As a journalist, you’re always looking for the next big story, the one that makes you rich and famous. Having said that, money has never been a really strong motivating force. If that was all I wanted, I’d have been an accountant.

But fame and prestige – being noticed and acknowledged – that’s a different matter. I was brought up in a large family, where I received very little attention from my parents and had to fight for recognition – sometimes physically fight when it came to my big brother John. So when I grew up and left home, I vowed that one day I’d become the type of person people wanted to talk to – and hence the step into journalism.

So here I was, then, about to interview a man whom most people acknowledged to be one of the greatest minds of the twentieth century: Dr Carl Robbins. My editor hadn’t been quite so complimentary.

“That man’s a nutcase!” he yelled at me in his office.

“All great thinkers are eccentrics – you know that,” I replied. “Copernicus and Galileo were both branded as lunatics when they postulated their ideas.”

“Don’t give me all that postulation crap – talk normal English will you? You’re a journalist, not a frigging academic. Wake up Zack.” But I wasn’t going to be put off so easily. I told him I’d work on the Dr Robbins interview in my own time, and still do the magazine column I was really paid for. He grunted what I took to be an affirmation, and I left his office before he changed his mind.

I arrived at Dr Robbins home after having found his address on the Internet. It was a large greystone building in the New Forest, miles from the nearest village. I parked my car and stepped outside, drinking in the atmosphere. Here I was, outside the home of a man who had changed the thinking of everyone on Planet Earth – including my editor, though he’d never admit it. I had an immense feeling of history as I locked the car and walked down the gravel pathway to the front door.

Now in his nineties, Dr Robbins was understandably not in the best of health, and required round the clock attention. His nurse answered the door and I introduced myself.

“Oh, Mr Waters, please do come in. Dr Robbins is so looking forward to meeting you!” she said, adding, “He hasn’t talked to any journalists for such a long time now.”

As I walked with nurse Peters down a long blue corridor with peeling wallpaper, I reflected on how sad it was that such a genius lived out his remaining years in isolation from the World. Was this the fate of all farsighted men and women? We stopped at a door with nothing more than the number twelve on it.

“Here we are – just let me see if he’s ready for you.” She popped her head round the door without knocking and then beckoned me in. “Well, I’ll leave you to natter. Can I get you a cup of tea or coffee?”

“A black coffee would be nice, thanks. No milk or sugar.”

“A man after my own heart”, replied a frail, grey-haired old man sitting in a lived-in armchair and wearing an old maroon dressing gown over blue and white striped pyjamas. “Make that two black coffees would you Margaret.”

The nurse nodded and smiled at me as she left, leaving me alone with Dr Robbins. At first, I wondered how any revolutionary theory could emanate from the man I saw before me. But as we began to talk, his brilliant mind soon began to shine through. I kicked off by asking him how it all started – how did he come to that ‘Eureka’ moment?

“At that time, my scientific career was all but over. I was approaching sixty-five, and retirement, and my goal of making a great discovery, and thereby a name for myself, was then just a distant dream. So, I wasn’t prepared for the ideas that suddenly came to me.”

Just then Margaret returned with a tray containing two cups of steaming coffee. She placed the cups and a plate of assorted biscuits on the small round coffee table between us. “I brought Dr Robbins favourites. They’re all different shapes and sizes, but made from the same flour.” She smiled at Dr Robbins, and he smiled back, as if sharing a private joke. The old man waited until the nurse had closed the door, and then continued.

“I recall it was a Friday night. A documentary was showing on BBC2 – the Horizon programme I think it was – and the subject was advances in Stellar Physics. Are you familiar with the theories of astrophysics Zack?”

I had to admit I wasn’t. But Dr Robbins patiently gave me a basic introduction to Stellar Theory.

“If you look up at the dark, night sky – far away from the glare of street lights, and not on a night when the moon is full or bright – take a closer look at the stars, preferably through binoculars or a small telescope. You’ll see that stars are not all white points of light. There are red, orange, yellow and even blue and green stars. And they’re all different sizes and intensities. At first, in the early days of astronomy, little attention was paid to this. But in the early twentieth Century, astrophysicists realised that what we are witnessing is ‘Stellar Evolution’. Stars are not static bodies – they change just like we change. As human beings, we are born small and young; then we expand and develop, become stronger and brighter. Later, as we age, we begin to decline. We shrivel, grow old and weak, and then die. So it is with stars. Young blue stars, grow into larger, more radiant, white bodies, which develop into strong yellow stars…”

“Like our Sun?” I interrupted.

“Exactly like our sun,” the doctor exclaimed, now animated by his own descriptions. “The yellow stars mature and become large orange stars, which expand further to become cooler red giants. After that, things can go one of two ways: if the star is very large, its own gravity will force it to completely collapse into itself, forming what we call a white dwarf, or even a black hole.” 

“Yes, I’ve heard of those…” I found myself saying, trying to show that I knew at least something about the subject.

“But I bet you’ve never seen one!” The doctor was jesting with me now. I had to admit I hadn’t.  “Well, of course, nobody has! But the theory says there are millions of them in the universe.”

I picked up my coffee, thinking about what he had just explained. I did wonder what black holes had got to do with his theory – but I just smiled and waited for him to continue. The doctor gingerly picked up his own cup, his spindly hand shaking with the weight of the coffee, so I reached over and helped him put the cup to his lips. He took a few sips, and continued.

