I'd kept that. Not that it's terribly important, but yes, that, that was the inspiration, I guess I could do reverse engineering and say, well, I was used to reading books in the summer because of TJ.
Matthew Troutman: [00:27:38] Right the summer or probably
Paul Messina: [00:27:41] Yeah, that sounds right. And, and now I was in college, but you know, I was still inclined to, you know, read books over the summer.
Matthew Troutman: [00:27:49] It might be an impossible question to answer, but if you were to reset to today. Is there something, is there an area of interest that you might pick up a book and [00:28:00] start to explore?
Paul Messina: [00:28:03] Yes, I'm biology.
Yeah in biomedicine as well as just fundamental biology. I I've never taken a course in that. Although I, I did collaborate with biologists at Caltech and modeling neurons. Per Kenji neurons, which are the biggest neurons in the human brain, but, but I have, you know, essentially zero knowledge, but it is such a, well obviously from the mental aspect of our world and so complex, so challenging, there are endless challenges and opportunities, both for understanding how things work. And, and for them doing very important things, such as producing vaccines and a reliable tests for infections and many other things. So that, that would be a field I would go [00:29:00] into. I mean, another one out of curiosity is geology and there I'm just, again, fascinated by geology. I know only a little bit about that. I've done a little bit of reading on my own and, and again, I collaborated with earthquake specialists at Caltech. So that's one of this it's very strong departments that Outback, of course not.
Matthew Troutman: [00:29:25] Lot of local interest. And in that field,
Paul Messina: [00:29:28] and local interests indeed, because anytime that there are earthquakes well, almost anywhere in the world, but you know, certainly in the Southern California area we would get all these TV trucks to cluster around the building where the briefings are done. You know, there's a briefing room for that.
And so in instead of the richer scale, we came up with the TV van scale, you know, if we saw nine vans and we knew it was a pretty strong quake, we were only up all this that, you [00:30:00] know, it was probably not, not a very strong one. Not that much interest from the press,
Matthew Troutman: [00:30:04] Oh, wow. So where were you in LA? What was it? 90? There was a rather large
Paul Messina: [00:30:09] maybe seven to 2000. Four. And so in 1994, the North Korea earthquake, I was there. I was, it was in the middle of the night, as you may know. And so I think I'd stayed up working until something like one o'clock and and so I was sound asleep and I think it was around two o'clock and the earthquake started.
And I was quite familiar with earthquakes because in Guatemala city and in Panama, we had a lot of earthquakes. But, and I experienced some mild ones in Southern California, but that one was quite intense and quite long. And I was lying in bed, telling myself I really should get under the bed to protect myself. I was just so tired. I, I don't know if I ever did. And [00:31:00] unfortunately I only had a broken window in my house. But it, it really shook a lot you know an early earthquake that wasn't as strong. I was biking to Caltech to go to work early one morning through a neighborhood. And, and all of a sudden the car alarm started going off and people started coming out of their houses often with just a towel around their waist, you know? On the bike. I hadn't felt that I thought a ha earthquake and sure enough, I got to my office at Caltech and my bookcases had fallen over their books all over the place.
Matthew Troutman: [00:31:34] That one may have only been a three, three van three or four van
Paul Messina: [00:31:39] Right. That one wasn't so strong.
Matthew Troutman: [00:31:41] Well kind of curious to ask a few. Quick questions. And then I have a big question for you at the end. Thinking back do you have a favorite, you mentioned meals.
So do you have a favorite TJ meal or a dish?
Paul Messina: [00:31:57] I don't know if my memory is accurate because you know, we're talking about [00:32:00] 60 years ago, but it seems to me that on Sundays, at least most Sundays there was maybe dinner that had a T-bone steak.
Matthew Troutman: [00:32:09] Oh, wow.
Paul Messina: [00:32:10] In those days, I think that was quite feasible. So I think one reason that it has such an effect on me was the taste and the tenderness, because it's in, in Panama beef was extremely tough .
Matthew Troutman: [00:32:24] Is, is there is there a teacher or a person who made a meet an outsized impact as you look back?
Paul Messina: [00:32:32] It's really difficult to narrow it down to one. Daws spotter Ruth Potter's husband is certainly a strong candidate. So it's about burden.
For example, sometimes the potters would ask me to babysit their children and And I certainly was pleased to be able to do that. You know, there's no pay involved, but it was really neat because once the kids were in bed [00:33:00] asleep, I could use their Hi-Fi system, you know, to hear music for the first time in my life with really high fidelity.
Matthew Troutman: [00:33:09] Yeah. I mean, the, the, the babysitting is a common story you hear from boarding schools. It's less common in day schools, as you might imagine, but that's That's interesting. Do you have a favorite book from the TJ curriculum?
