#143 Alfred Lee Loomis (the most interesting man you've never heard of)

What I learned from reading Tuxedo Park : A Wall Street Tycoon and the Secret Palace of Science That Changed the Course of World War II by James Conant. ---- [0:01] Few men of Loomis’ prominence and achievement have gone to greater lengths to foil history.  [0:17]  Independently wealthy, iconoclastic, and aloof, Loomis did not conform to the conventional measure of a great scientist. He was too complex to categorize—financier, philanthropist, society figure, physicist, inventor, dilettante—a contradiction in terms.  [0:42] He rose to become one of the most powerful figures in banking in the 1920s.  [4:42] The smile was a velvet glove covering his iron determination to get underway without any lost motion.  [5:29] He would dedicate himself to overcoming Germany’s scientific advantage.  [7:19] He had amassed a substantial fortune, which allowed him to act as a patron.  [8:06] Loomis was a bit stiff, with the bearing of a four-star general in civilian clothes. He was strong and decisive.   [10:15]  He was enthusiastic about American know-how and was not inclined to sit idly by until the miliary finally determined it was time to take action—particularly if just catching up with the Germans proved to be a monumental task.  [13:30] He carried himself with composure, but his politeness was merely a habit; he was preoccupied.  [16:56]When duty called he helped reinvent modern warfare. [20:21] He became an enthusiastic champion of the new armored tanks. He became such an expert on tank construction, he built a scaled-down model in his garage in order to see if he could make further improvements in the design. When his cousin came to visit, Loomis rolled into the rail station in his light armored tank to meet the train, kicking up dust and causing quite a scene.  [26:54]  Loomis would later maintain that everybody on the Street knew the crash was coming, the only difference was that he and Thorne refused to bank on its being inevitably delayed.  [31:20] After the shock of the