Very Weird Science

Very Weird ScienceThe Office of Professor Kurt Wise could be a set in an Indiana Jones movie. Tall bookshelves, exotic fossils and stuffed birds jostle for space with heaps of esoteric journals in fields ranging from geomorphology to the Hebrew scriptures. Wise--a slight, pale paleontologist in his mid-30s--is courteous, absentminded and given to laughing at his own slightly obscure jokes. He and his office, in fact, wouldn't seem odd at Harvard, where Wise got his Ph.D. What sets him apart from...