Rose then spent two years at Nebraska, where his master's thesis examined the skills most associated with winning.
His thesis examined the role played by provincial government policy in the crises in British Columbia's forest industry.
So it was not surprising that he earned a Ph.D. in chemistry and physics from the California Institute of Technology with a thesis examining the characteristics of simple molecules.
"Many Israelis and Palestinians depict this as a religious conflict, but it is not," said Father al-Siryani, whose doctoral thesis examined the legal status of Jerusalem.
His thesis examined the genetic fitness of fruit flies (Drosophila) and revealed that the pace of evolution was dependent on the amount of genetic variation in a population.
Mr. Tobin, 24, was at work on a thesis examining Russia's changing political attitudes when police officers arrested him and, the police said, found a half-ounce of marijuana in his clothes.
The question was, he decided, a psychological one, so he sought psychological answers, and eventually earned a Ph.D. from McGill University, having written a thesis examining the heritability of alcoholism.
