Marilyn addressing crowd at Marilyn Madness, BBR lunch room 2016 |
Geophysical Lab History and Colleagues: 1950s to 2008
Phil Abelson became the Director of the Geophysical Laboratory in 1953,
after spending the years during and after World War II at sister lab,
Department of Terrestrial Magnetism. One of his first hires was Tom Hoering,
then a professor of chemistry at the University of Arkansas, a hot bed of
isotope research in the United States. His second hire was P. Edgar (Ed) Hare
who was postdocing at Caltech. Both were some of the first of a new breed of
chemist—geochemists trained to study the compositions of rocks and sediments,
rather than synthetic products that most chemists study. Tom and Ed were even
more specialized: they analyzed the organic remains of living organisms from
geological samples thousands, millions, or even billions of years old.
Abelson, Hoering, and Hare joined
the Geophysical Lab’s senior staff that had for over 50 years concentrated only
on inorganic samples. It might even be said that the three were second-class
citizens who were doing something completely out of the Lab’s mainstream.
Abelson became President of the Carnegie in 1971, leaving just Tom and Ed to
carry out the biogeochemistry program. They hosted several successful
postdoctoral fellows during this time and were vigorous researchers on their
own. In the Carnegie Institution of Washington’s Annual Report of 1971-1972,
the research highlighted a new type of mass spectrometer for identifying
compound structures (Hoering, 1972; Hare, 1972) from hydrocarbons and amino
acids from the Cariaco Trench, an anoxic sediment basin just north of Venezuela.
In the 1972-1973 annual report, there were only two reports on Biogeochemistry,
dwarfed by petrological studies of all sorts. That trend continued—Hoering
published one or two papers per year switching between organic geochemistry
work and stable isotope studies; Hare was dating bones by new techniques;
postdocs contributed one or two sound reports. Ed Hare had firmly established himself as
the expert in measuring amino acids in everything you could think about. Tom
Hoering was a generalist with a hand-made stable isotope laboratory with some
new “toys” for studying rare molecules. This was the scenario when I arrived in
1977 to work on hydrogen isotopes.
In 1963, Tom wrote to
Abelson about his feelings in the early days of biogeochemistry.
“The decision to work on organic
geochemistry was not a bad one and I feel that the work we have done in the
last few years has been good work. However, as I look about and see what
progress has been made in the field of geochemistry of stable isotopes, I feel
that we may be missing the boat in that area. In fact relatively little
progress has been made in the last five years. I am sure the field is not
“mined out.” Only one new laboratory that is doing first class research has
been opened up in that time. For example, my initial work on the geochemistry
of the stable isotopes of nitrogen has not been extended by anyone and I see no
one who will in the near future…When the true facts are known, there is
relatively little enthusiasm among the rest of the staff members for organic
geochemistry. This has tended to make me feel a little isolated from the rest
of the group. Also, the fact that I have set up, from scratch, a reasonably
expensive laboratory has caused some long looks my way…After five years, I
scarcely know some of the other staff members…”
“I
think one major area that the laboratory could profitably undertake that would
complement the program in organic geochemistry is “biogeochemistry,” the
interaction of the biosphere with the lithosphere…It would seem that if we are
going to worry what is happening to the organic matter in ancient sediments, we
should worry about what is being fed into recent sediments and how this organic
matter interacts with the inorganic world about it. It would be well to have
someone who has had some training along biological lines. “
When Tom wrote this memo
I was 11 years old and in the 6th grade. That year, I wrote an essay
that when I grew up I wanted to have a chemistry lab, six dogs, and five
children. It took fourteen years for me to make it to the Geophysical Lab,
ready to take on the challenge of building a biogeochemistry program. Hoering
also noted in this letter than someone needed to work on the oxygen isotopes of
silicate rocks. In 1972, my colleague Doug Rumble, a Harvard grad and UCLA
assistant professor, was hired to do just that. Tom was prescient in so many
ways.
2801 Upton St. N.W. The “old” Geophysical Laboratory
Built in the early 1900s, the
Geophysical Laboratory, two blocks off of busy Connecticut Ave. in Washington
DC was specially designed for sensitive temperature measurements important for
determining how the interior of the Earth was structured. The Laboratory’s interior
walls were 18 inches thick (about 40 centimeter) and the exterior walls at
least two feet thick. Perched on top of the second highest hill in Washington
(the National Cathedral is on the highest), the Lab commanded a view of much of
downtown D.C. through the filter of tall trees that graced the grounds. I first
saw the Lab in July 1977, a few days before starting my postdoc. It was the 4th
of July weekend, so I was to start work immediately after the holiday. My
friend Nancy “Nat” Peters drove me by. We stared in awe of the august building.
I felt humbled.
