Bobby's Double Life

In most ways, little Bobby Gordon is like any of the other eleven-year-olds he plays with in Cleveland. He wears-blue jeans and flannel shirts, has trouble with spelling, whoops loudly at the cowboy matinees on Saturdays. But for several years Bobby has had a way of astounding his elders.

At five, he visited an observatory and startled the astronomers by naming the major constellations, and describing the planets and their characteristics. At six, he wrote a learned little essay on the atom (though in those days, he spelled it "andn"). At seven, he wrote another paper on "Cellula" structures ("the amoebas is the smallest cell . . .").

In the third grade, he showed little interest in drawing flowers and houses. He preferred skeletons, with each bone carefully labeled, or diagrams of the human circulatory system. Two and a half years ago, Bobby took up chemistry. He set up a tiny laboratory in his parents' unused coalbin, plastered the walls with his own charts of the elements and their valences. His mother went to the Cleveland Heights Board of Education to get him a special tutor.

Since then, Bobby's life has taken on a busy pattern. At 7 each morning, he is awake, poring over chemistry books until breakfast. At lunch recess, he runs down to his laboratory to see how his latest experiments are coming (he is now making photographs of radioactive uranium acetate). After dinner he goes back to his laboratory again: "And if it's an important experiment I stay down there a real long time."

Under his tutor's guidance, Bobby jumped through one chemistry book after another, until last year he was able to pass the high-school chemistry finals. Then he had an interview with Professor Frank Hovorka of the chemistry department of Western Reserve University. Last week, from the university came the official news. Starting June 20, sixth-grader Bobby Gordon will continue his chemistry studies at Western Reserve.

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