“Throughout my career, I always needed several stimuli at once. It was never enough to just read a book – I would have to put some music on, or the television – or sometimes both. So when I turned on the Horizon programme, I was already reading a magazine.” He paused as if reliving the moment, his eyes wandering to look out of the window towards the gardens surrounding the nursing home. ‘Wheels in Motion’ – that was the title. Couldn’t think of it for a minute – that’s what happens when you get to my age, I’m sorry! Anyway, I’d always been a great car enthusiast and had a monthly subscription to the magazine. Read it cover to cover – even the ads! And then – bang! Eureka! It was suddenly so very obvious.”

“A real Rolls Royce moment then?” I replied. The doctor chuckled.

“Yes! You could say that. All these different cars in all sorts of shapes, sizes and colours, with no apparent rhyme or reason for their design. That had always puzzled me. I could never understand why there were so many different types. Why weren’t they all the same – like the Germans’ black VW Beetle in the 1940’s? And then the explanation was staring me in the face. Carvolution – the evolution of one vehicle into another – just like in Stellar Physics.”

I found myself nodding in appreciation of the great leap forward in thinking this amazing man had made. Without his intelligence, we would never have discovered one of the fundamental principles of Car Mechanics.

“It must have been a very special moment,” I observed.

“Yes, it was – very special. My mind suddenly went into overdrive – if you’ll excuse the pun! And the theory was so simple. Over millions of years, a bicycle evolves. It finds a need to go faster and faster, and starts to develop a small engine – and hey presto, we have the first motorbike. Over the next thousand millennia, the bike grows a side car and an extra wheel, and it isn’t a great leap from there to a three-wheeled car – the Robin Reliant. The bike is adjusting to the changing climate of the Earth, which, during the last Ice Age, was extremely inhospitable – as you can imagine. Through the need for greater stability, the Reliant develops a fourth wheel, and the Mini car is born. Moving on, its need to survive the harsh climate, and travel further and faster, the car increases its engine size and carrying capacity, and we have the appearance of Fords, Peugeots, Renaults and Nissans – and then Mercedes and Bentleys. Finally, at the top of the tree, the Rolls Royce.”

The doctor sank back in his chair with great satisfaction – as if he had just postulated the theory for the first time. Like everyone else, I was introduced to this theory at Primary School, and I never questioned any part of it at the time. Probably because it was taught as fact rather than theory – and how could my teachers be wrong? But having heard the hypothesis from the horse’s mouth, as it were, something troubled me – and I just had to voice my thoughts.

“Dr Robbins, it was fascinating to hear you reiterate the theory of Carvolution – to get it in your own words. I really felt that I was there, reliving the discovery with you. But there’s just one aspect of the theory that troubles me. Can I ask you a question about it Doctor?”

“Of course you can! You’re a journalist, aren’t you? You’re meant to ask questions!” I nodded foolishly, and he continued. “When I first came up with the theory, there was great opposition to my ideas, and so many questions. I was shunned by many of my colleagues for years, and the Church still doesn’t acknowledge the theory as fact – despite the overwhelming evidence. So go ahead.”

I didn’t want to pick holes in his ideology, but there was something I just had to clarify. “If every bicycle and car evolves into something bigger and better, why do we still see so many bicycles and small cars still around? Surely, they would have all evolved into BMWs, Mercedes and Rolls Royces by now?”

The doctor smiled and nodded to himself, as though he’d heard this objection thousands of times before. “Consider the stars that we talked about previously. They were not all created at the same time. We’re looking at various stages of evolution over millions and millions of years. So it is with bicycles and cars. Bicycles will inevitably evolve into Bentleys and Rolls Royces, just as our sun will inevitably become a White Dwarf. This is just how things are in the Universe.”

I understood his reasoning, but I still wasn’t satisfied. “But what will happen to the Rolls Royce – what’s the next stage in its evolution? Will it develop wings and fly?”

I was being a little sarcastic, I have to say. But the doctor smiled at me again – more broadly this time. “Where do you think aeroplanes come from?” he asked.

I was stunned. This had never been mentioned at school: cars becoming aeroplanes! I wanted to question him more; but the nurse entered and, having put down her tray, turned to me and said that, if we were finished, Dr Robbins could really do with a rest. I thanked the doctor for his time, switched off my recorder and picked up my bag. Dr Robbins had closed his eyes now and I left quietly, whispering goodbye to the nurse as she put a blanket over him. But she seemed oblivious to my leaving.

As I walked back down the corridor toward the front door, my mind was trying to take in the morning’s events. My thinking had been turned upside down by what I’d heard that day.

On reaching my car, I was somewhat relieved that my Ford Escort had not yet turned into a single-engine Cessna. Not that I didn’t want to fly home, but I could no longer accept the theory of Carvolution as fact. It just didn’t ring true. And as much as I hated to admit it, my editor had been right about Dr Robbins – he was indeed a nutcase. 

 As I turned my car’s ignition, and took one last look at the building, I couldn’t help noticing the sign high up above the entrance – something I hadn’t seen earlier. It read: ‘The Charles Darwin Home for Retired Academics’. Well, well, I thought: one deluded soul in the footsteps of another.

* * *