When I arrived for work a day or so
later, entering through the double doors of the main entrance, the First Floor
hallway was eerily silent. Wooden museum cabinets flanked the walls containing
mineral specimens that had been given names in honor of the famous scientists
who had worked at the Geophysical Lab. I reported first to Tom Hoering in his
office and lab suite on the First Floor. Hoering’s office centered on his old
oak desk and was flanked on either side by lab benches holding a balance for
weighing, a small refrigerator, and two gas chromatographs. He loved being
among the hum of instruments, even in his office. The main lab held three mass
spectrometers—an old homemade instrument, a new Nuclide mass spectrometer to
measure hydrogen isotopes, and a third mass spectrometer for measuring the
chemical structures of unknown compounds from sediments, oils, and rocks. Lab
benches by the front windows were covered with custom made glass vacuum lines
with columns of liquid mercury, pumps, and furnaces. A smaller interior lab
included two ancient soapstone hoods that barely worked, a
bromine-pentafluoride vacuum line for analyzing oxygen isotopes in rocks, and
the laboratory bench that became my “home” for doing research for the next
several years.
After a brief meeting, I was taken
to the Second Floor where the Director had a suite of offices and the
secretarial staff was located. In those days, people used telephones and
letters to communicate, rather than email or text messages. Secretaries
answered most phone calls, then used a complex series of bells to summon us to
answer the phone. My call sign was 5-1: ding ding ding ding ding pause ding.
Hoering’s was 5-2. When we heard five rings, we both listened up. The
secretaries also typed all of our manuscripts and correspondence. They were
sources of important information on how things really worked.
I was assigned a desk space at the
other end of the hall from Tom’s lab, just outside of Larry Finger’s
crystallography laboratory on the First Floor. With tousled curly brown hair
and a matching beard of a similar unruly nature, Finger had designed an
automated laboratory with two or three sophisticated X-ray instruments
specially designed to measure the crystal structure of very small pieces of common
and rare minerals. He was an early computer whiz. His inner office, stacked
with paper computer codes, punch cards, and various computer parts, was the
typical scientific mess. Larry was assigned the job of computer support for the
Lab, which took up a considerable amount of his valuable time. Often he was
seen as a grumpy tyrant, but in reality, he was very generous with his time and
knowledge.
Over the next few years, my Lab
“real estate” expanded from the Basement all the way to the Attic floor. To
sterilize the media for my microbial cultures, I used an autoclave—a large,
hot, pressurized cylinder that was installed in the basement room where the
maintenance staff ate their lunches and changed their clothes. When I was
coming down the spiral staircase into this room, the support staff “lair,” I
whistled so that I wouldn’t literally
catch them with their pants down. One floor lower was where the Boiler Room and
Electrical Vault lay. The Lab’s only shower, peppered with mold and grime from
years of not being regularly cleaned, was located on this level. The few women
at the Lab rarely, if ever, used it. The Electrical Vault doubled as a Barber
Shop, run by our mail clerk, Harvey Lutz. Budget conscious staff scientists had
their hair trimmed there on a regular basis.
The Attic was a similarly unusual
place that served many purposes. It housed a storeroom of used glassware and
chemicals, a dark room for processing photographs and slides, an archive of old
papers, a museum-like office with former staff member Frank Schairer’s pipe,
desk, and papers, and a small room that I used for transferring microbial
cultures. When any postdoc needed a few beakers for an experiment, she/he was
sent by Dave Singer, the Assistant to the Director, to the Attic to see if some
could be found in the jumbled storeroom. The storeroom held a treasure trove of
old historic junk, including all of the radioactive samples analyzed over the
Lab’s history.
In order to maintain sterile
conditions, I needed to shine ultraviolet lights on the bench tops for 8 hours
prior to working. Here was my routine: 1) make the culture media in my lab on
the First Floor; 2) carry it and the glassware for growing the microbes into
the Basement where it was sterilized; 3) bring it up to the Attic for
inoculating with microbes; 4) carry down the cultures to my lab on the First
Floor. Hardly convenient, especially since the Laboratory had no elevator!
Tucked underneath the stairs on the
Ground Floor, Doug Rumble’s small lab housed the Nuclide isotope ratio mass
spectrometer we shared. I would prepare samples in my First Floor lab, then
shuttle them downstairs for final analyses. Our gas tanks came into the Ground
Floor from an adjacent parking lot. When we needed one upstairs, our janitorial
staff used an old-fashioned dumbwaiter to physically haul it up. The instrument
shop took up much of the real estate on the Ground Floor. Employing three to
four machinists at any one time, the Shop could make any complex metal
structure you could imagine. Having this facility on site made the difference
for most of the Lab’s scientists, who designed their own specialized equipment.
The men’s only restroom was on the Ground Floor and was the only restroom in
the building when it was built, meaning there was no ladies restroom!
Sometime in the
1930s, a Ladies room was built on the Second Floor.
The rear of the Laboratory held three
external, separate buildings: the Dog Sheds, low “temporary” laboratories built
for research during World War II; the Electronics Shack, housing our electron
microprobe; and a metal shed holding years of old, often-leaking chemicals. Rus
Hemley managed to build a nice lab in the Dog Sheds that overlooked the volleyball
court, which was outside the Dog Sheds and actively used for games at
lunchtime. We also used the court for disposing waste bromine pentafluoride, a
nasty explosive chemical that reacted safely with the water vapor in DC’s humid
air.
The exterior of the Lab was tan
stucco, with a very distinct patch on the side where stucco was replaced after
a serious fire. Two tall holly trees dwarfed the front flanks of the building.
