MAGAZINE
March 7, 2004 | Linda Marsa, Linda Marsa is a regular contributor to The Times' Health section.
Stephen Quake has the full lips and startling blue eyes of a cherub in a Renaissance painting, and the only sign that he is old enough to teach at a top academic institution is his corona of thinning curls. Wearing an olive-green golf shirt, loosely fitting khaki pants and sandals--the equivalent of formal attire among Caltech's lab rats--he ushers his visitor into an office where papers are stacked precariously high.