The Truth about Tony DiNardo
As told to Michelle Snyder by Dr. Enzmann
Image – detail of Mysterious Object painting, showing the Time and Information theorems – Enzmann & Enzmann. Painting by Don Davis & Dr. Enzmann
Dr. Robert Duncan-Enzmann and Tony DiNardo were friends. They often went out to dinner. Tony was a genius, an expert in Information Science Theory. We tell you this because Enzmann believes credit should be given where it is merited, and Tony never received credit for his theory.
Enzmann often played the game Go at his desk at Raytheon; no one seemed to mind, not even his boss. He was well respected. In fact, the New York Academy of Sciences sent his boss a letter saying that he should be complimented that Enzmann worked for him. A man named Laskowitz was an ardent supporter of Dr. Enzmann. He even saw to it that Enzmann was accepted as a Fellow at the NYAS. Laskowitz was an interesting fellow. There was, at one time, a Laskowitz Helicopter Company.
Tony DiNardo was a shy person. He hung around Enzmann’s cubical and talked about Information Theory while Enzmann played Go. Another man named Girard also hung around in the background – in a sneaky way, pretending to be watching Go, but really, he was there to listen in to the conversation, which he was deliberately not included in.
While this story takes place, there was, at the New York Academy of Sciences, an extraordinary incident that affected the flow of information between them and their members. It affected the review of submissions and publication of the material. There is, in California, a group that is allegedly a space institute, yet everyone in it is utterly hostile to the space industry, especially any manned space efforts.
One day a large group from this alleged space institute in CA walked into the NYAS without invitation. They confronted the editor and told him he was fired. They ranted that it was a disgrace to have someone like Enzmann doing planetology conferences in the Academy’s name, and for the sake of human decency and science, they, the group from CA, were going to have to take over management of the NYAS.
The NYAS has been around a long time and, fortunately, has many friends. One was a certain NY Police Captain who had two sisters associated with the NYAS. One owned a little girls’ dress shop next door to the Academy and sold many to the members, and the other processed paperwork at the Academy.
During this invasion, the NY policeman happened to be visiting his sister in the cafeteria. The alleged space institute continued its tirade, threatening to call the police in to clear the place out, which they did. However, before they did, the Police Captain, hearing the uproar, had called his superior and said there was an invasion and he needed reinforcements at the Academy.
The reinforcements came and evicted the space institute persons amidst threats of “we know the mayor” etc. They were never heard from again, but the ripples of disruption they began lasted for quite a while.
Now we return to Tony’s story.
At Raytheon, you are either funded or not funded. If you are funded, you manage your contract. On the other hand, some are never funded, and great effort is made to see it stays that way. Girard wanted to be an information expert. He had the point of view that everything technical or scientific done by anyone at Raytheon belonged to him. We can cite no reason why this should be so, but that was his point of view.
Conversations at the cubicle as Enzmann played Go covered a lot of material. Joanna Enzmann had developed a derivation of gravitational constant and a number of other relativistic problems. Some of her work was published. Girard ‘knew’ that all of it should have been given to him before she published any of it and was outraged because he knew that with some information from Enzmann on Newtonian approximations, he, Girard, could have published it all.
Dr. Enzmann and Joanna know there is a limit to time. Not that the universe has a beginning or end, but that we must define time, which they had done as Time Existence Theorem and Information Existence Theorem. Enzmann did the approximation and Joanna set up the integral. Her integral expressed his approximation but not with Information Algebra. It was Tony who wrote it up using Information Algebra. Girard wanted it.
Girard was determined to get credit for this work. The NYAC published work like this and then it was presented at the Planetology and Space Mission Planning Conferences Enzmann and the NYAS produced. Because of the previous uproar at the NYAS, Enzmann was unable to monitor all the information going into the academy for the current Planetology Conference as closely as was required, and Girard submitted a paper on Time and Information Existence Theorem by R. and J. Enzmann, with his name on it.[1]The work he took credit for was actually done by Tony DiNardo.
Not long after this, Girard saw to it that Tony was fired. Tony took it badly, but being shy, did not speak up. He did not try to claim credit for the work he had done on Joanna’s theory. It was said he became depressed and committed suicide. Dr. Enzmann suspects it was more sinister.
Despite the paper with his name on it, Girard was angry with Joanna for publishing her work. She should have given it to him outright, then he would have published more broadly and received credit for the complete work, not just the part Tony did. He sought revenge on her by stopping an assignment that would send her to Kwajalein and succeeded. She did not go. He tried again later on another project, but as Joanna knew the equipment better than anyone else, he couldn’t stop her from going that time. Later on, Girard’s brother also sought to get revenge on Joanna for not giving Girard everything she wrote, but he also failed.
Decades have passed. Dr. Enzmann told the editor that he wanted Tony DiNardo to get credit for his brilliant work on Information and Time Existence Theorems, and as is his habit, told the story in Oral Tradition to the editor, who presents it here for your consideration.
A detail of the painting Time and Information, at the beginning of the article, shows Tony DiNardo’s equation work on Enzmann and Joanna’s Time and Information Existence Theorems. The painting was done by Don Davis with Enzmann guiding.
Dr. Enzmann hopes somewhere Tony is smiling, and that his family is happy he finally got credit for his work.
[1] Cosmological Aspects of Order, Relevance, and Information Theory, by R Enzmann, J Enzmann, A Girard, in the Third Conference on Planetology and Space Mission Planning, Dr. Robert Enzmann, Ed., Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, vol. 187, January 1972, page 10.
