Pursuing a Passion and Lost Keys

As a graduate student in 1970 I was excited to attend my first GRC, Chemistry and Physics of Solids, at the Holderness School in Holderness, New Hampshire. The conference was attended by many accomplished scientists whose names I knew from papers and group discussions. I must admit I felt rather ignorant, but everyone made me feel welcome. I even got to play in the poker game with the stars (I lost). The amount of time permitted to discuss what people were doing as of yesterday, with no distractions save some afternoon swimming, was incredible.

I have been attending GRCs ever since–having been to more than thirty by now. They are the only meetings where there is time to form and discuss ideas–some crazy, some not so crazy. I love the mix of students, young faculty, and old-timers like myself. A meeting highlight is always the evening poster sessions, which are small enough to discuss and take in all the work–mostly unpublished and sometimes still “raw.” It is hard to find other conferences that have the same feeling of dynamism–probing and advancing the frontiers of one’s own field or related fields. I always get home feeling rather exhausted from so many late nights and a little too much wine.

One summer I was invited to speak at three Gordon Conferences in New Hampshire. Including a week of vacation, my family spend a whole month at Squam Lake. What a summer! I cannot imagine finding it worthwhile to attend three conferences in a month if they were not Gordon Conferences, summer or otherwise. The ideas at the Gordon Conferences were just popping: it was very exciting. I was working at AT&T Bell Laboratories then, and, even though Bell was a terrific environment for building collaborations, I wanted to stay longer in New Hampshire to keep learning from and talking about results and ideas with such an accomplished and diverse set of scientists.

I have many memories of the fun and the little misadventures we had as well. One summer I drove a group to a lake about fifteen miles from the conference site for an afternoon of swimming and talking. I put the car keys in the pocket of my swimming trunks, and–you guessed it–they fell out while swimming and were lost. We all eventually got back to the conference, but I had to wait two days to get a new key for the car. On another occasion I took a group hiking in the mountains and got the group lost. We all got back after dinner rather tired and hungry. The staff took pity on us and brought us leftovers to eat, so it all worked out in the end. Somehow recalling these and many other adventures still tickles me. These events as well as the science have helped me make many friends.

Even now, I cannot recall other times in my career when the number of ideas discussed or inspired were so many in such a short period. I always had plenty of new things to try in the lab when I returned home from Gordon Conferences.

I am not particularly fond of committees, but because I profited so much from the conferences themselves, I happily agreed to serve on GRC’s Selection and Scheduling Committee. There I met scientists from disciplines I knew nothing about. They were inter-esting people and great fun to work with. In 1994 I was fortunate enough to be elected to the board of trustees, and I was privileged to serve as chair in 1997. The trustees are indeed a wonderful group–all talented scientists who feel that Gordon Conferences were very important to their careers and fields. The combined experience and wisdom of the group is impressive. Of course, our meetings were always held in interesting places, so we all enjoyed ourselves immensely.

If Gordon Conferences did not exist, we would have to invent them. They are meetings for scientists, run by scientists, doing what they like best–pursuing their passions with similarly minded scientists. This philosophy has clearly endured. Gordon Conferences are now held around the world and are sometimes imitated by other organizations. Because of volunteer scientists who listen and have assembled a superb staff at the helm, GRC is dynamic and continually evolves to meet the needs of the scientific communities it serves. On the occasion of the seventy-fifth anniversary of GRC’s founding, I wish us all continued success. Together we will always have a bright future.