Charles R. O’Melia: Of Particles and Prose A modest man establishes a major legacy in water chemistry and engineering. R ACHEL PETK EW ICH
© 2005 American Chemical Society
ior. He’s been a member of the U.S. EPA’s Science Advisory Board, has served on countless panels around the world, and has chaired several committees for the National Research Council, including one that in 2000 examined New York City’s drinkingwater system. He even did a stint as an ES&T associate editor from 1975 to 1983, and he currently serves on the AQUA editorial advisory board. But this tall, soft-spoken man with a residual New York accent— an engineer, a water chemist, a teacher, and a mentor to many students, including 30 Ph.D.s—is one of the most well-respected, humble, and beloved people in the field, say colleagues. Beloved, that is, even if he blocked your shot on the basketball court.
Hoop dreams O’Melia was born in Manhattan on All Saints’ Day (November 1) in 1934. His mother was an elementary-school teacher and his father was an accountant for a construction company, and they all lived in the Bronx. He credits his mother for introducing him to the wonders of water with trips to the New Jersey beaches, the Pocono lakes in Pennsylvania, and Penobscot Bay in Maine. Sadly, when O’Melia was seven, his mother died in childbirth while delivering his sister, Anne. Because their father worked overseas, the two siblings moved to Brooklyn to live with their grandmother and three maiden aunts. At 16, O’Melia graduated from a Catholic high school and enrolled in his father’s alma mater, Manhattan College. He thought he wanted to build bridges and tall buildings like those he saw daily from the train on the way to school. He ended up studying water and sanitary engineering, a discipline with a strong tradition at the college, which O’Melia later helped keep alive with money he contributed from his Clarke Prize.
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efore Charles Richard O’Melia agreed to chair the department of geography and environmental engineering at Johns Hopkins University for the second time earlier this year, he occupied a smaller office along a long hallway with the rest of the faculty. Taped on his door were three items: postcards featuring Albert Einstein and James Joyce and a meandering light-blue streak printed on computer paper. “What’s on my door?” asks O’Melia. He’s not sure he’s ever explained it to anyone. Einstein and Joyce are his “own personal opinions about the landmark contributions in science and humanities in the 20th century,” he says. Einstein influenced the way people think about particles in water and bridged the great divide between humanities and sciences. Joyce, who like O’Melia had Irish roots, included references to hydrological cycles in his writings. And the meandering blue streak? It’s a smaller version of “a long the riverrun,” a Joycean-phrase-turned-graphical-tribute to O’Melia when he was named the first Abel Wolman Professor of Environmental Engineering at Hopkins in 1999. (The late Abel Wolman, a Hopkins professor, was instrumental in the use of chlorination to establish safe drinking-water systems worldwide.) O’Melia is known for advancing the science and engineering of coagulation, flocculation, and particle behavior in water in both technical and natural systems. His students say that he advocates learning basic principles and champions looking at environmental problems from a fresh perspective. His numerous honors include being elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 1989 and winning the prestigious Athalie Richardson Irvine Clarke Prize in 2000 for work in chemical and physical processes in water treatment and particle behav-
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Although O’Melia graduated with a degree in civil engineering, his true desire was to be a professional basketball player. He says he probably played in every gym in New York, with an intensity that would appear later in his research and teaching. “I was really an immature guy. I hadn’t actually studied at all. I spent most of my time playing basketball,” he admits. “So I thought I’d get a master’s degree, and at that time it was also considered the entry degree into the consulting field.” He went to see his mentor Donald O’Connor at Manhattan College for some advice. O’Connor told him, “Well Charlie, you aren’t good enough to go to Harvard. Try Michigan.”
