1 Professor Wilson Augustus Bledsoe's car glided along the dark narrow roads of Hanover, New Hampshire, then crossed Ledyard Bridge into the vast wilderness of Vermont. The rain had started slowly at first, but now heavy drops danced staccato across the windshield of his old Mercedes. He felt relieved to be heading home, away from the noisy party still in full swing back at the president's mansion. The celebration was in his honor, yet he had been the first to leave. It wasn't that he was ungrateful. Bledsoe simply felt uncomfortable in large crowds, especially ones convened on his behalf, as they were these days with increasing frequency. What most of the guests didn't know was that but for his wife's insistence, he wouldn't even have gone. He had much more pressing matters to see to in his lab. Bledsoe was no ordinary professor. He had just been awarded the twenty-third Devonshire, the most lucrative prize in science and second only to the Nobel in prestige. Winning it was no small feat, even for a full professor at Dartmouth College, which boasted more academic luminaries than universities four times its size. That's why Wallace Mortimer III, the college's revered president, and his wife, Serena, had spared no expense in celebrating their most acclaimed--and certainly their most acclaimed African American--faculty member. It was clear to all who had gathered this evening that they were celebrating not just the Devonshire but a career that had