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Autobiography of D. Wayne Goodman I was born on December 14, 1945, in Glen Allen, Mississippi, the second child of Henry Grady and Annie Belle Goodman (ne´e McDonald). I was very clever at birth in that of all the possibilities, I chose the very best parents available, not to mention durable. Both are very much alive at the ages of 89 and 90. The birth site was not a log cabin, however, my understanding is that with a platinum card and 30 000 points we could have upgraded to a log cabin. At the time of my birth, my parents, neither of whom graduated from high school, were sharecroppers in the Mississippi Delta where talent for growing and harvesting cotton was highly valued. Shortly thereafter, my father purchased his own small farm and supplemented his income as a rural mail carrier. At three years of age, a case of measles I had acquired turned into a life-threatening case of meningitis that led to the first of four major ear surgeries scattered over the next 40 years. Early in my childhood, my father’s decision to become a Baptist minister led him to complete his high school equivalency and essentially all the requirements for a college degree. His ministries (lasting a total of 62 years) during the next 15 years carried our family to several locations in Mississippi, the longest tenure of which was our stay in Leland, a wonderland town of some 5000 persons (known as the home of Jim Henson, the muppeteer) located in the heart of the Mississippi Delta. This became my hometown because it was here that I completed the last 8 of my first 12 years of school. I was most fortunate during these eight years to have many gifted teachers who taught me far more than they could have ever imagined, especially the belief that any of one’s dreams could be achieved through hard work. I had a latent interest in science and technology in what was an excellent school system, but my primary interest was sports of all types with a descending order of football, baseball, basketball, and track. Thanks to the coaching, athletic example, and mentoring of my older brother Garon, who was and remains my best friend, I had a considerable head-start over my peers. In any case, I spent enough time to do very well in my classes, but most of my time and attention was directed otherwise. It was indeed an idyllic environment within which to mature, particularly coupled with the national optimism for the future prevalent in the 50s and early 60s. One of my classmates during this entire period was Sandra (Sandy) Hewitt, now my wife of 43 years. We were paired in various ways, academically and otherwise, during junior high and high school but only began seriously dating during our senior year in high school. In the summers during junior high and high school I worked 60 hours a week at the local agricultural experimental station starting at $0.25 per hour, working my way up from hoeing in the fields to tractor driving. In fact, I offer a standing challenge to anyone out there interested in competing in a four-wheeltrailer-backing contest. Only Ernest, my friend and co-worker, who came from my reciprocal space and from whom I learned far more than he from me, could best me. After work, there was always baseball every summer. My life-long infatuation with flying began in junior high school and became serious during early high school. Enough so that I began to work for a grizzled old crop duster named Joe Call who agreed to give me flight lessons in exchange for work. Soon afterward I soloed a J-3 Piper Cub, then moved up
to Cessna’s, again trading work for flying time. I received my private pilot’s license during my senior year in high school for a total outlay of $5 out of pocket. Try doing that in this day and time. There are some great flying stories from my high school days, but those will have to wait. My flying interests led to my first majoring in aerospace engineering at Mississippi State University, entering their coop program in the summer of 1964 after graduation from high school. My plan, like that of many young people at the time, was to become a military pilot then an astronaut. Unfortunately for my flying career, but fortunately otherwise, the ongoing ear problem disqualified me from being either a military pilot or an astronaut. More fortunately, it ultimately led to my being disqualified from military service in general, thereby allowing me to miss my tour of Vietnam. In any case, by the end of summer school of my freshman year, I decided that I simply did not want to build airplanes that I could not fly and so changed my major to physics. In the fall of my freshman year I transitioned to a small liberal arts school, Mississippi College, motivated by a scholarship and also by the fact that it just happened to be the same school that my future wife, Sandy, was attending. During my freshman year a miserable physics professor in contrast to a fantastic chemistry professor, Professor Archie Germany, convinced me that chemistry was my calling. Those were the days when one could actually earn one’s way through college assuming he or she were willing to have three or more jobs. This I did, one being the manager of the school’s recreational room, that is, pool hall, on nights and weekends. I used my time “wisely”, winning the school billiards tournament three years running. The little extra time I had was spent flying “paying customers” on sight-seeing tours of the local area and, of course, watching the local submarine races with