Stanley Ruby is among the former students and colleagues of C. S. Wu who are quoted

I’m reading a helpful book, Story Genius, by Lisa Cron, about narrative technique that I plan to write more about in the master blog. Here I will focus on Cron’s concept of any story’s “third rail,” the underlying problem that ties together the external plot points with the main characters’ beliefs and motivations, and thus electrifies the story. 

in The Physics Experiment That Went Wrong story, I believe the third rail is the conflicting belief systems of Wu and Ruby over the appropriate balance between doing science with one’s family life.

Before I turn the page for good on the doppelganger Stanley Ruby, I can't resist this tidbit about his father. I wanted to know where the family had come from and how it had come by the Ruby surname.

But let's start with that page of Ruby listings in the 1949 Manhattan phonebook that I posted a few days ago. There were two Stanley Rubys listed on adjacent lines, but a few lines above that we find two other interesting listings.

One is Samuel Ruby at 9 W. 18th St. and above that is S. Ruby Luggage Company also at 9 W. 18th St. 

That other Stanley Ruby who later worked at the Pentagon had a life that closely mirrored Stan's.

Deeper searches for "Dr. Stanley Ruby" are returning some hits related to the Advanced Research Projects Agency.

ARPA was the Pentagon-led program that was established in 1958 in the wake of Sputnik to fund research and development in advanced technologies with military applications. In 1972, the initial D for Defense was added, forming DARPA.

One of the important things it did in this period was to create an information network connecting university labs and government sites. This ARPANET used packet-switching technology that became the basis of the Internet. 

Working on surface chemistry for Professor Hassialis was as close to weapons work as Stan ever got

When working in genealogy, you learn never to rule out the possibility of coincidence