The Confidence Game by Maria Konnikova

Author:Maria Konnikova [Konnikova, Maria]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781782113904
Publisher: Canongate Books

CHAPTER 5

THE TALE

The whole secret to our success is being able to con ourselves into believing that we’re going to change the world—because statistically, we are unlikely to do it.

—TOM PETERS, BUSINESSMAN

In late April 2014, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill did something almost unprecedented: it fired a tenured professor. He’d wanted to retire. No, the university told him. A peaceful resignation? No. He was, Chancellor Carol Folt reiterated, fired. “You committed misconduct of such a nature as to render you unfit to serve as a member of the faculty of this University,” she wrote in her letter to the professor, informing him of the Faculty Hearing Committee’s decision. The professor in question had held the Louis D. Rubin Jr. Distinguished Professor of Physics and Astronomy chair at the university. He had published 271 papers and racked up more than 7,000 citations, and had the support of nearly one hundred tenured faculty from across the country behind him. So what had happened to render such an absolute judgment?

Paul Frampton had first met Denise Milani online, on a popular dating site, Mate1.com. He was sixty-eight, divorced, and lonely, a theoretical particle physicist whose work had devoured much of his personal life. But he wanted more: children. A rewarding home life. Love. And there she was, his perfect mate.

Denise Milani was gorgeous. A Czech model who, at thirty-two, was forty years his junior, she had been crowned Miss Bikini World several years before. Why would someone like her fall for someone like him? In his mind, it made perfect sense. She liked older men, she told him, and photo shoots had grown draining over time. People always ogling her, seeing her as nothing more than a body; it could all be a bit much. She was ready for a change.

For eleven weeks, Frampton and Milani corresponded. Their messages, the New York Times reported in a lengthy profile, were frequent, intimate, and passionate. Often, she told him that she loved him. They’d never met, but sometimes love just happens. You have to embrace it when it comes, whatever guise it might take. He asked to speak on the phone. She put him off. Why not just go all the way and meet in person? She was going on a photo shoot to Bolivia, she told him. He could meet her there. At long last, they would be united.

Frampton was born in Kidderminster, Worcestershire. He came from a lower-middle-class family that doted on his academic accomplishments, heralding them throughout the neighborhood and encouraging him to do much the same. He graduated with a double first from Oxford’s Brasenose College, received his DPhil in 1968, and from there made his way to Chicago for a postdoc with Yoichiro Nambu, a Japanese physicist who was a leader in his field. In 1985, he became a professor at UNC Chapel Hill, a post he would occupy for close to three decades.

It wasn’t the first time Frampton had been lured to a foreign country by the prospect of new wedded bliss.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.