Bob Curl - it is possible to be successful and also a good person

I went to a memorial service today at Rice for my late colleague Bob Curl, who died this past summer, and it was a really nice event.  I met Bob almost immediately upon my arrival at Rice back in 2000 (though I’d heard about him from my thesis advisor, who’d met him at the Nobel festivities in Stockholm in 1996).  As everyone who interacted with him for any length of time will tell you, he was simultaneously extremely smart and amazingly nice.  He was very welcoming to me, even though I was a new assistant professor not even in his department.  I’d see him at informal weekly lunch gatherings of some folks from what was then called the Rice Quantum Institute, and he was always interested in learning about what his colleagues were working on - he had a deep curiosity and an uncanny ability to ask insightful questions.  He was generous with his time and always concerned about students and the well-being of the university community.

A refrain that came up over and over at the service was that Bob listened.  He talked with you, not at you, whether you were an undergrad, a grad student, a postdoc, a professor, or a staff member.  I didn’t know him nearly as well as others, but in 22 years I never heard him say a cross word or treat anyone with less than respect.  

His insatiable curiosity also came up repeatedly.  He kept learning new topics, right up to the end, and actually coauthored papers on economics, like this one.  By all accounts he was scientifically careful and rigorous.

Bob was a great example of how it is possible to be successful as an academic and a scientist while still being a nice person.  It’s important to be reminded of that sometimes.