Paul Messina: [00:33:24] I do. And in fact, it happens to even be by my bedside stand. Now it's a book of a Robert Browning's poems. And I don't know if the edition I have is the exact one that I had during TJ because I, I remembered it, you know, some years ago, and then I bought a copy and, you know, so there are a couple of specific bonds that I remembered.
And so I wanted to read them again, which is why I got the book again. So there's my last Duchess. And , [00:34:00] and the song that picked up passes are among them. And, and so I strangely that's, you know, the one book that from TJ times that I not only still remember, but I occasionally pick up when I'm in bed and read apart.
Matthew Troutman: [00:34:16] We're going to have to have you lead a TJ review session about one of the poems at some point,
Paul Messina: [00:34:22] Yeah. All right.
Matthew Troutman: [00:34:23] never be a great experience. this is a strange question. Do you have a favorite dorm or a favorite room and using one word? Can you explain why.
Paul Messina: [00:34:34] Yeah, so it would be Gables and that one word would be interaction.
Matthew Troutman: [00:34:39] Any other TJ person you wanted to highlight, mention any of your classmates
Paul Messina: [00:34:44] No, I, so I would say all of my classmates and then since I've already exceeded the quota one also Larry Morgan you know, both [00:35:00] because of my Time within when I was a student. And then I, I feel that he did a wonderful job as head of school later on, and I had some interactions with him then.
My classmates almost all of whom I'm in touch with you know, one John Black eyes and we haven't been able to track down fortunately, but Jack Lynn was. My best friend. And we were roommates a few times and I have kept in touch with him throughout
I think it must've been in 2009 that bill Rowe was retiring.
I was living in Chicago at the time and there was some kind of an event like a brunch in his honor. And I thought, well, why don't I go For that he was head of school when my son David Messina was in school. And so I, I flew to [00:36:00] St. Louis and took a cab to the restaurant and, and lo and behold, two of my classmates are there Dan little and Porky bits.
And, and so that was a pleasant surprise. And one of them Porky maybe than phone Mike Margolis. And so I spoke with Mike over the phone. Then later Irving Williamson. And, and so we, we spent the day together and, and had a wonderful time. And that prompted us to have an informal classroom. You the very first one, which happened to be 50 years after the graduation.
And we've had a reunion just about every year, since then in various locations. It's hard for me to. Just point to one classmate, but if I had to, it would be Jacqueline. And he's been a dear friend over the years.
Matthew Troutman: [00:36:54] I think we we all know that many people that we interact with, so I'll have an impact. And, and [00:37:00] so it really is kind of an excuse just to name as many, as many people as you want. So I have one final question for you. How do you live the mission of TJ now by lifting up the world with beauty and intellect?
Paul Messina: [00:37:17] So I have an answer. That I'm not totally happy with, but that's life. Right? A couple of ways that are thought of is I've given quite a bit of my time as an advisor, almost always for no compensation to research institutions, government agencies in the United States.
To a handful of countries the Netherlands Australia Spain Belgium, Italy, Germany, Japan and you know, the idea was to help guide those countries and [00:38:00] institutions in their activities, computing, mathematics, and science, and. And the impact on society. Certainly, and I've enjoyed doing that, but I felt that was my contribution out of, you know, my own time.
And then a second one, which I think many people do is I donate a modest amount of money to many intellectual arts institutions, you know, museums symphonies opera organizations classical music stations, public TV stations.
I donate money to some professional societies, both unrestricted, but also some specifically tied to travel funds for students so that they can attend conferences. They otherwise wouldn't be able to, so, you know, a little bit as with money and time. And I, I do believe I've [00:39:00] felt that.
It's an important part of one's life. Basically a duty to, to try to help society. And you know, I've tried to do it through a lot of my career the in indirect ways. But you know, in ways that might help in the long run, I, you know, I was involved in some projects in which. I think there will be a, an impact on society pretty broadly. It was fun to do them but knowing that it, you know, there was a potential to help society was certainly an attraction to me.
Matthew Troutman: [00:39:40] That's a, that's a perfect place to, to end things. Paul, thank you for your time this morning.
Paul Messina: [00:39:48] Oh, you're welcome, Matt. It was a pleasure. They care.
Matthew Troutman: [00:39:52] If you'd like more information about TJ, please go to TJ s.org, or you can find us on social media. [00:40:00] Look for Thomas Jefferson school on Facebook or TJ underscore S T L on Instagram. If you want to help by contributing to TJ to help support us in delivering our mission or to bring more conversations like this one, go to T J s.org/giving.
Paul Messina: [00:40:18] There's a really nice quote from Einstein. He says in teaching history, there should be extensive discussion of personalities who benefited mankind through independence of character and judgment.
And then he also said the critical comments by students should be taken in a friendly spirit accumulation of materials should not stifled the student's independence. So I thought those were.
Matthew Troutman: [00:40:45] That's great. Yeah.
Paul Messina: [00:40:47] and quite pertinent to Thomas Jefferson.