Rambling roses covered the front entrance giving the appearance of a modern day
Sleeping Beauty castle. Azaleas imported from Japan by visiting scientists
rimmed the front lawns. We held picnics and barbecues there, as well as the
Friday afternoon beer sessions. A curving driveway swept up from Upton Street
in a loop. It was not that unusual for someone’s car to roll off the driveway
into the lawn because their parking brakes weren’t set.
In photos of the Lab when it was
first built, all of the trees were small saplings. A large weeping willow,
planted by staff member Joe Boyd to hide the electrical lines, frequently took
out our power because branches fell on the lines at the first sign of wind or a
thunderstorm, something that happened almost weekly in the summer. The saplings
grew into massive oaks, maples, and walnut trees. In one of the violent storms
that swept through the area, postdoc Zach Sharp and I watched from the front
doors as tall trees were completely uprooted, flying like tooth picks in the
violent winds. The grounds were nearly destroyed, and electric lines were
downed. A large, uprooted walnut tree at the rear of the Lab was recycled one
weekend by my husband Chris and postdoc Susse Wright’s husband Tom. Tom Wright,
an NSF program director, grew up on a tree farm in Alabama and had a chain saw.
He and Chris sawed off the limbs, loaded the heavy trunk onto the back of
Chris’s Jug Bay Wetlands Sanctuary work truck and took it to a small sawmill in
southern Maryland. We have a picnic table built with the lumber and shared some
of it with others at the Lab. I cherish it as a memory of that day and of the
old Upton Street Laboratory.
Without question the old Geophysical
Laboratory building had history, class, and a unique character. We all loved
it, but eventually it began to limit our scientific research. The electrical
system was a rat’s nest. My laboratory had power lines coming in from three
sources, one of which ran through the Instrument Shop. When they turned on a
certain milling machine, one of my mass spectrometers would catastrophically
shut down. We didn’t have enough space for new equipment; if we did, it often
got stuck on the stairways bringing it in. NSF refused to fund a new mass
spectrometer we desperately needed until we moved to the new lab. The fume
hoods could no longer handle the chemicals we were using. The DC Environmental
Protection agency was appalled at our old chemical storage shed. In summer
time, the room air conditioners were insufficient to cool labs. In winter, the
old boiler often broke down for days at a time. The Lab was contaminated with
radioactive carbon, so our work on dating bones needed to move to the National
Bureau of Standards. It was time for a change.
In 1990, we moved to the 5251 Broad
Branch Road N.W. campus amid a flurry of activity. Ed Hare claimed he wouldn’t
move and refused to pack up his lab when the moving trucks came. The Laboratory
photo that year showed us all in our work clothes, informally posing on the
front steps. Tom Hoering worked so hard, he took naps on cardboard spread out
on his old lab benches, now vacated. The move took over two weeks. When it was
over, we came back to see the bones of our beloved building. Even today, when I
dream about the Geophysical Lab, which I do often, it’s always the Old Lab that
I dream about. Memories of the old Lab are dear to many.
Pedro Roa, our custodian from Nicaragua, and Tom Hoering, circa 1992 |
Thomas C. Hoering: Staff member: 1959-1995
I have peppered my
memoir with stories about Tom because he had a way of contributing pithy advice
whenever you or he thought you needed it. In summer of 1994, he attended the
Organic Geochemistry Gordon Conference in New Hampshire, when he first noticed
that he had a difficult time opening the screen door of his house on his way to
the airport. That fall, his usually fastidious glassblowing was lopsided, even
sloppy. In late September, he confided in me that he thought something serious
was wrong. A few weeks later, he learned he had an aggressive form of brain
cancer. He went through two surgeries in November and December. He trundled
into the lab a few days that fall, with shaved patches on his scalp and bruises
from numerous IV infusions. By February of 1995, he entered a skilled nursing
facility in Chevy Chase, Maryland.
All of us from the lab
visited every week, but it was clear he was declining fast. One Saturday, he
told my husband Chris to move his “mass spectrometer” out to the patio—he meant
his wheelchair. Tom had declared he was retiring at the end of June 1995. I had
started planning his retirement festschrift to be held at a resort on the
Potomac River in Northern Virginia. Colleagues from around the world were
invited and coming. We held the event in May 1995, but Tom was unable to
attend. It was his wish to continue to hold the festschrift in his honor even
though he’d not be sitting in the front row napping frequently during the
scientific talks. People who came from afar stopped by the nursing home and
said goodbye. With colleague Dave Freeman, a chemistry professor from Univ. of
Maryland, I assembled a booklet with reminiscences from many of his colleagues
(see below).
Maxine Singer, President
of the Carnegie at that time, wrote “His enthusiasm for science and sense of
the Carnegie community have been evident in his frequent comments and questions
about modern biology. His broad thinking extended to the constantly changing
borders between biology and geology.” Colleague David Freeman noted about Tom,
“He had big instruments, and worked with big ideas. He also had his own ideas.
The scientific life for Tom is a complex of doors that open to ideas inside—any
one of which might shift a perspective, reveal something new, or lead to a
better question.”