my wife-to-be. In the summers of my freshman through junior years, I worked on a road crew in rural Alabama learning, among many things, hard-knock philosophy 101 from some of the funniest and most interesting human beings I have ever met, most being convicts from the local penitentiary. What took four years for me, Sandy finished in three, at which time we were married in June, 1967. Sandy immediately began a long career of teaching high school Spanish and English as well as English as a second language. During my senior year I was first introduced to research through the honors program that gave me my first hands-on experience with scientific hardware, specifically an ancient polarograph. After graduating from Mississippi College with a major in chemistry, I accepted a NSF Fellowship to the University of Texas at Austin. Choosing physical chemistry as my specialty (inspired by undergraduate tutelage from Professor John Legg) and after interviewing the appropriate faculty, I chose Professor Michael J. S. Dewar as my faculty advisor. Although his group was comprised of some 30 persons, very few were graduate students. Most group members were postdocs from all parts of the globe, many from Eastern Europe. Dewar himself was, to say the very least, of a unique species, and most surely his group contained more less-than-normal persons than any group with which I have ever been associated. For a true hay-seed from Mississippi, this was an eye-popping, jaw-dropping experience. Let us say I came up to speed rather quickly. In any case, my time with Michael Dewar was exciting both scientifically and
10.1021/jp105967p 2010 American Chemical Society Published on Web 10/07/2010
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otherwise, not to mention truly amusing in many ways, including the bizarre. Together we produced a dozen or so papers correlating the photoelectron spectroscopy of various molecular species with their corresponding MINDO theoretical calculations. Of these I am very proud. There was lots of science, but I also found time to become pretty good at handball (thanks to my great friend Les Wade), rebuilding sports cars (two Bugeye Austin-Healey’s), and even at playing a decent (decent being relative, of course) game of golf. My vehicle of choice was a Triumph motorcycle, which, by the way, I still miss and threaten to reclaim. Flying was still at the top of my list, but unfortunately it was too expensive and was put on hold. After finishing my graduate work with Dewar I anticipated accepting a NATO fellowship to Germany where I planned to work with Gerhard Ertl, the future Nobelist, then in Munich. A complication, and a very pleasant one I must add, arose in that we found ourselves soon-to-be parents. After our son, Jac, was born in early 1974, I reconsidered traveling to Europe, decided to be a responsible person, and accepted an industrial research position at Exxon, Baton Rouge, Louisiana. I quickly realized, however, that my destiny was to spend some time in Europe rather than be a corporate researcher. Accordingly, after only five months as an industrial chemist and with the encouragement of many friends and colleagues at Exxon, Baton Rouge, I assumed a NATO postdoctoral fellowship in Darmstadt, Germany. After a very enjoyable and enlightening year in Darmstadt, we returned to the U.S. where I assumed a NRC postdoctoral position at the National Bureau of Standards (now NIST) under the guidance of John Yates and the late Ted Madey. This decision and subsequent adventure turned out to be one of the most extraordinarily lucky events in my life. These two gentlemen took in a young, inexperienced, gas-phase spectroscopist and taught me how to ply the surface science trade. More importantly, John and Ted were true epitomes of a research mentor, both in showing me the road rules of surface science and in serving as personal and scientific models to emulate. I am deeply indebted to these two quintessential scientists and exceptionally distinguished gentlemen for their patience and diligence in taking this green Mississippi boy and continually pushing him toward the light. During this two-year postdoctoral period and my subsequent two years as a permanent staff scientist at NBS, we individually and collectively produced some excellent science. One study in particular, the very first relating the kinetics of the methanation reaction on single-crystal nickel surfaces with the corresponding data for supported nickel catalysts on a site-persite basis, turned out to be one of the most highly cited papers on each of our publication lists. This paper, I should add, included as a coauthor, in addition to John and Ted, my good friend and colleague at that time, Richard (Dick) Kelley, now at DOE Germantown. There were many other memorable studies with a number of co-workers, including several important ones coauthored with the late J. M. (Mike) White, who generously gave the NBS a day of his time while serving as a rotator at the NSF. The memories of Mike and I working and laughing together during his visits are indelible and unsurpassed. It simply does not get any better than those four years, working and playing with such good friends and collaborators. While at the NBS I resumed flying, but with a twist. The twist was construction of a motorized hang glider (misnamed Easyriser), one of the very first built from a kit in the world. I partnered with two other NRC Fellows, both physicists, to purchase and build what turned out to be a complete deathtrap.
