The Professor and the Pirates

Through storytelling, he has earned the love and respect of his daughter and endured the trials of mourning his beloved wife. Now, just weeks after the tragedy that shook his entire world, the Professor has important decisions to make.

As he embarks on his yearly solo sailing trip, he contemplates whether to keep sailing into oblivion or to return to his previous life. But when his small sailboat is boarded by Russian pirates, that decision is quickly—and violently—ripped out of his control.

Now bruised, broken, and missing key parts of his memory, the Professor finds himself aboard a disguised World War II gunboat—and much to the happiness of the pirate crew on board, he has somehow acquired the culinary skills of a master chef. While he faces new death-defying adventures on the high seas, will the professor-turned-pirate eventually unearth the clues he needs to unlock the secrets of his past?

The action-packed second installment in a series, The Professor and the Pirates reveals the fate of the eponymous Professor in a swashbuckling tale of high-stakes adventure you’ll have to read to believe.

R. Igor Gamow is a retired university professor who taught biological engineering at the University of Colorado. He is also the author of the comic series The Adventures of Mr. Tompkins, in which famous scientists are interviewed by a fictional character invented by his father, George Gamow, in the 1940s.

The Professor and the Pirates is a sequel to Gamow's fictional memoir, The Professor's Daughter, and is his first work of pure fiction.