Tom was variously
described by his colleagues as “curmudgeon, impatient, cynical, distinguished,
beloved, friend, generous, scientific marksman, pragmatic, enthusiastically
contagious, loyal, respectful, supportive, fun, remarkably broad, analytically
ingenious, pioneer, butterfly, leader, rigorous, gleeful, and kind.” As he
aged, Tom was a magnet for postdocs who had a tough analytical problem. He
enjoyed swiveling around on his desk chair, propping his feet up, and giving
advice. He was known for folksy phrases:
“It’s more than
tinkering. It’s what I call ‘having hands’.”
“We young people need to
stick together.”
For lab equipment: “You
have to show it who’s boss.”
And “If you don’t run
the machines, they will run you.”
“Shoot first and ask
questions later.”
“Pick five well chosen
samples.”
Phil Abelson and Tom
Hoering had an oft-challenging relationship. When they worked together as
colleagues, Tom complained that Abelson could be sloppy and ask Tom to chase
projects he wasn’t interested in. One year, Abelson asked Tom to take his place
at a conference where Abelson was scheduled to speak, saying he was too busy to
attend. Tom dutifully got on a plane, headed to California, and while giving
the presentation, looked up and saw Abelson sitting in the audience! Every
Friday, Tom’s phone would ring about 2 pm, and Tom would bark, “That will be
Abelson!”
As editor of the
prestigious Science magazine, Phil
called Tom for advice while writing his weekly editorial. In 1995, Abelson
wrote this about Tom, “Soon after Hoering arrived at the Geophysical
Laboratory, he and I collaborated in a number of experiments. In the course of
these, while we were in daily interactions, I observed his superb qualities as
a rigorous scientist. While he moved quickly and decisively, he was always
cautious about random or systematic errors in his measurements. He was
completely aware of the behavior and capabilities of his equipment and of
possible isotope effects in procedures.”
11.3 P.
Edgar Hare: Staff member 1963-1999
Ed Hare was born in 1933 in
Burma, while his parents served as missionaries for the Seventh Day Adventist
Church. He attended Pacific Union College, an Adventist school where he received
his B. S. in Chemistry. One year later, he earned a M. S. degree from
University of California at Berkeley. For his doctorate, he studied at the
California Institute of Technology, under the guidance of Hans Lowenstam. Ed’s
dissertation was on the amino acids and proteins from carbonate minerals found
in the shells of modern and fossil mussels (Mytilus
californicus), which was subsequently published in Science magazine in 1963.
His work attracted the attention of
then Geophysical Laboratory Director Phil Abelson. The two scientists
corresponded for several years until Ed Hare was invited to join the scientific
staff in 1963. During his early years at the Laboratory, Ed set up an
instrument, new at that time, to measure amino acids, the building blocks of
proteins. His first paper on the development of new methodology for amino acid
analysis was published in 1966, in which he described the use of pressure
coupled with automation to simplify the analytical procedure.
In 1968, Ed Hare and Phil Abelson
published the first paper on the discovery of left and right-handed amino acids
in fossil shells. Living organisms are composed almost exclusively of
left-handed amino acids. After an organism dies, the left-handed amino acids
convert to right-handed amino acids as the organic matter in bones and shells
starts to decompose. Hare developed a
process for accurately measuring the amounts of left- and right-handing amino
acids that could be use for dating ancient shells and bones. His work for the
remainder of his career centered around studying the conversion from left- to
right-handedness, called racemization, and exploiting this phenomenon for
dating Early Man in North America, early human evolution in Africa, and the
geological progression of Arctic climates.
When the first rocks came back to
Earth from the Moon, Hare was involved in searching for signs of life on these
precious samples. He published his findings in Science in 1971, finding some evidence for amino acids in lunar
samples, but most probably from terrestrial sources. By this time, Hare’s
laboratory became the training ground for young scientists from paleontology,
geochemistry, archaeology, and biochemistry. In 1979, he published a landmark
methods paper on new techniques for measuring the left and right-handed amino
acids. With co-author and inventor Emanuel-Av from the Weitzmann Institute of
Science in Israel, they obtained a patent on their invention.
Ed
passed away in 2006. I spoke at the memorial service for him that was held at
the 7th Day Adventist Church in Takoma Park. He had retired in 1999 and died
seven years later on the day of the Geophysical Lab’s Centennial Celebration,
which also happened to be Tom Hoering's birthday. Ed Hare, as one of three
organic/biogeochemists at the Geophysical Lab, worked with Tom and me from 1977 until Tom’s death in 1995, when
George Cody arrived on the scene. Tom and I worked closely together over the
years, but Ed was more of an occasional colleague. At the old Lab, Ed's lab and
office were on the Second floor, whereas Tom and I were on the first floor.
The
memorial service brought up some of the central issues of Ed's Life.
First, to The Seventh Day Adventist Church and his family
and friends, Ed was known as Peter, which was his first name. As we listened to
the stories about Ed, it was even more clear that Ed as Peter was a completely
different person than the man we knew at the Geophysical Laboratory. The
Seventh Day Adventist Church is one of the fundamentalist religions: they don't
eat meat, their Sabbath is on Saturday, they don't drink alcohol (at least not
when others are noticing). They also believed the Earth and the world were
about 5,375 years old before Ed started his work in amino acid dating.
The
story came out again and again at the Memorial service that Ed Hare
changed the way this fundamental religion viewed the Creation.
