At Fermilab National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, where high-energy physicists probe the the mysteries of the universe, the answer has been found to perhaps the biggest mystery of all: Where are all the single men? They are here at Fermilab, young and single, some of them good-looking.
Few women go into high-energy physics, or the engineering and technical fields associated with physics research. Fermilab is, thus, overwhelmingly male, which the men find unfortunate.
"It is very difficult to find companionship," said Marcelo Gleiser, 27, a dashing astrophysicist from Brazil with tousled blond hair. "Sometimes I bitterly regret having chosen to be a physicist."
"The longing," said Bud Dickerson, 28, a strapping, outdoorsy physicist researching quantum chromodynamics, "is everpresent and constant."
"We wait all winter, looking for a month like June, July or August, when many summer students come in," said Armando Lanaro, a 30-year-old physicist from Rome given to rakish mufflers and a Continental air. "The new person who comes in for the summer is extremely welcome. Especially if she's pretty."
Many scientists find it difficult to meet people outside Fermilab. They often work late, which Dickerson suggested is partly because there are few women around. But the nature of the work demands long hours: When the particle accelerator is running, it runs 24 hours a day.
"The feeling you get from people outside is that this is a sort of secret place where something strange is going on, and the people doing it are are strange people," Lanaro said. "It is very hard to make people understand that we are just normal people. We like to go dancing once in a while, have a cup of coffee with a friend, take a walk." Lanaro used to live on-site, an expericence he likened to his year in the Italian army. "There is a lack of sex life for most of the people who live in Fermilab," he said. "It is very depressive. Very, very depressive."
Many scientists live in such hotbeds of nightlife as Batavia, Warrenville and Wheaton. Still, Steve Delchamps, 31, said socializing is not impossible in the western suburbs. "We don't have Division Street in Batavia, but then again, who really wants Divison Street in Batavia?" he said. "What is Division Street?" asked his colleague Alberto Marchionni, 30.
For the visiting female, a walk through the high-rise Robert Rathbun Wilson Hall can be a delight. Heads turn; handsome men gaze shyly. The heart flutters; the ego soars.
"In the cafeteria, everyone is quite aware of whenever a new woman walks in," said Joey Huston, 32, "You definitely sort of see."
"I see no problem with it," said Joy Perington, 24, an office clerk, of the situation. She met her boyfriend on the job, and introduces lonely scientists to her girlfriend.
Margherita Vittone, 31, one of the few women scientists, said she sometimes feels like a curiosity. "They say, `Oh, what is that?'" she said.
Lanaro thinks that a lack of daily contact with female colleagues makes Fermilab men uncomfortable around women. "I think that a woman outside can recognize a physicist from Fermilab just by looking in his eyes," he said.
The men of Fermilab are prime marital real estate. Possessing some of the brightest minds in the world, they have excellent career prospects. Some may win Nobel Prizes, and the lucky wife and kids could go along to Stockholm for the ceremony.
"In France, it is very trendy for women to go after mathematicians," said Gleiser, "They know they are stable and reasonable people. Maybe this trend will catch on here."
Physicists can tell fascinating tales about the universe, can wear jeans to work and often have droll senses of humor. Still, Tim Turkington, 25, said that women at parties sometimes fall silent when he says he is a physicist. "We know guys who never tell anyone they're physicists," he said. "They tell people they're photographers."
Fermilab provides on-site diversions such as a swimming pool, gym, barn dances and concerts. There are soccer and volleyball games, and an on-site tavern called the User's Center, which offers a game room and Saturday night movies. There is a herd of sullen-looking buffalo and an exhibit of old farm machinery. A Quality of Life Committee is charged with improving Fermilab social life, but Hustion, its chairman, said he has been too busy with work to do much with it.
Gleiser endured one lonely winter living on-site before moving to Chicago's De Paul neighborhood. His social life vastly improved when he met a bartender on the beach who introduced him to customers at his North Side bar. "I came from Rio to London and then to Batavia," he said. "It's kind of a social shock."
But even Batavia, said Lanaro, was an improvement over living on-site surrounded by male physicists. Fond as he is of his colleagues, he enjoys walking out his door in the morning and seeing a neighbor going to work somewhere other than Fermilab, or perhaps watching children play. "Just saying good morning to a non-physicist," he said, "makes me happy."