Murray's Problem

Mark Johnson: Murray Blackmore stood at the lectern and tried to take in the dark conference room, the men and women in wheelchairs waiting for him to wrest a little hope from science. But in his preoccupied state, the room was a blur and hope a struggle.The 39-year-old researcher took a deep breath.

An assistant professor at Marquette University, Blackmore had looked forward to addressing the symposium on spinal cord research in Boston. Work filled his daylight hours; interrupted his dreams at night. Often he would wake at 2 or 3 in the morning, pitched from sleep into the scientific puzzles of a broken spinal cord. Ideas in the midnight hours seldom bore fruit, but his mind churned through…