Asa Breed

Dr. Asa Breed was vice president of the Research Laboratory of the General Forge and Foundry Company in Ilium, New York. Although nominally supervisor of Dr. Felix Hoenikker, he would later call him "a force of nature no mortal could possibly control." He was the brother of Marvin Breed, who was the fourth generation owner of the family-run Avram Breed and Sons, carvers of tombstones and monuments.

Biography

Breed attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and once, while on spring break, courted the future Emily Hoenikker, who was then dating Marvin. Although engaged to be married for a time, Emily later left Breed for Felix Hoenikker. Breed's son worked with him at the Research Laboratory until he quit the day the atomic bomb was dropped, saying anything a scientist worked on would become a weapon. He took a job as a stone cutter for his uncle Marvin, becoming as skilled as his great-great-grandfather Avram and later became a sculptor in Rome. It was a common rumor in Ilium that Breed was Emily's lover during her marriage with Felix and was the biological father of her children. He once replaced Hoenikker when he failed to show up as commencement speaker for his son Frank's graduating class at Ilium High School. His tradition of giving chocolate bars for the Girl Pool who go caroling at Christmas was often overseen by his long-time secretary, Naomi Faust.

Once a writer named John passed through Ilium, looking for information of Dr. Hoenikker for a book on the atomic bomb, which he had helped develop. John made an appointment to speak with Breed, who came to believe the writer only wished to make scientists look amoral and dangerous. In an attempt to give an example of Hoenikker's scientific imagination, he told John of how a request by a general of the Marines to find a way to get rid of mud on the battlefield led Hoenikker to hypothesize about how water could ultimately be made to crystallize in different ways. This was the origin of the idea of ice-nine, a form of ice with a melting point above 100F. John was horrified when he realizes that such a substance could freeze all water on earth, but Breed angrily told him that it was only an example and that such a substance did not exist, before throwing him out of his office. However, Breed was unaware that Hoenikker did in fact secretly develop ice-nine at the Research Laboratory shortly before his death.

Quotes

"New knowledge is the most valuable commodity on earth. The more truth we have to work with, the richer we become."