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Villa Devoto Prison, Buenos Aires - Professor Paul Frampton is as fascinated as ever by the mysteries of time and space, publishing six papers on the subject this year alone.
The 68-year-old eminent British physicist is usually based at the University of North Carolina, where he is Distinguished Professor of Physics and Astronomy.
But for the past six months, the professor has found himself studying at a lesser-known seat of learning - the Villa Devoto prison in Buenos Aires.
He shares a cramped communal cell in the Argentinian prison with 80 other inmates, men with whom he has only one thing in common: they are mostly suspected drug dealers, while he stands accused of drug smuggling.
In January, Professor Frampton was arrested at Ezeiza International Airport in Buenos Aires after 2kg of cocaine was found in his suitcase.
The professor told police he was innocent, the unwitting victim of an elaborate honeytrap sting.
He says he thought he was carrying the suitcase on behalf of a young glamour model, Denise Milani, who holds the title Miss Bikini World 2007 and with whom he was about to begin a new life.
(There is, of course, no suggestion that Miss Milani had any involvement in the alleged plot or knew that a group was allegedly using her identity for criminal gain). The police chose not to believe him.
And so the professor is locked up in Villa Devoto, where he has immersed himself in his studies. At the top of his research papers, he writes his address with wry humour - University Centre of Devoto.
Meanwhile, colleagues and scientists from around the world, including 1979 Nobel prizewinner Sheldon Glashow, are protesting his innocence and have sent letters to Argentina’s President Cristina Kirchner, appealing for his release.
His former wife and brother also claim that Professor Frampton is a man utterly lacking common sense, who could easily be tricked into carrying a stranger’s luggage.
A colleague at the University of North Carolina, mathematics don Patrick Eberlein, wrote this somewhat mixed assessment of the professor in his appeal: ‘Paul Frampton may be guilty of a lot of things, naivete (extreme), enormous ego ... however, I have never seen any indication that he was using illegal drugs. I find it impossible to believe he was attempting to sell illegal drugs.’
But these entreaties may not be of any help. In Argentina, it is usual for suspects to be held without charge for up to two years.
And at the prison there is a saying: ‘If you get caught, you get convicted.’
Undaunted, the professor is even continuing to lecture two American graduate students over the phone(when he can afford to buy phone cards).
Professor Frampton’s plight was reported briefly in March, but was all but forgotten until last weekend, when he gave an interview to an Argentinian magazine about how he ended up in a South American airport with a suitcase containing the equivalent of 18,000 lines of cocaine.
After speaking to friends, family and colleagues of the professor, and taking his testimony into account, the Mail has pieced together the trail of events that led to his dramatic arrest and imprisonment.
Professor Frampton, the son of a surveyor, was raised in Kidderminster, Worcestershire, with his elder brother, John.
From King Charles I School in Kidderminster, he went up to Brasenose College, Oxford, achieving a Double First and then completing an MA.
From there he moved to America, where he continued his studies and research at Harvard University, Boston University and the University of Texas. In 1981, he took a teaching post at the University of North Carolina, where he worked until his arrest.
There he established a reputation as a brilliant scientist, though he was not liked by all his peers.
One professor at the university told me: ‘He has problems with some of his colleagues, I am told, because, for example, he lets people know when their contributions to physics do not measure up to his.’
In 1983, Professor Frampton married a French American called Anne-Marie Curran. They divorced in 1998.
‘The thing about Paul is that he is totally naive, his mind is wired differently from other people,’ his former wife told me this week.
‘He lives in his own universe. But I don’t want to discuss the divorce - that’s private.’
Post-divorce, the professor began his search for romance over theinternet.
He began exchanging emails with a young Chinese woman, the daughter of an eminent scientist. The professor - by then over 60 - flew to meet her, but it didn’t workout.
Professor Frampton’s 73-year-old brother, John, who still lives in Kidderminster, says: ‘Paul told me he liked this young lady, who was about 30, but that her parents did not approve of the match.
‘So that was that - he returned toAmerica.’
Once home, he began a new online search for a woman to share his life with. By his own account, he started communicating with a person whomhe believed to be bikini model Miss Milani a few months before his arrest. In January, they agreed to meet in the Bolivian capital, La Paz, though his colleagues insist he did not intend to leave America permanently and that he was to come back to North Carolina to teach a course in the spring.
Mark Williams, a professor of mathematics at the University of North Carolina, who is leading a campaign for his release, says: ‘Paul has told me he left the U.S. fully intending to return, with the woman he was supposed to meet, after just a few days.
‘That intention is substantiated by the fact he left his car parked at the airport, something people normally do only for short trips.’
But it has been a rather longer trip than he imagined.
According to an Argentinian magazine, investigators have discovered that Professor Frampton flew first to Toronto - it is not clear why - but was refused permission to board an onward flight after the airline discovered his ticket had been booked with what was described as a ‘fake credit card’.
