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| (L-R): Garret Huntress, Marilyn, and Doug Rumble, fancy dress party 2006 |
“Do you like good sushi?” he would ask. Who doesn’t like
good sushi? Washington DC abounds with great places to sample sushi from small,
packed classic places to Avant-garde restaurants with the latest trends in fine
Japanese dining. Doug Rumble knew them all. It became his trademark—the
restaurant critic--at the Geophysical Lab for over 45 years.
He and I worked together for 35.5 years sharing laboratory
space that entire time. It wasn’t always easy sharing lab space with someone
that had almost completely different sensibilities about what constitutes an
efficient lab space—but we made it work—most likely because at a very basic
human level we worked to understand each other. Douglas Rumble III and I
recently chatted over Zoom comparing our lives now on the other side of the
continent.
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| Marilyn's lab in foreground; Doug's in background, 2008 |
Doug retired at the end of 2019, as the Geophysical
Laboratory merged with DTM, which happened quietly and slowly as fall
progressed. It was time. Doug’s 10 years older than I am, and I’m at the age
where I plan to retire in a few short months. We’ve always talked about this
time and what we’d do once it arrived. Yesterday, in his new home surrounded by
Ponderosa pines and sitting next to his wife, Doug waxed poetic about the
geology of Northern Arizona. They’d just completed a hike that took them to a
deserted outcrop impacted by recent volcanic activity. If they’d been in
Washington, DC, they’d have been stuck in their house with nowhere to go.
When I arrived at the Geophysical Laboratory in 1977, I came
from relatively humble beginnings. Nowadays, Penn State and the University of
Texas are powerhouse public schools. Then, both schools were very popular
locally with big football teams and loyal alumni. Neither belonged to the Ivy
League. The majority of staff members at the Lab were graduates of Harvard,
Yale, Caltech, University of Chicago, or Johns Hopkins. Doug was a graduate of
Columbia and Harvard, sporting the Harvard flag on the inside of his office
door. Ve-ri-tas or Latin for “Truth” was emblazoned on its center.
Although it was often intimidating for me to join the ranks
of my colleagues then, I learned to pay attention to my own work and what I
knew rather than worry about how others viewed me. Doug and I shared the back
laboratory in Tom Hoering’s suite of old chemistry labs when I was a starting
postdoc. I worked silently inside my white, plywood transfer “hood” which
allowed me to grow sterile cultures of microorganisms alongside of Doug’s
handmade glass and metal vacuum line. He was a relatively new staff member, a
permanent position given to promising young scientists and had yet to get his
own lab. At that time, Doug was primarily a field geologist with a talent in
geochemistry, but was learning the stable isotope trade. Although he had a few
years experience on me, we were both under the mentorship of Tom Hoering at
that time.
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| Shuhei Ono, Marilyn, Doug--new Sulfur mass spec |
I’ve already written about many of the hare-brained things I
did when I first started as a stable isotope biogeochemist. Here’s one of my
favorite stories about Doug. He decided he needed to change the oil in the
vacuum pump that was the workhorse for making sure his oxygen isotope analyses
of rocks worked without issue. The pump on his ‘line’ was one of the larger
ones, attached to a tenuous glass tube with a stout rubber hose. Doug had
wrestled the hose off the pump and dragged it to the center of the lab. He
lifted it onto one of the Carnegie’s ancient wooden stools, found a 1-liter
beaker, and started to remove the oil cap and drain the dirty oil.
“Darn!” he said, as I heard the clunk of the cap hit the
bottom of the beaker. The slimy cap had slipped from his fingers landing in the
sludgy oil. I watched as the oil poured out quickly, rapidly reaching the top
of the beaker.
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| Ed Young and Doug, laser vacuum line, circa1995 |
“What am I going to do?” he exclaimed, as the oil starting
spilling onto the linoleum floor. I grabbed the lab’s trashcan, rushed it over
under the oil spout, and saved the day. The old trashcan was a mess, but not
nearly the mess that would have happened should that extra liter and a half of
oil poured out on the floor. Hoering would have never let him forget it.
“Thanks for that,” said a relieved Doug. I felt good. Even
though this is a trivial action, I’d thought fast and helped my colleague. We
began to develop a professional relationship.
I knew nothing about metamorphic rocks; he knew nothing about enzymes
and photosynthesis. It didn’t take long for us to talk over problems we were
having with mass spectrometers and share our analytical isotope triumphs when
we had them. When I was appointed as a staff member two years later, Doug was
as happy and proud of me as any.
Together we wrote a proposal to the National Science
Foundation for a new mass spectrometer that was to be built by the Nuclide
Corp. in State College, PA. It was the first of its kind with a metal inlet
system, isotope collectors that could be individually adjusted, and an upgraded
vacuum system. The proposal was funded and we shared in the maintenance,
financing, and operation of this instrument for almost 15 years from 1982 to
1996. I spent time in his laboratory analyzing oxygen isotopes of manganese
oxides. We shared the mentoring of many postdocs. Mutual respect and friendship
followed.
While Doug was an extremely driven, focused scientist, he
had other interests. Over the years, he obsessed over ocean kayaking, Paris,
Japan, restaurants, cooking, Dartmouth, bird watching, fine wines, China, opera, and
river sculling. His family was front and
center in his life, and his bulletin board outside his office was covered with
their pictures. Every summer Doug and his wife Karen would head up to Lyme, New
Hampshire, where they rented a cabin on a lake populated by loons. Those of us
remaining in sweltering DC dealing with electrical outages were often jealous
of his peaceful serene summers.
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| Brendan O'Connor, high school intern mixing Doug a drink, Karen in background, 2008 |
Scientifically, his research themes expanded from
metamorphic rocks and fluid flow to graphite to meteorites to sulfur isotopes
to methane isotopes. His last work was pioneering the development and use of
the large format mass spectrometer known as Panorama. Doug is an exacting
writer and a gifted speaker, who turns on his Southern accent when he gets
excited about a topic.
When either of us experienced personal challenges, the other
was there offering a chicken casserole, an understanding ear, and some sage
advice. While I pick up on social cues with emotional intelligence, Doug has a
broader philosophical approach to life. We had discussed years ago that when
the time had come for either of us to retire, we’d let each other know.
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| Ken Rumble, son, roasting Doug at 70th birthday party |
Before coming west to the University of California, our
joint lab space was essentially split in half. My side included instruments
that were fully automated, high throughput machines that operated 24/7/365. I
had high school kids making measurements. We played loud music, swore, and
carried out pranks. Doug’s half was aging, complicated, and often on standby
after two decades of producing the best quality isotope data of its kind in the
world. After I left for a new life in California, he missed me. Fortunately for
me, we’ve kept in close touch.
Together we’ve shared five isotope ratio mass spectrometers
and remain good friends to this day. To those who aren’t familiar with these
instruments, it’s quite a fete to work together—and remain friends--keeping
equipment in top shape.
Tom Hoering, who passed away in 1995, had trained us well.
“Show it who’s boss,” he’d taught us. And we did.
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