Since I was the only pilot of the lot, I was “chosen” to make the first flights. Since this was a foot-launched projectile armed with a 150 dB chainsaw motor, piloting entailed stopping up one’s ears with cotton and running with a 150 pound object without clenching one’s teethsthis would activate the kill switch of the motor. Needless to say, before learning how to fly it, we learned more how not to. I still have many scars to attest to the unsuccessful attempts. Finally, after a number of reports of fatalities in this machine, we retired it and ourselves from service. Although my time at the NBS was remarkably enjoyable and productive, I decided to start my own DOE program at Sandia National Laboratories after accepting their offer in 1980. At this point I should thank my good friend Jack Houston, who as a guest worker from Sandia to the NBS at that time, served as a matchmaker between myself and Sandia. Thereafter followed eight fantastic years with many highlights, both scientific and personal. The close cooperation among the surface science staff, which included Jack Houston, Bill Rogers, Mike Knotek, Gary Kellogg, Peter Feibelman, Bob Rye, and many others, constituted one of the happiest periods of my life. There was considerable recreation both scientific and otherwise, the latter of which included a lot of skiing, at which, I admit, I was known for skiing faster than my brain and particularly for my catastrophic crashes. The tennis-at-lunch with Jack Houston, et al., was more than a little entertaining, and, incidentally, I did beat Houston more times than he’ll admit. There also was the annual, not-to-be-missed New Year’s Day staff versus technicians football game. The staff, by the way, never won, but we stand by our claim that we did. During this period I was most fortunate to have the first group of many-to-follow, excellent postdocs, the very first being Chuck Peden, now at PNNL. Chuck was followed by Paul Berlowitz, now at Exxon, and Allen Sault, who remained at Sandia as a staff scientist. There also were many guest workers including my professional-life-long friends Charlie Campbell, John Yates, Mike White, Chuck Mims, and Galen Fisher. Each visitor received gratis the use of my personal automobile, specifically “the Green Mist”, an ancient Pinto retained especially for my distinguished guests. The “Mist”, just one minor rear-end collision away from a blazing inferno, became a legend in its own time for undependability. Then again, the guests selfadmittedly received exactly what they paid for. To say the least, a fun time was had by all and, as a byproduct, we produced some excellent science. There are many anecdotes from this period worthy of publication, some best covered with brown paper perhaps, a large fraction of which could better be used for extortion than entertainment. In 1988 I accepted a full professorship at Texas A&M University in the Department of Chemistry. I decided to venture into academics for no particular good reason other than the realization that science is clearly most efficiently carried out in an academic setting, that is, graduate students work much more cheaply than national lab technicians and postdocs. Of course, you do have additional responsibilities at a university, for example, teaching, committees, etc. In any case, I loaded the trucks and headed east from Albuquerque to College Station. (I note, parenthetically, contrary to the rumors, all the equipment transferred from Sandia to Texas A&M was indeed legally acquired.) I had prebuilt much of my equipment before arriving so we made a very quick start. The university and departmental faculty/staff facilitated in every way possible my transition, and, for that matter, have always by their actions made it impossible for me to seriously consider moving elsewhere.