At a party he was asked what was the oldest organic matter he had ever
analyzed. "25,000 years,” he said," but some rocks are hundreds of
millions of years old.” These facts blew the minds of the Adventists that day,
but as earth scientists we knew he’d analyzed rocks billions of years old, and
some of those bones were over a million years old. It was the dichotomy of
Ed/Peter's Life. Ed was sent to graduate school specifically to try to prove
that the Earth was only 5,375 years old, like the Bible claims. When he
reported his findings to the Church along with Irving Taylor and David von
Endt, the Church essentially excommunicated them for several years. Eventually,
the Church came around, with Ed and his colleagues writing a book for them on
rectifying Bible stories with Science.
At the
annual Geophysical Lab Christmas party, I think Ed often ate a piece of the
roast beef. Even in the Seventh Day Adventist Church, God is forgiving, and
when the roll is called in Heaven, Ed will be there. Near the end of his career
at the Lab, he was heard to emit a swear word or two; God is forgiving, and
when the roll is called up yonder, he'll be there. Let me describe his normal
working day at the Old Lab.
The door
to Ed's lab was always closed. You walked into his office, also the home of the
amino acid analyzers and gas chromatograph. Around a corner was another
instrument lab complete with whirring liquid chromatographs and ovens. Further
around the corner was a chemical prep lab littered with dirty glassware, old
samples, various science trash, and a fume hood that never worked. In an
interior room entered through a swinging door, was the acid room. Fixtures
corroded to a fine, peppery green, acid stained floors, cabinets, windows, and
the proverbial fume hood that did not work. Instruments that entered this room
never came out unless they were sopping with acid and completely destroyed. It
was science the old way.
Layer
onto this scene the people. When you opened Ed's door you could be assured that
someone, typically a visiting scientist, would be standing at one of the
machines. Ed had a complete spectrum of people from the biggest nuts of the day
to the most prestigious and serious scientists. Often, the scientists/students
were from the Church. Ed continued quietly to interface church and science as a
professor at the Adventist Columbia Union College in Takoma Park. Once a
student or visitor came, they always returned. The legacy of people who lined
up to use Ed's one of a kind instruments is enormous. When we planned his
retirement festschrift, an argument ensued as to whether we should invite his
direct legacy or amino acid scientists with no regard to connection. It turned
out that there were no amino acid scientists who did not originate in some
fashion from Ed Hare.
As the Memorial
service went on, with accolades heaped on Ed, I could not help thinking about
how we at the Lab and his close colleagues thought of him in the last 10 years
or so of his career. Ed had turned into a difficult man. The timing was hard to
pin down. Was it a difficult postdoc that he had? Was it the move to the New
Building? Was it the requirement to write grants? Was it the death of his old
Professor? Was something happening at home? Was he depressed or having
complications from medication? We could not pin down the problem.
Time
after time, Tom and I would try to start a project with Ed, only to have it stall
at the start, or halt in the middle, or putter out at the end. Ed was unable to
write scientific papers, and his presentations were growing embarrassing. I
recall his last presentation to the Visiting committee, when he appeared with
some yellowed overheads, and talked about work he'd done twenty years before.
In conversation, Ed had a way of looking off to the distance after about 5
minutes; in the lab, he could get angry and yell at a student.
So we
grumbled. I did my work with my friend Noreen Tuross. Ed's lab was propped up by
visiting scientist Glenn Goodfriend. When Ed retired, he simply walked out of
the lab leaving fifty years of papers and samples untouched. I was tasked with the
chore of cleaning out his scientific life. Ed never threw away anything, nor
did he open most of his mail. I found some very interesting unopened correspondence,
but threw out an enormous amount of junk mail. The signs were all there, but we
were not able to read them.
Within 6
months of his retirement, Ed was no longer able to hide his problems. It was
determined that he had an advanced stage of Parkinson's disease, without the
shaking. His wife Patti took over. She was on a mission to save her Peter from
the ravages of this disease. They moved from their new home in California to a
retirement community in Florida. His wife was a true saint throughout this
time. Ed never recovered, and also had Lyme disease on top of Parkinson’s.
After his death, it was determined that he had a form of dementia somewhere in
the middle of Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. He is gone; the roll will be called
up yonder, and Ed will be there.
At the
service we heard only good things. Peter (Ed) was a trumpet player; he loved
basketball and baseball; he took his grandchildren to fast food restaurants; he
gave science lectures to the Church and changed their opinions about the age of
the Earth and the Creation. There was little mention of how the disease had
affected him, but it was in our minds, those of us who worked with him daily.
Ed Hare
was a great scientist. He revolutionized paleontology by enabling
people to date fossils. He trained an army of
geochemists, archaeologists,
stratigraphers, and organic geochemists. At the Lab, he
was both Yin and
Yang. The memories of Ed at the Lab are dimmed, only a
handful of people knowing who he was and what he accomplished. His last years
did not help him. None of us understood what he was going through.
As Type
A people, we reward those scientists who continue "sharp as a tack"
at the office every day until they die. We tend to judge older scientists with
the eyes of youth--why aren't they on the same funding track as I am? Their
labs are old fashioned, we really need their space. I'll never get old, and if
I do, I'll make way for younger folks. And then, there you are. Looking
retirement, or possible disability in the face, and what do you decide? What
can I learn from Ed's story? A host of things: tolerance, learning not to judge
without knowing all the facts, acceptance that old age isn't always Golden.
