After 33 years, her routine is the same. In the morning, she walks through millennia-dead invertebrates to reach her desk. She sits down, checks the phone messages, picks up faxes and reads the batches of e-mail messages that have arrived overnight.

Most of the communication is not intended for her--or so the senders think. They are addressed to Stephen J. Gould, Agassiz Professor of Zoology and Professor of Geology.

But Agnes H. Pilot, Gould's staff assistant, is as close as many get to the professor himself.

By any name--secretary, staff assistant, executive assistant or just plain old assistant--Pilot and a small army of Harvard employees help keep sane and wise many of the world's most famous academics.

These are privileged jobs, because being in close contact with such savants on a daily basis requires mutual trust. Scholarly secrets and personal foibles must be guarded.

It is also rewarding, the assistants say, because each day is different--and because the professors seem genuinely thankful for their help.

Last of The Species

33 years ago, when Pilot began to work for Gould, most professors wrote out manuscripts longhand. Secretaries would type them up afterwards. "It took a lot of concentration to type a whole page of a paper perfectly. If I made single mistake, I had to start the page again," Pilot says.