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COURTESY OF MARY O’MELIA
who sort of adopted me. But I think he adopted most of the people who worked with him.” James Morgan, another Irish-American, may be partly to thank for O’Melia’s stint at Harvard. The two had played club basketball at Manhattan College and for a year at Michigan. They crossed paths again by chance at an American Chemical Society (ACS) meeting in New York City in 1963. Morgan, now professor emeritus at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), recalls that O’Melia “had come to believe that he needed to know more chemistry . . . and [asked me to] recommend someone that he might go and study with after he had already finished his Ph.D.” Morgan enthusiasticalBuilding a strong foundation ly suggested Stumm, his former O’Melia says that he “actualPh.D. adviser. From then on, the ly worked” at the University of two have been good friends, disMichigan. Master’s degree in cussing their common loves— hand, he was hired as an assisteaching, water research, James tant sanitary engineer by Hazen Joyce, and basketball. and Sawyer, a consulting firm in Morgan created the “a New York City. Shortly thereaf- When O’Melia was named Abel Wolman long the riverrun” poster for ter, in 1956, he married Mary Professor of Environmental Engineering in O’Melia. The title is composed 1999, long-time colleague and friend James Curley. They were both 21. of the first and last words in “My wife and I planned on Morgan (left) created “a long the riverrun,” Joyce’s novel Finnegans Wake. a poster that documented O’Melia’s work me becoming a great consulting The river “became a figurative and included various quotes and signatures engineer,” says O’Melia. But he of students and colleagues. metaphor for the science that quickly realized he would never [O’Melia] has been a leader in, which is to understand how particles come to be in be able to be a good salesman for the firm and dewater, how they travel through the water system, cided to get some special expertise. reservoirs, aqueducts, [and] how they get removed He ended up back at Ann Arbor, where environat modern water-treatment plants,” says Morgan. He mental engineer Jack Borchardt gave him the only adds that O’Melia is a “devoted teacher, dedicated two fellowships he had: one for research and one [student] adviser and mentor, and a researcher not for teaching. Having grown up with aunts who were easily satisfied with conventional wisdom.” teachers, O’Melia had long vowed to do something different. But he had to teach to eat in graduate school—and ended up really enjoying the vocation. Particles, limnology, and microbes “One of the reasons I was able to teach the master’s When the fellowship with Stumm concluded in 1966, design class at 22 years old was [that] I had gray O’Melia took a faculty position at the University of hair,” he states matter-of-factly. North Carolina, Chapel Hill. O’Melia taught more Of Borchardt, he says, “I was sort of learning how master’s-level students than he could count and also to be a doctoral student, a husband, and a father at established his first group of doctoral students. “My a relatively young age, and he kept me from making first [Ph.D.] student was Kuan-Mu Yao, and he was too many dumb decisions.” older than me,” he recalls. By 1961, the O’Melias had three kids. In June of In 1971, O’Melia, Yao, and Mohammad Habibian that year, O’Melia finished his experimental work published an ES&T paper, “Water and Waste Water and started as an assistant professor at the GeorFiltration: Concepts and Applications” (1). The wellgia Institute of Technology. In Atlanta, he “really” cited paper included a now-famous figure (depicted learned how to teach, and he finished his dissertaon the cover of this issue of ES&T) that describes tion, The Sand Filtration of Algal Suspensions, which three basic transport mechanisms in water filtrahe defended in 1963. In it, he emphasized the imtion: interception, sedimentation, and convective portance of pretreatment chemistry. Meanwhile, the diffusion. family grew to five children. O’Melia has “had such a big impact technically Their sixth child was born in Boston, where in and scientifically on our understanding of particle 1964 O’Melia had an opportunity to study at Harbehavior and particle removal,” says Philip Singer, vard University, thanks to a postdoctoral fellowship a longtime friend, colleague, and fellow basketball with the legendary Werner Stumm. “For two years, player, who is still at Chapel Hill. Singer was a docI had the most intellectually inspiring time in my toral student when he met O’Melia at Harvard. “Delife,” says O’Melia. “I worked with Werner Stumm, spite [his] very large impact, Charlie is a very humble
captured on filters. EPA now uses parts of O’Melia’s model to account for the efficiency of microbe removal in water plants, adds Edzwald. “If you said that to [O’Melia], he’d argue for a half hour that he had a modest role.” In 1979, Hopkins reopened its School of Engineering. O’Melia remembers thinking, “I’d like to see if I can make it there.” When he got a position at Hopkins the next year, the O’Melias packed up again. “Mary has been remarkably supportive of my wandering around,” says O’Melia. “When I interviewed [at Hopkins] in 1980, I asked practically everybody: What is the best thing about Hopkins? What is the worst thing?” recalls O’Melia. “The best thing, they said, is you can do whatever the hell you want here. And that’s true. I mean, you’ve got to get the money to do it, but you can do whatever you want. And what’s the worst thing around here? Well, everyone else can do whatever the hell they want.” COURTESY OF MARY O’MELIA
