Peter Wilding

[摘要] In 1957, Peter Wilding was 22 and working as a laborer on a building site on the outskirts of Birmingham, England. Once, on a day that was pouring with rain, the electric shovel broke. Wilding spotted the problem—a spade was stuck straight through the cable. He pulled it out and got the shovel working again. The following morning, the crane operator fell and broke his arm while riding his bicycle to work. Impressed by what he had seen the day before, the foreman turned to Wilding.“He said, ‘Would you like to drive the crane?’ I said, ‘I don't know how to drive a crane.’ And he said, ‘It's easy—just six buttons and be careful,’” said Wilding, professor emeritus in the department of pathology and laboratory medicine at the University of Pennsylvania Medical Center. Wilding climbed the hundred feet to the crane operator's box and found the buttons. “One said ‘up,’ one said ‘down.’ One said ‘out’ and one said ‘in.’ There was ‘right’ and ‘left,’” he said. Within a week, he was navigating the giant machinery.Wilding is filled with stories like that. They flow from him with such ease, enthusiasm, and good cheer that it is no wonder that Wilding, one of the most eminent clinical chemists of his day, has a reputation as a master storyteller. “I've been to many meetings with Peter and I always want to sit at the table where Peter's sitting because I know the table is not going to be dull. There is going to be one story after another told,” said Laurence Demers, distinguished professor emeritus of pathology and medicine at the Penn State M.S. Hershey Medical Center.In truth, Wilding's early life was shaped by some of the defining dramas of the 20th century—the Great Depression, World War II, and …

[学科分类] 过敏症与临床免疫学