J. Phys. Chem. C, Vol. 114, No. 40, 2010 16865 I recruited a stellar first class as well as subsequent classes of students whose names appear on the student roster. The group and equipment grew rapidly, as did the scientific output. It was hard work, indeed, but there was never any looking back. I still feel the same today. I credit any good things that happened here or, for that matter, at any time during my career to the hard work of my students and other co-workers. If I have any skills at all, most certainly the sharpest is that of recognizing good talent, recruiting the owner, and tagging along. This I have been very successful in doing during the last 22 years at TAMU. Continuously, I have had a superb group of highly active and extremely talented graduate students and postdocs, all of whom have gone on to establish their own successful careers. For this, I am the proudest. The science has been incredibly amusing, but seeing students develop into seasoned scientists, moving on toward their career goals, and building successful lives is a supreme rush for me. I have many notable recollections of my life and times at Texas A&M, both scientific and otherwise, but space prohibits recounting even a small fraction. Two events, however, are at the very top of a long list, namely, my sabbatical visit to Berlin in 1996 as a Humboldt Fellow with my “guter freund” Hajo Freund, and my sabbatical visit to Cambridge University in 2002 as a Fulbright Fellow with my good friend Richard Lambert. My sincerest thanks to these great colleagues for their friendship and efforts in securing the awards that led to these once-in-alifetime memories for Sandy and me. Other than doing science, I continue to fly, in the last two decades moving more toward experimental aircraft of the canard wing design made famous by Burt Rutan, two of which I have flown/restored for a number of years and another I am constructing. I also have returned to motorized hang gliding, which has become much more modernized and civilized, that is, landing gears and more powerful engines. I have one of these in my hanger. Ear plugs and clinched teeth are now optional. In my old age I’ve moved back to Cessna’s and own a Skyhawk that I fly on occasion. I’m an avid reader, particularly of history, and have now managed to get through a large fraction of a very long list of books I always planned to read. Of course, travel is, as with everyone in this business, an essential part of our professional life. I’ve now been to most parts of the world with any significant population of human beings, and even have a
two-million mile airline certificate to prove it. Of course, travel leads to some interesting cuisinesI now have quite an extensive list of “those things I thought I would never eat, but actually have”. Although I cannot confirm that I am the luckiest person in the world, I strongly suspect that I am. In this regard, it is an immense honor and a pleasant surprise to have a special volume of The Journal of Physical Chemistry dedicated to me. I am extremely pleased to see, too, that there are more than a few submissions. I truly hope that no money changed hands to encourage these contributions. Seriously, I thank all of my friends who contributed with very special thanks to my four former students who organized and promoted this project, Ja´nos Szanyi, Chuck Peden, Jose Rodriguez, and Mingshu Chen. A hearty thanks to you and a full bow and tip of the hat to all my former students, postdocs, and the many other co-workers. This volume and the honor it bestows are much more for and about you than me. I also would like to thank my friends and colleagues throughout the scientific community, in particular, the exceptional group of world-class faculty and staff in the Department of Chemistry at Texas A&M. Of course, my great appreciation goes to our mainstay in the Texas University system, the Robert A. Welch Foundation, whose research support has to a large extent sustained me throughout my years in Texas. Special kudos go to members of “the Choir”, including Frank Raushel and the Choirmaster, Greg Reinhart, who meet regularly on Friday afternoons at the local “one-half-price-until-seven” to do everything but sing. Most fittingly last, my deepest thanks, love, and appreciation go to my dear wife of these many years and a dear friend of even more. Her patience and tolerance are exceeded only by her uncanny ability to know what I should or should not do well before I. If only I had her smarts, intuition, and good looks, life would have been so much simpler for me. My thanks also go to my son, Jac, and his partner, Steve Teiler, who complete our lives and give us so much joy. Finally, I close by thanking my parents for their love, support, and friendship during the last 64 years. Their efforts and hard work created all my possibilities.
D. Wayne Goodman JP105967P