Chris Hadidiacos, Bob Hazen, and Margie (either Imlay or Hazen?), circa 1976 |
11.4 Text Box Marjorie Evelyn
Imlay: Secretary and Assitant to the Director 1955-2008
If you are
lucky enough, you will have had a friend like Marjorie Imlay some time in your
life--a friend who was there to listen, to offer some advice, but also one who
was willing to leave you alone when you needed that. A friend who always had a
funny phrase or joke to pick you up when you needed it most. As a young woman,
Margie was a curly headed blonde with the sparkling blue eyes, a big bust, and flashy
jewelry. She regaled me with stories of pouring vodka tonics, flirting with the
Geophysical Laboratory scientists, and joking with the women. For me, working
at the Geophysical Lab, I relied on going to her office, often as not, to speak
to Marge as a voice of reality and common sense.
Margie had a wonderful life. She did
pretty much what she wanted. Margie enrolled in secretarial school and
worked in various government and business offices in the DC area just after
graduating from Roosevelt high school in Washington, DC. She started work at
the Lab in her early twenties. Phil Abelson hired her in 1955 for the princely
sum of $3,200 per year. Early on Margie was breadwinner for her family after her
father’s sudden early death. She sometimes worked
three jobs at once to pay the bills. She embraced the hard work and enjoyed the
experiences.
In the early 1960s, she scraped
up enough money to buy an old MG convertible with holes in the roof that served
as her early “wheels.” Imagine the young blonde zipping around DC, for sure a
heartthrob to many a young lab postdoc during that time. She was very popular, but never married, and dated some
very interesting men, even some GL people that she kept a careful secret! I
never learned who they were. Margie claimed, when pressed, that everyone she
dated seriously proposed marriage, but she never accepted that we know of!
When I met
Margie in 1977, she served as the head secretary for the Lab and was the most
skilled typist and stenographer. She worked in the back office surrounded by
knickknacks on her desk that were mementos of her family: her sister, her
mother, and her aunt. Margie was imperious to me in those early days: she spoke
with authority, always carried a large purse bulging with important papers, and
a wallet stuffed with cash. Margie typed my first GL manuscript and let me know
in no uncertain terms that I was to make sure my tables were in final format
before she spent the time typing them! When I was offered a staff position at
the Lab, Margie quickly became my ally, letting me in on things that I needed
to know to get by in an all male world.
Margie’s work life was a welcome escape
from her family’s health issues. She progressed from
secretary to head secretary to assistant to the Director after the death of
Dave Singer in 1986. Margie’s stock in the Geophysical Lab rose substantially
during this time, and she not only did the bidding of the director, but also
held together the postdocs, students, and other young people as they came
through. Margie’s office served as a place where you could let the Director
know informally “through the back door” how things were going, if you had any
problems, or if you had great successes. There were weeks that I avoided going
over to see her, because I knew it would be hours before we would be finished
with all the things that needed to be said.
As
Assistant to the Director, Margie held responsibility for appointment letters,
keeping records on scientists, arranging for hiring and performance reviews,
and organizing social functions. For over twenty years, she served as
Unofficial Photographer. For Directors Hat Yoder, Charlie Prewitt, and Wes
Huntress she served as their Eye and Ear on the day-to-day workings of the Lab.
These men trusted her judgment and wisdom, often asking her opinion on issues with which they struggled. She had many stories about people at the Lab - some very
funny and some tragic.
At the
age of 75, Margie retired. Her blonde hair was thinner, her bust even larger,
and she still wore great costume jewelry, but she looked tired. She had spent 5
months working with her new boss, Rus Hemley, and had started to train her
replacement. With typical Margie stealth, she eschewed a big retirement party,
preferring to avoid the spotlight. Avoiding the spotlight was one of Margie’s
hallmarks. A woman who served to support people, who provided a major source of
advice and support for my own career and family life--she was a person who
helped others before herself. Margie died suddenly in 2008, only nine months after her
retirement. Complications from a blood clot ended the life of a friend,
colleague, and one of the Lab’s most colorful characters.
Campus cherry blossoms, 2018 |
The Postdoc Experience at the Geophysical Lab
When a student in the field of
science gets her/his PhD, it is customary for the newly minted Dr. to work for
another two to four years as a semi-autonomous to fully independent researcher
in another person’s laboratory. The position is comparable in some sense to a
medical residency, except that postdocs are not required to work excessive
80-hour weeks. They may choose to work as long and hard as they wish, but that
generally depends on how passionate they are about their work, the work
environment, and the competition in their specific field for a permanent
position.
A postdoc will either work on a project of
her/his choice usually as a fellow, or as part of a grant-funded project in
which the basic research will be outlined by a senior researcher. Because
postdocs no longer need to take classes or pass exams, they can make swift
progress with new research. At the same time, they are expected to mentor
junior scientific staff in the lab and write up their dissertation work for
publication. With the right relationship, a postdoc can amass a lot of data,
that can be published in the early years when they’re getting their own labs
established. With the wrong relationship, a postdoc can feel like an indentured
servant, possibly told to work overtime without compensation. In some
circumstances, postdocs can be asked to do a lot of non-research tasks like
excessive teaching, grant writing, or conference organizing. At the Geophysical
Lab, the great majority loved their time as a postdoc because they were given
intellectual freedom and stimulation.