The implication is that this flight was paid for by whoever was behind the scam.
According to the magazine, by then the professor was not in contact with ‘Denise Milani’, but with an agent behind the scam, whosent him to the Chilean capital, Santiago. He was then directed on to the Bolivian capital, where he spent ten days waiting for Miss Milani to arrive.
Professor Frampton has told the police that at his hotel one night, he met a Hispanic man aged between 30 and 50.
This man asked him if he would mind taking Miss Milani’s suitcase on to Buenos Aires, where she would meet him. The professor was happy to oblige.
At the airport in Buenos Aires, there was no sign - again - of Denise Milani. But he was still hopeful they would finally meet.
He says he waited for a while at the airport for Miss Milani, or her representative, to organise an electronic ticket to Brussels - though there is no clue as to why they would want to travel to Belgium.
In the meantime, however, he spoke to a friend, who told him to forget about Miss Milani and return to America.
The professor decided to heed the advice, but for some reason checked in what he believed to be Miss Milani’s luggage for the flight to North Carolina, via Peru.
He was arrested as he tried to board the plane after officials discovered the cocaine, packed in gift wrapping paper, inside a false lining of the suitcase.
Professor Frampton was put into the foreigners’ wing of Villa Devoto jail and a formal investigation into the case began.
News of the unusual inmate eventually trickled out.
The professor’s first remark to a journalist, who spoke to him over the phone 137 days into his imprisonment, was: ‘137 is a famous number for physics. Do you know why? One in 137 is the effective electric charge of an electron. Isn’t that interesting?’
In the interview he gave last week to Argentina’s Clarin magazine, Professor Frampton was asked bluntly: ‘Why would a girl like the one you thought you were talking to want to meet up with an old physicsprofessor?’
He replied: ‘She said she liked older men and that she was tired of photoshoots. I fell for the story. Before my arrest on January 23, I was convinced that I was chatting with a “her”.’
The professor says that as soon as he arrived in Bolivia, he was told she wouldn’t be there.
‘At that moment, I should have returned to the States,’ he said. ‘But I always try to complete my projects, like I do my physics papers. She was my project.
‘After a couple of weeks in prison, I realised it was a man, a criminal posing as this model.’
The news of the professor’s arrest was greeted by amazement by those who know him, all of whom are convinced of his innocence - including his former wife, Anne-Marie.
‘I’m deeply concerned,’ she said.‘It has been a bit of an adventure for Paul, but I think he is beginning to realise the gravity of the situation.
‘I have spoken to him on the phone several times and he is starting to get upset.
‘As for this non-existent model, well, Paul is deluded, definitely. No one else would have agreed to take a suitcase from a stranger, but outside physics Paul is childlike, like a three-year-old. He is innocent.
‘His health is not great, conditions are bad there. He needs to get out of there.’
Professor Frampton was advised by the US embassy in Buenos Aires to get a private lawyer - he has dual British / U.S. citizenship - but refused on the grounds that it was ‘too expensive’.
As a result, he is being represented by a public defender with a huge work load.
Professor Williams, from the University of North Carolina, says: ‘Paul is bearing up surprisingly well. When I speak to him on the phone, he is clear-headed and even good humoured.
‘But I am concerned about him. There is a lot of smoke in the air and apparently many viruses - he says he has had about ten colds since January. The prison food is terrible and he must pay to obtain decent food.
‘Everyone I have spoken to at the university and elsewhere strongly believes he is innocent.
‘It is quite likely he has a psychological impairment that makes him especially vulnerable to scams like this one.
‘He is a lonely person and this explains his going to a foreign country to meet a woman.
‘He is running out of money and expects his savings to be depleted within a few months. His divorce nearly cleaned him out, apparently.
‘The university has recently decided, I understand, not to pay his summer salary.
‘I believe these actions are inhumane. The man needs money to defend himself. He is being kicked when he is down.’
Earlier this year, a New Zealander, Sharon Armstrong, was sentenced to four years and ten months in an Argentinian jail after being caught carrying more than 5kg of cocaine hidden in a suitcase.
This was despite her lawyers providing evidence that she was set up by a man she met on the internet, posing as the owner of a mining company.
If convicted, Professor Frampton faces a sentence of between three and 16 years.
This week, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office told the Mail it was providing consular assistance to Professor Frampton, but would not give further details.
We were unable to contact the professor because the courts in Buenos Aires were in recess this week, but his brother, John, who spoke to him last week, said:‘He says all the stuff that’s been written about him makes him look a bit silly.’
So what of Denise Milani, the 34-year-old, Czech-born model who has been caught up in this strange business?
She lives in Los Angeles and, it transpires, is happily married.
The professor, meanwhile, trapped in Villa Devoto, has hopefully moved on from the ‘romance’ with Miss Milani. Right now, all he wants is his freedom. - Daily Mail