From Vacation to Vocation: Fifty Years with the Gordon Conferences

New Years Day 1947 my wife Irene and I were having dinner with Dr. and Mrs. George Parks, when he asked, “How would you like to vacation in the mountains of New Hampshire for ten weeks this summer, all expenses paid?” At that time I was a young chemistry instructor at Rhode Island State College (renamed University of Rhode Island in 1951) and Irene was secretary to Dr. Parks who was a full professor. He presented his offer after Dr. George Calingaert of Ethyl Corporation had written a letter asking him to direct the Gibson Island Research Conferences during the summer of 1947. The conferences’ founder, Dr. Neil Gordon, had resigned the year before. Irene and I hesitated until Parks told us he would not take the job unless we agreed. It was decided: Irene became the secretary and treasurer, and I assisted wherever necessary the first summer and in 1948 became assistant to the director during the summer sessions.

Not only had Gordon resigned in 1946, but the Gibson Island Research Conferences had also outgrown their meeting facilities. Led by Dr. Calingaert, a management committee of the American Association for the Advancement of Science set a foundation for the conferences that maintained their success and sought a new meeting site. The committee also included Drs. Kenneth Hickman, Lawrence Flett, Sereck Fox, Dean Burke, and A. Marshall. On their way back from an unfruitful visit to Dartmouth College (there were too many other summer activities on campus), they passed by Colby Junior College (renamed Colby-Sawyer College in 1975) and stopped to talk to its president, H. Leslie Sawyer. Colby Junior was a perfect fit: it was cool, secluded, and otherwise closed during the summer. As the conferences were no longer on Gibson Island, they were temporarily renamed the Chemical Research Conferences in 1947 until they became the Gordon Research Conferences in 1948 and were incorporated in 1956. These arrangements kept the conferences going and laid the groundwork for their growth.

In the early years either Dr. Parks or I would open the meeting on Monday morning. There was only one conference a week then, and my job was to keep the operation moving. Initially I would run the slide projector, deal with the attendees, and handle on-site logistics. I also helped Irene in the office whenever I could, since keeping the financial records in order was a big job. In addition, I kept statistics on the conferences, including the number of participants and their affiliations with academia, government, or industry. In the 1940s conferees came largely from industrial research labs, partly because chemical, petroleum, and pharmaceutical firms sponsored the conferences and partly because that was where a lot of leading-edge science was going on. By the mid-1950s the government was sponsoring more scientific work, and participation by academics in the Gordon Conferences increased rapidly.

Each conference always had lectures and discussion. The discussion was very important; in fact, we had monitors that reported on the amount of discussion (and even timed it). A. Marshall of General Electric was the driving force behind creating the Selection and Scheduling Committee in 1958 to review the previous year’s conferences and applications for new conferences. The group met in October, sometimes for two days, and went through stacks of monitors’ reports. This ensured the quality of the conferences: if a conference did not do well or if there was very little discussion, the committee did not hesitate to terminate it. Conferences also monitored themselves. If a conferee was observed to be merely taking notes and not contributing to the discussion, he or she might not be accepted the next time the conference met. Attendees quickly learned they had to participate.

Scientific discussions are the most amazing thing about the conferences. People on the floor would argue with each other. In fact, they came to Gordon Conferences to challenge each other and defend their own science. If a conferee had evidence contrary to someone else’s presentation, pretty often they would have a slide of it in their back pocket. They were just waiting for the opportunity to present new findings. I recall Professor Herman Mark bringing equipment and supplies to present polymer experiments in front of the conferees.

The Gordon Conferences promoted a level playing field: we often had a mix of Nobel laureates and young scientists in attendance. Well-known chemists like Professor Paul Emmett (Catalysis Conference) were great with all the attendees. Dr. Emmett would sit under a tree every afternoon surrounded by attendees asking questions. This was source material for them. At all the conferences the attendees would spend their entire afternoon just exchanging ideas. Dr. Parks, Irene, and I enjoyed seeing those one-on-one relationships develop and did everything we could to foster them. Afternoon free time and meals at round tables were especially nourishing for discussion with table linens used to write on.

Part of what made my career with GRC special was getting to know the conferees firsthand. The afternoons were free, and so I would help the scientists find something to do, or I would take them down to the local swimming hole, where a lot of science was discussed over a raft. We knew 30 to 40 percent of the people attending on a first-name basis, so each conference was like a family reunion. We would register them and assign them a room, and then they would gather around in the yard. Dr. Parks and I would go out and talk with the conferees. In the evening we used to stand around on the campus road after dinner and answer their many questions. As the conferences expanded, I continued to make a point of visiting the conference chairs at all twelve sites to review their specific agendas.

When I became director in 1968, we adjusted the conference fees and put surplus money into a special fund. Each chairperson was then given five hundred dollars to use for speaker expenses, travel, or registration fees. Eventually each conference was getting three thousand dollars. In many cases government agencies would match a conference chair’s fund. We also applied for federal grants without an overhead charge for individual conferences and convinced chairs to write their own grant proposals, which GRC administered. Throughout the years GRC staff has always worked diligently to assure the successful operation of the conferences.

Even before I was made director, the conferences were branching out geographically. The first group to meet in California was the Polymers Conference in 1963. Professor Herman Mark had a large contingency of polymer scientists on the West Coast, one of whom suggested that the conference meet at the Miramar Hotel near Santa Barbara. It was isolated, on the oceanfront, and the grounds were lush and gorgeous. The conferees could go out, sit, and talk to colleagues under palm trees, surrounded by flower gardens with the two outdoor swimming pools–the site most conducive to lots of afternoon discussions.

We always worked to bring in scientists from around the world. Even during the cold war we included scientists from Eastern Bloc nations. Shortly before I retired, we held our first overseas conferences, which came about because some scientists wondered why they always had to come to the United States to go to a Gordon Conference. After the GRC trustees had a joint meeting with several European scientific organizations in Irsee, Germany, we scheduled the first overseas GRC in 1990 in Volterra, Italy and in 1991 in Irsee, Germany. In 1993 I toured England with trustee Dr. Leila Diamond to explore a new meeting site that opened at Queen’s College, Oxford, in 1996 after I retired.

The board of trustees has played a critical role over time by constantly questioning whether the organization was expanding too quickly, whether conferences were becoming less personal as they grew, and whether we were on the leading edge of new scientific fields. Throughout the years GRC has held to the ideals laid out by Gordon that scientific fields flourish only through good communication in an atmosphere of collegial challenge. Gordon’s zeal, vision, and understanding of the importance of communication brought the conferences into being, and I had the pleasure of watching them grow, expand, and mature. Unlike other organizations, however, I believe that the Gordon Research Conferences will continue to prosper and expand on the incredible enthusiasm and energy of the participants and their dedicated chairpersons.

Irene and I were most fortunate, thanks to Dr. Parks, to be a part of the Gordon Research Conferences “family” and to say we enjoyed our work would be an understatement. The early years required long hours and much trial and error, but they were still lots of fun. Many conferees became close, lifelong friends and we continue to cherish very much the fond memories and experiences we had over the years. Every conference, every conferee, every week, every year, was exciting and most rewarding: we were lucky.