One of the best things that the
Geophysical Laboratory, in fact the Carnegie Institution as a whole, spends its
endowment on is funding postdoctoral fellowships, which attract some of the
best young minds from around the world. It was not uncommon for a promising
postdoc to be offered a position at the Laboratory when there was an opening. I
started my career this way, along with current Geophysical Lab staff members
Doug Rumble, Yingwei Fei, Tim Strobel, Alex Goncherov, and Bob Hazen. As a
staff scientist at the Lab, I mentored many postdocs, many of whom I’ve written
about later in the memoir (e.g., Mat Wooller,
Diane O’Brien, Dave Baker, Seth Newsome, Dominic Papineau, Sue Ziegler, Carmen
Aguilar). Each postdoc has her/his own story—most of which were unique—and many
of who went on to highly successful careers in academia, government, and
private industry.
Geophysical Lab postdoctoral
applicants wrote 2-3 page proposals describing their ideas for a one or two
year research project. Mine wasn’t particularly good, and I never carried out
the work I proposed. When I arrived at the Lab from a fully equipped biology
facility in Texas, I landed in an earth science focused environment without the
equipment I really needed. Usually for most Geophysical Lab fellows, this was
not the case. The Geophysical Laboratory has mass spectrometers, high-pressure
apparatuses, and sophisticated microscopes, all available to any postdoc who
might want to use them—for free. Once I obtained some used instrumentation from
DTM, I was ready to go. With a clean slate, open doors, and plenty of senior
scientists to mentor you, a postdoc at the Geophysical Lab is akin to a kid in
a candy store for someone with a science bug.
Frequently, postdocs brought
innovation to the otherwise quiet Laboratory. They had youthful energy, new
ideas, were fearless. They kept the Lab alive and vital. I’ve mentioned Steve
Macko’s nitrogen isotope innovations; Shuhei Ono revamped the sulfur isotope
methodology to a high level; Francis McCubbin brought petrology into relevance
in astrobiology; Sarah Stewart changed the way we do of high pressure experiments;
Sung Kyun Lee merged Bjorn Mysen’s petrology studies with George Cody’s NMR
expertise; Noreen Tuross infused anthropology with medicine; Matt McCarthy kept
my “feet” in ocean sciences; Shiv Sharma brought his expertise in Raman
spectroscopy. These are just a few examples of the impact postdocs have had on
Geophysical Lab’s scientific direction.
Women started being hired as
postdocs and Predoctoral fellows in the 1960s, although there were very few.
Once we came, there were relationships, followed by marriages. It was common
for single women to find another postdoc whom she was attracted to,
particularly if they shared an office or lab space. Paul Koch, now Dean of
Science at UC Santa Cruz, was a postdoc with me who came up with the Gerbil
Theory. When placed in a small cage (i.e., the postdoc office), gerbils will
mate (i.e. people will pair up). I watched it happen many times, as scientists
can be socially introverted. Or, great minds think alike. We’ve had some
wonderful, enduring pairs over the years.
When Paul Koch arrived at the old
Geophysical Lab on Upton St. from the University of Michigan, he was young and
green. His project was to analyze carbon and oxygen isotopes from bones and
teeth from various animals. He was a contemporary of Zach Sharp’s but did not
have the lab skills Zach had. He’d never been in the field, didn’t own a car or
truck, and seemed puzzled about how to carry out life. His first field trip was
with Kaye Behrensmeyer from the Smithsonian to go to Kenya to collect plants and
bones as part of her work on taphonomy, the study of what happens to animal
carcasses after death. My other postdoc David Velinsky and I took him in the
lab and packed his luggage with sampling gear that Paul would need. The trip
was a success, and he returned with enough samples for a publication. Within a
couple of years, Paul got a loan and bought a truck, wrote an NSF grant and got
it funded, then published a paper in Science.
The postdoc was just the time he needed to figure things out. Dave Velinsky, a
talented experimentalist and field person now leading a department at Drexel
University, fine-tuned his professional skills in speaking and writing while a
postdoc. It can be a transformative time for many.
The Lab also hosted postdocs from
around the world. The first from communist China and the USSR came to the Lab
in the late 1980s. They were often “handled” by older, senior government
officials, who made sure they didn’t defect. Postdocs from Europe typically
hung out with each other after work, smoking cigarettes, drinking wine, and
talking until the early morning hours. Japanese postdocs (e.g., Taki Yagi,
Hikaru Yabuta, Shohei Ohara) had to get accustomed to the English language,
completely new customs, and a different way of relating to senior scientists.
It was common for international postdocs to come in quiet and leave as strong,
independent, English speaking forces that turned out to be leaders when they
returned to their home countries.
