Perspective pubs.acs.org/est
Ronald A. Hites: Chemical Comedian Barbara Hillery
who gave us Planck’s Constant and was cousin to Max; Henry’s Law Constant was named after Hank Henry, Flemish; and Boltzmann’s Constant came from Billy Bob Boltzmann of Southern Germany. Some students would chuckle at this, some would look quizzical, some would just copy assiduously into their notes. He would draw a large oval on the board, label it raindrop, then in parentheses add “not to scale”. Problem sets asked students to estimate how many shoes could be made from a cow. (John Harte’s Consider a Spherical Cow was recommended.) With humor, he was always encouraging students to think, estimate, ask themselves if something made sense. I have a copy of an exam from that period, and one of the questions is: Why is the cartoon on the last page funny? The cartoon shows 3 people at the top of Bungee World, noting that they are 130 feet up and have 45 yards of bungee cord, so perfect! Quantitative skills are often a problem for students, so Ron’s syllabus included as recommended reading Sheila Tobias’ Overcoming Math Anxiety, and he encouraged students to think of their calculator as their friend. He would give the energy required to split O2, then leave it “as an exercise for the student” to convert joules to kcals. When handing back exams he would give the z-score. My notes for September 1995 semiquote him as follows: “I hate exams. Subjective...Glimmer in eye...We’re all friends now, right? I guarantee when I hand back the tests, half of you will be pissed at me.” He told me once that his student evaluations were about equally divided: half the class typically thought he was great, witty, and engaging; the other half thought he was foolish and wasting their valuable time. One day he announced to the class that he went outside. This was big news, so much so that I have it all in CAPS in my notes. One might assume that, as an environmental chemist, he was outdoors a lot, but as he explained it he used to ride a moped on the streets of Boston, and he was stung by acid rain, and sneered at by a Hell’s Angel, so he gave up the outdoors. Later he noted fire ants as another excuse. All Ron’s students know that he does not go outside. And that leads to Ron’s mysterious perceptive powersthe ability always to know what is going on with his group. I remember the one and only time Ilora (his research associate) and I took a brief respite from a conference. We had never before missed any sessions at any conferences, but it was a glorious day, there were beautifully maintained gardens, and we had diligently attended talks for days. We succumbed; who would know? Yet within minutes we ran straight into Ron, out walking with Steve Eisenreich. Anyone who knows Ron knows he does not go for walks outside, yet there he was.
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ithin the chemical community, Ronald A. Hites is known as a highly accomplished chemist: Distinguished Professor at Indiana University; long-time editor at Environmental Science and Technology; Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS); inaugural Fellow of the American Chemical Society (ACS); inaugural Fellow of the Society for Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (SETAC); and, well, etc. etc. Perhaps more telling, now that google is a verb, a quick search of Google Scholar (1/ 31/15) elicited over 3500 hits (I stopped checking for validity after the first 26 pages). These are some of the things that have made graduate students and postdocs strive to work with Dr. Hites; but once in his lab, he quickly became Ron and his humor, good-nature, and perceptive personality earned the respect, trust, and even devotion of his research group. These are traits that led one person (from a different research group) to describe him as a big teddy bear (sorry Ron, but true). I became a member of the Hites Group club in the mid 1990s, joining as a postdoc eager to work with the highly acclaimed Ron, and quickly discovering that he was, in fact, a chemical comedian, storyteller, and font of wordly wisdom. That first semester I sat in on his graduate Environmental Chemistry course, taking copious notes, perhaps occasionally missing some of the chemistry but striving to get every joke, pun, and comic turn-of-phrase. The class was a large lecture, before the existence of fascinating toys like clickers or tablets that let students amuse themselves. It was up to the professor to keep all those people engaged. Ron was infamous for the jokes he told as well as the stories he did not, the famous cat story, for instance, or the famous pilot story. He never actually told these stories, citing time constraints or suggesting he already had and we must have forgotten. When discussing Chapman Reactions he would invoke the hit country song Three More Ways to Lose Your Ozone. He had a million of them. One student evaluation for the course said the professor seemed to think he was teaching Topics: Stand-up Comedy in Chemistry. Ron was clear that you could not do environmental chemistry without being quantitative, and would continually reference famous scientists as he went over equations. As told by Ron, there was the famous German chemist Alfredo Planck, © XXXX American Chemical Society
Special Issue: Ron Hites Tribute Received: February 2, 2015
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DOI: 10.1021/acs.est.5b00589 Environ. Sci. Technol. XXXX, XXX, XXX−XXX
Perspective
Environmental Science & Technology “If you have data, plot it” advised Ron. Environmental data sets often produce lots of data, and it does not always mesh nicely with your proposed model. Once as I was reviewing atmospheric deposition data with Ron, I explained why some points were invalid and should not be included, but there was one pesky outlier that I felt I knew was wrong but just could not show why. Ron said he felt in these large data sets you could always get rid of one point because you did not like it. Words of wisdom that I could not help sharing later with my own undergraduate students, one enterprising student dubbing it the Hites Rule. I learned a lot about things besides data from Ron. He told the story of his early days as a professor, when he had a research talk to give and things were not going as planned in the lab. Ron prepared his talk, while his postdoc kept trying to get data, any data. When Ron gave the talk, he suavely moved past the treacherous slide. A vigilant audience member, however, questioned the graph he presented, noting that it looked like it was based on just one data point. Ron was equal to the challenge, and replied that he believed all graphs should have at least one data point. I have told this story frequently to my own students, especially as they are stressing over their first public research presentation, emphasizing that things do not always go the way you plan, but you have to do it anyway, and you can find innovative ways to deal with any situation. Ron had many words of wisdom that have had an enduring influence on my own teaching career. Of course, I collect chemistry jokes, and find them handy at meetings when there are technical delays. The previously mentioned “now there’s an exercise for the student” surprised me by slipping out 1 day when I was teaching my analytical chemistry class, and I continue to use it frequently. “When in doubt, hyphenate” continues to inform my writing, and has the benefit of turningphrases-into-single-words for those submissions where word limitations become a hindrance. He told us on more than one occasion that the most important words in the English language might be “you may be right, dear”. I find myself falling back on that again and again in faculty meetings, though I usually drop the “dear”. Ron Hites is a renowned chemist, a great teacher and a remarkable individual−good humored, unflappable, always working on his Dean for a reserved parking space. Like the best teachers everywhere, Ron’s teaching transcends the classroom and the subject. Current pedagogical terminology may decry “the sage on the stage”, but I believe there is always a need for chemical comedians.
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AUTHOR INFORMATION
Notes
The authors declare no competing financial interest.
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DOI: 10.1021/acs.est.5b00589 Environ. Sci. Technol. XXXX, XXX, XXX−XXX