person, and I think that humility comes across when Charlie speaks, when Charlie asks questions, when Charlie makes presentations, and I think it’s that kind of humility that you can’t help but respect,” says Singer, who refers to O’Melia as the “quintessential role model.” O’Melia balanced his responsibilities at home, too. While in Chapel Hill, Mary O’Melia started night school to earn a bachelor’s degree in education. O’Melia remembers spending a lot of time at home with their children. (Years later, after their children were grown, Mary would become a school principal and earn a doctorate in education.) Until 1971, the focus of O’Melia’s academic work had been technical systems. That was the year Stumm, a native of Switzerland and the director of the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology (Eawag), cornered O’Melia in a rowboat on the Charles River during a consulting trip to Boston. Stumm asked him to come to Switzerland for the summer to learn about limnology, lakes, and other natural systems. “I’m not—on many issues—very adventurous, so I didn’t pick up on his [previous and more subtle] invitations,” says O’Melia. He admits he hesitated because until then he’d never traveled outside the United States. “I can barely speak English—what am I going to do in this foreign country?” O’Melia remembers thinking. “So I went back to Chapel Hill and talked to Mary, and she says, ‘Well, let’s go’.” The family spent three months in the Luzern area while O’Melia worked in the Eawag laboratory on the lake. Stumm “never said it, but I think what he was really doing was taking this American and trying to grow him a cultural perspective,” says O’Melia. Turns out the work and the country captivated him. Two years later, while on a sabbatical in Morgan’s lab at Caltech, O’Melia found inspiration again. In addition to regular Friday afternoon basketball games with students and faculty, O’Melia sat in on various classes, including one taught by Sheldon Friedlander, a chemical engineer who pioneered the study of particulate processes in the atmosphere. O’Melia borrowed ideas from Friedlander (and others from atmospheric chemists)to describe how some particles function in water. This sabbatical was the beginning of his work on aquasols, a term he coined in an ES&T feature article in 1980 (2), which he followed up with a research article in the journal decades later (3). O’Melia also tackled some old topics. “Filtration has been around a long time,” yet very few studied it from a scientific and fundamental point of view until about the 1960s, states O’Melia’s former student, 1972 doctoral graduate James Edzwald. “But [O’Melia] went the extra step and showed how that science explains the technology or the engineering.” That understanding has influenced U.S. EPA regulations on filtration for various target pathogens, says Edzwald, now a professor at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. O’Melia explained how viruses and cyst-type protozoa such as Giardia and Cryptosporidium are
On his first trip outside the United States, O’Melia studied natural water systems in Switzerland with the late Werner Stumm (left). On a subsequent summer trek into the mountains for samples from Lake Cristallina, they used poles to check for deep, hidden holes in the snow.
Don’t get it in writing At Hopkins, O’Melia’s research has ranged from aquasols and aquatic and environmental colloid chemistry to water and wastewater treatment, riverbank filtration, and how to predict the behavior of natural materials in water. He also maintained his ties with Switzerland. Aside from many short trips and a year-long sabbatical with Stumm at Eawag in 1988, O’Melia co-advised Ulrich Weilenmann, now a casualty risk assessor in Switzerland, who did his research work at Hopkins but graduated from the SEP TEMBER 1, 2005 / ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY ■ 365A
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advice from his Ph.D. adviser. When putting together a paper or presentation, write the conclusions first. Second, don’t publish until you have something to say. Third, always measure the pH in a water study. Lawler remembers a “three-minute soliloquy” after a student seminar at Chapel Hill about how recording the pH is essential in all water studies. For emphasis, O’Melia strongly advised everyone to take the pH of water, even before brushing their teeth in the morning. His students and colleagues say that they enjoy O’Melia’s leadership and appreciate his ability to approach a problem— technical or administrative—and find the right people to solve it. After 10 years at Hopkins, O’Melia became department chair, a position he held for 5 years. “Hopkins had always been one of my first choices of a place to come in part because of Charlie,” says William Ball, currently a professor at Hopkins. “He’s a good motivator but not in the sense of ‘rah-rah’.” O’Melia can really dissect a problem down to the basics. “He’s had good ideas for the department and good ideas for the field,” says Ball. “He’s just fair—in the way he treats science and the way he treats everything.” O’Melia is also passionate about his beliefs. “When he gets an idea he thinks is right, he can be dissuaded, but it takes real hard evidence and a good argument,” says Ball. “You can’t just hope that he’ll believe you.” At conferences, students ogle O’Melia “like a movie star,” but he is “a real scientist,” says Kimberly Jones, an associate professor at Howard University, who graduated from Hopkins in 1996. Her most unforgettable time with O’Melia came only minutes after her dissertation defense, when he gave her an “inspiring” talk about lifelong learning and loving science. PECK STUDIOS
Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zurich) in 1986. Weilenmann remembers O’Melia as the consummate teacher: Although he had taught the same topic many times, he still checked the overheads the night before. In 1986, Menachem Elimelech came from Israel to join O’Melia’s group. Elimelech remembers O’Melia’s patience and care while he was adjusting to a new country and language and credits his mentoring for where he is today. “What I liked the most as a student, and at the time it was quite intimidating, [was that] he would let you choose the topic that you [would] do your research,” he recalls. Elimelech, now a professor at Yale University, reciprocated by organizing, with William Ball and John Tobiason, a three-day symposium in honor of O’Melia at the ACS national meeting in Philadelphia last year and by serving as a special editor for this tribute issue. Kimberly Gray, a 1988 graduate and now a professor at Northwestern University, and William Becker, a 1995 graduate and currently a consultant at Hazen and Sawyer, both former Ph.D. students of O’Melia, remember his emphasis on establishing simple questions as guides throughout a research study. Becker recalls that at one point, O’Melia recommended writing those questions on a piece of paper and taping it to his desk. Students and colleagues report that when O’Melia is asked for advice, he rarely answers complex questions directly. Instead, he provides perspective so that people can find their own answers. Avoid getting the advice with paper and pen, however, because his handwriting is notoriously incomprehensible, say colleagues. O’Melia “is able to think so fundamentally, sort out basic science principles, and apply them creatively to our complicated, real-world field of the environment, where nothing is simple, where we always have complicated mixtures of things in water and air,” says John Tobiason, who earned a master’s degree and Ph.D. with O’Melia and is now a professor at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. What sets him apart is that he is not satisfied with experimental data—he wants to know “why,” says Desmond Lawler, a professor at the University of Texas, Austin. And his ability to stay so intellectually alive is rare among academics, he adds. O’Melia had other memorable lessons for his students. For example, Lawler, a 1979 graduate of O’Melia’s group, remembers three specific pieces of
As long as the river runs What’s changed in his 25 years at Hopkins? Certainly not his quiet dedication to excellence. This year, U.S. News & World Report ranked Hopkins’ graduate environmental engineering department third in the nation. Even the new undergraduate program, which graduated its first students this year, is highly ranked. As department chair, he is looking at a new vision for the future. He teaches classes and advises two doctoral students who are studying membrane fouling. In addition, O’Melia consults on various projects, such as how to clean up the Baltic Sea.
“For me, coming to work has been going to play,” says O’Melia. “When I go to work, I go to play, I really don’t work. [Now that my family is grown], I pretty much play seven days a week, which is what I used to do with basketball. But it’s not a job.” He adds that “it’s amazing how lucky” he’s been with getting good students. And what about basketball? Over the years, colleagues and students noted the sharp contrast between O’Melia’s personality on and off the court. “Because his personality off the court is so gentle, people [were] surprised by [the elbows],” says Morgan. Does he still play? A broken ankle several years ago basically spelled the end of his days on the court. “I like the sport, but now I just sit back and watch it on TV.” Or he watches his nine grandchildren play. He also likes to read. One might even say that O’Melia subconsciously moves between science and humanities, like the men pictured on his door. “I looked at the titles of Charlie’s papers [and book chapters] over 30 [or] 40 years,” says Morgan. “What I found out was a very great inclination to alliteration . . . From Algae to Aquifers: Solid–Liquid Separations in Aquatic Systems (4). . . Particles, Polymers, and Performance in Filtration (5), Natural Organic Matter at Oxide/Water Interfaces: Complexation and Conformation (6), Chemistry and Collisions in Natural and Technological Aquatic Environments (7), but there are many more. . . . I think that is a hidden Joycean tendency [in Charlie].”
Acknowledgments
Thanks to the people who provided stories and pictures: William Ball, William Becker, James Edzwald, Menachem Elimelech, Kimberly Gray, Janet Hering, John Holmes, Haiou Huang, Kimberly Jones, Desmond Lawler, James Morgan, Joseph Ryan, Jin Yeong Shin, Philip Singer, Nathalie Tufenkji, John Tobiason, Rodrigue Spinette, and Ulrich Weilenmann.
References
(1) Yao, K.-M.; Habibian, M. T.; O’Melia, C. R. Water and Waste Water Filtration: Concepts and Applications. Environ. Sci. Technol. 1971, 5, 1105–1112. (2) O’Melia, C. R. Aquasols: The Behavior of Small Particles in Aquatic Systems. Environ. Sci. Technol. 1980, 14, 1052–1060. (3) Hahn, M. W.; Abadzic, D. S.; O’Melia, C. R. Aquasols: On the Role of Secondary Minima. Environ. Sci. Technol. 2004, 38, 5915–5924. (4) O’Melia, C. R. From Algae to Aquifers: Solid–Liquid Separation in Aquatic Systems. In Aquatic Chemistry: Interfacial and Interspecies Processes; Huang, C. P., O’Melia, C. R., Morgan, J. J., Eds.; Oxford University Press: New York, 1995. (5) Habibian, M. T.; O’Melia, C. R. Particles, Polymers, and Performance in Filtration. J. Environ. Eng. Div.-ASCE 1975, 101, 567–583. (6) Au, K.-K.; et al. Natural Organic Matter at Oxide/Water Interfaces: Complexation and Conformation. Geochim. Cosmochim. Acta 1999, 63, 2903–2917. (7) O’Melia, C. R. Chemistry and Collisions in Natural and Technological Aquatic Environments. In Role of Interfaces in Environmental Protection; Barany, S., Ed.; Kluwer Academic Publishers: Norwell, MA, 2003.
Rachel Petkewich is a senior associate editor of ES&T.
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