No, his greatest strength was curiosity. An interesting research question caught him, wouldn’t let him go. He’d started with gorillas because, after paging through a National Geographic article, he’d had a dream that night about one of them shaving. Handling the shaver adeptly, stretching the mouth to the side to get the cheeks, eyeing the progress in the mirror, the ape had removed the hair bit by bit, looking more and more human. In the morning, Blum had woken, wondering just how smart they were under all that fur.

Several times so far, once he’d started investigating a subject, other researchers would follow, the topic becoming trendy. By then he would already have established himself, made a few big discoveries, and he could move on to some new subject.

His second strength was being able to convey the importance of the work with a single well-chosen analogy—essential to securing funding. Other neuroscientists might be as good or better with the science, but they didn’t comprehend the funders’ desire to be associated with an analogy like that, to buy it with money and mention it at parties.

When he started his research on gorillas, the newspapers had been filled with stories about computers and their many potential applications. The word, “computers,” no longer referred to women in the back office hunched over adding machines, but instead to huge cabinets of humming machinery capable of adding up a thousand numbers in a second. This new type of mechanical computer was associated with everything futuristic and impressive.

And so, with his research into gorilla brains, he’d associated the work with computers. He told the funders that brains were like biological computers and he would unlock the secrets to the gorillas’ foreign circuitry, capabilities and speed.

Blum and Tibbet had opened a crack in the whale’s skull with the hatchet. Blum was Tibbet’s department head. When Blum asked him for help, he’d said yes.

They used a hammer and wood shims to widen the crack systematically. They worked carefully, so they wouldn’t harm the brain or its protective bag of meninges. When the crack was wide enough, running three quarters of the way around the skull, Tibbet got his fingers into the crack and leaned back, pulling. Blum sat on the animal’s forehead and applied the crowbar. Working together, rocking with their bodies, the gap widened. There was a sudden crack and the top of the skull opened.

Blum fell forward onto the side of the animal. His eyes at the level of the brain, he stared across its surface like an astronaut on the moon.

Even through the thin cloth of meninges, the organ was clearly convoluted and dense with power.

Jesus—said Blum and sat up.

Gently he slid his hands in, between the meninges and the skull, to heft the bag of brains up—the contents a trifle soupy from decomposition. Tibbet cut the bag free at the base and Blum pulled it out.

He held the organ in his arms, a father cradling a newborn. Or a miner with a bag of gold.