The marshmallow experiment is one of the most famous psychological tests. In the late 1960s, Stanford researcher Walter Mischel gave a preschool child a sweet, with the promise of another if the child could wait 15 minutes before eating it – a measurement of the ability to delay gratification. What few people know: Mischel had already carried out similar experiments back in the 1950s in Trinidad to research the differences between white and Black children. “There are no historic studies on this,” says science historian Susanne Schmidt from the Humboldt Universität zu Berlin/Germany.
Susanne Schmidt received a scholarship from the Leopoldina for a 15-month stay in Stanford, near San Francisco, in order to study Mischel’s original documents. She delved into the archives at the institute of the renowned science historian Londa Schiebinger, and lived in an interdisciplinary post-doc flatshare. The time in California was like a “summer research retreat”, according to Schmidt, who is now working on a book about the marshmallow experiment in Berlin. For now she would like to stay at the Humboldt Universität and continue working on the political and social relationships in human science research.
Nils Kurig has been at the Scripps Research Institute in Southern California since February. At his home university in Aachen/Germany, the chemist had focused on chemical processes for energy storage – an important element of climate-neutral energy economy. It was pure coincidence that he discovered a research group in San Diego was using one of the processes he was working with for a completely different purpose: optimising the synthetication of medication ingredients with the help of “Kolbe electrolysis”. This process is, however, only one of many methods.
Kurig was excited to think outside of the box and to switch from inorganic to organic chemistry for two years. In Aachen he had headed an entire group, but in San Diego he had to return to the lab and work with test tubes and solutions. “That was indeed quite an adjustment.”
He took his wife to the USA with him, as maintaining contact with colleagues is not easy – also because of the enormous work pressure. “They are all under extreme stress, many work all through the weekend.” After his time in the USA, he will likely return to researching renewable energy and look for a position as a junior professor or junior group leader.