It's amazing!

You can read about Putnam's story in @nautil.us here: nautil.us/finding-pete...

I've come to believe that, if we're lucky, we are tasked and entrusted with stories - stories that confound us, that elude us, that are bigger than us, that change us and then outlive us, that we have to fight to keep them alive by telling them, living them, and sharing them while we can.

This obituary gives a wonderful account of Bob's life and values. I hope you'll read it, and Putnam's story, as well, which Bob guarded and preserved and continues to keep alive today.

www.berkeleyside.org/2025/07/22/r...

When the article came out last month, I sent Fuller the link. He was elated. Overjoyed. Relieved. Shortly after, he suffered a stroke, and last week, he passed away.

I needed to get Putnam's ideas out there because otherwise they would simply be lost, and I needed to do it for people like Fuller who'd kept the flame alive. "This is the last second chance there will ever be," Fuller told me. It was a feeling that shook him (and me in turn) to the core.

Fuller was never able to convince the world to look at Putnam's work. And it haunted him. “My basic upset is, I feel somehow I failed to get his stuff out there,” Fuller said. As I wrote in the piece, his regret was my inheritance.

...I have never in my life met anyone who would feel out and give themselves to the power in other people’s ideas, with no egotistic block…They are extraordinary qualities that made you able to do that for me. I would have done nothing at all had it not been for you.” But despite his best efforts,

He championed Putnam's work when no one else could understand it, when Putnam himself could barely explain it. Putnam wrote to Fuller: “There is the very real miracle of yours being able to realize I was not just a mad crackpot and that this chatter had a core...

People like Robert Works Fuller, who was the first person to whom Putnam ever explained his theory. Fuller was a physicist who had worked out the mathematics of wormholes with John Wheeler. He immediately recognized the genius in Putnam and became Putnam's apprentice and sounding board.

I recently wrote a story about Peter Putnam, a forgotten physicist-turned-janitor with a groundbreaking theory of the mind, for @nautil.us. I was able to piece together Putnam's incredible story thanks to a few people who kept the ember of his work glowing for decades after his tragic death.

Great book.

Thank you so much!

Yes! 😊