Up from the Farm

Is the farm-boy tinkerer a vanishing American breed? Jerome George ("Jerry") Spitzner, 17, lives on his father's 160-acre farm, 4 miles outside of St. James, Minn. (pop. 5,005). Last week, in a field of 29,000 bright high school seniors from every state in the Union, Jerry walked off with the top $7,500 award in the annual Westinghouse Science Talent Search. His winning project: an ion accelerator made of such handy items as a Christmas-tree ornament and a float from a pig watering trough.

Built in a shack behind his house, the homemade atom smasher is not the least of Jerry's achievements. He has made and launched several rockets, using his own homemade fuel. He has designed an aerial camera with a parachute release triggered from the ground. He is now working on a sodium-lox rocket, studying low-temperature fusion through antiparticles, and putting together a binary digital computer, housed in a discarded dresser.

A straight-A student at St. James High School, Jerry is no one-sided grind. A strapping, 6-ft. 175-pounder, he is captain of the track and wrestling teams, a star football halfback, and he dabbles in dramatics on the side. Jerry's aim is a doctorate in physics, and a teaching job in a college where he can do research. He is well on the way, having completed eight college semester hours through TV's dawn-breaking Continental Classroom (his grade: A), and he is now finishing another TV course for four more hours of college credit.

To prepare himself even more thoroughly, Jerry stays after school two days a week for a special math course, and on Saturdays he travels 50 miles to Gustavus Adolphus College for a physics course.

Jerry's father, who quit school after the eighth grade, is solidly behind his son's dreams. On the record, Jerry Spitzner does seem highly educable.

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