Doug Rumble usually had one postdoc
at a time—and they were first rate. They often came from Harvard or another
distinguished university. [Page Chamberlain is mentioned in a subsequent
chapter.] Zachary Sharp impressed everyone at Carnegie with his early zip and
enthusiasm. Zach, a slight curly haired fellow with an intense manner, invented
a laser-based system for analyzing oxygen isotopes in rocks when he was a
postdoc. Tom Hoering gave him some practical advice; I served as a sounding
board for his ideas and results. Sharp fairly flew up and down the stairs,
particularly when his new method worked. He remains, even today, a person who
loves new techniques and is a master of his lab at the Univ. of New Mexico.
James Farquhar took a different
path. He spent much of his time thinking about what he could do, rather than
what he did do. His ideas diverged from the confines of his dissertation
research. George Cody and I listened to him talk for hours about subjects far
from what he thought he’d be doing at the Carnegie. James went on to a second
postdoc at UC San Diego, where he had his big chance to break into new
territory. He discovered unusual sulfur isotope patterns in Precambrian rocks,
billions of years old that led to the realization that sulfur isotopes could
tell us when the Earth’s atmosphere became oxygenated. He’s come full circle,
purchasing a large format mass spectrometer identical to the one Doug Rumble
has been working on for the past decade.
Ed Young, another of Doug’s
postdocs, has the world’s first large format mass spectrometer at UCLA and is
still working with Doug. The two are opposites in many ways—Ed has a fastidious
office and laboratory. He is detail oriented, sharply dressed each day, and
driven. Doug’s office is cluttered, his lab holds a dozen or more broken pumps,
but he somehow manages to produce sound data. It’s very much a father-son type
science relationship that goes back and forth like many regular father-son
relationships do when the son is fully grown.
The Geophysical Lab also hired some
non-traditional postdocs who kept unusual hours, drove flashy cars, left
precipitously, had affairs with the wrong people, or even wrote their own
letters of recommendation. That happened rarely, maybe once every 4-5 years,
but formed the stuff of lore for the Laboratory. One “enterprising” postdoc did
not get along with Director Hat Yoder. It took a couple of weeks for Yoder to
notice that he was no longer receiving any mail—it had been forwarded by the
enterprising postdoc to a fictitious address!
James Scott fit the bill of a
non-traditional postdoc, but in a good way. He was a towering, heavyset African
American from Ken Nealson’s lab at the Univ. of Wisconsin. I had met James
during visits to see Ken, and we had discussed his coming to the Lab for a
postdoc. During James’ interview, he brought over 100 plastic overhead slides
that slipped off the table when he was giving his presentation, falling in a
jumble on the floor. It had to be one of the worst talks we’d ever seen. But,
he had remarkable conversations with everyone during one on one interviews. We
hired him immediately. James continued to impress us, but he followed a
different path—a brilliant man but with little practical sense. Everyone loved
him.
James’ first field trip was to Lake
Tanganyika in Africa. He needed to obtain a visa from the Tanzanian government
in downtown DC. He spent a couple of days sitting in the waiting room for an
appointment, but was never called. When he told us this story, we said, “Oh,
you need to ask if you could “expedite” your visa with a cash contribution!” He
did, and after handing over $20, he had his visa in about 30 minutes. On the
way to Lake Tanganyika, he lost his wallet and credit cards—or they were
stolen. Penniless, he called collect and begged for cash. I wired him $1,000 to
the local telegraph office, which he picked up in small bills that filled a
backpack. We called this adventure “James—Out of Africa.” James always lived
this way lurching from calamity to personal challenge. Sadly, he passed away
from a massive heart attack during his fourth year as an Assistant Professor at
Dartmouth.
Although postdocs have little
primary responsibility for running a lab, they have the heavy burden of finding
a permanent position in a short time frame. In the ‘70s and ‘80s when
universities were expanding, Geophysical Lab postdocs were snapped up quickly.
At that time, hiring women in interdisciplinary fields wasn’t common, so I
suffered many rejections. Now, the opposite is true—women have a slight edge
and are hired very quickly, whereas men need more exposure to get noticed. We
spent a lot of time going over interview strategies, cover letters, CVs, and
practice talks. Most staff members were essentially teachers in a scientific
“finishing school.” We remain very proud of our early career scientists.
Mentoring them remains one of the most rewarding aspects of my career. Every
year at the American Geophysical Union conference in San Francisco, former
postdocs join Carnegie staff members in celebrating the gift and privilege of
doing discovery based scientific research.
Hi Dear,
ReplyDeleteI Like Your Blog Very Much. I see Daily Your Blog, is A Very Useful For me.
You can also Find Liquid petroleum We are providing wide range of plastic testing equipments, Liquid petroleum, gradient column, Oscillation U-tube and Densimeter for plastic in USA & Italian @ ortellitechnologies.com.
Visit Now:- http://www.ortellitechnologies.com/about-mvs2pro-
Very impressive article! The blog is highly informative and has answered all my questions.
ReplyDeleteTo introduce about our company and the activities, B2B contactlist
is a database provider that helps you to boost your sales & grow your business through well-build Laboratory director mailing lists.
Really I enjoy your site with effective and useful information. It is included very nice post with a lot of our resources.thanks for share. i enjoy this post. refrigerated blood bank centrifuge
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing such a useful blog.
ReplyDeleteseismic sensor supplier
geophysical vibrator