Stories, thoughts, memories

Last July, my grandparents, Mary Jane (MJ) and Dick Lewontin, died within a few days of each other. They were both 92 years old. It seems like there should have been enough time to prepare for their deaths, but the void they left was shocking for me and my family. We are very private people, and, in our grief, we have tended to retreat inward as we grapple with this tremendous loss. But reading the many dedications written by Grandpa Dick’s colleagues, students, and friends these past months has been a comfort to me. They’ve provided me with new insights into my grandfather, allowed me to see him again with new eyes. In return, I’d like to share a little bit about the man I knew only as Grandpa and perhaps provide new glimpses of him to others who loved him.

First, there was no Grandpa without Grandma. MJ was his partner of over seventy-five years, the mother of his four boys, the love of his life. He adored her. Even as a child, the way he looked at her stood out to me. And now that I am an adult, I know that their love was one of a kind. High school sweethearts, my grandparents shared a rare, unbreakable bond that only grew stronger throughout their long life together. MJ quietly matched Dick’s intelligence, in fact, I think she may have even surpassed it. The story goes that in high school, MJ, who was first in the class, got her hands on the class grade book and decided that Dick would make a suitable partner because he was second. I must admit that when I first became aware of my grandfather’s accomplishments as a scientist, I thought to myself, “I bet Grandma came up with that.” And in a way, there was something to this. She was so fundamentally part of who he was, his path would not have been the same without her at his side. Maybe it is not so surprising then that when she died, he followed so closely behind her.

Then there was the man I knew well, the devoted and affectionate grandfather. Grandpa was always happy to make room for us next to him on the couch or the hammock, to read to us, to share whatever cookie or ice-cream sandwich he inevitably had on hand, to tell us his jokes and to hear ours. He had a way of making ordinary life seem special and interesting. He would describe every bird that came to the window in great detail. For a while I was sure he was some type of bird specialist. And I can’t remember a dinner where he didn’t get up from the table at least once and go to the dictionary so that he could school us on the etymology of a word we’d said. (They kept an unabridged Webster’s on a special podium next to the dining room table for just this purpose.)

It might surprise some to learn that Grandpa Dick was something of a Christmas enthusiast. He loved decorating, piling presents under the tree, and handing them around on Christmas morning. My sister and I always slept over on Christmas Eve, and he’d have us leave a glass of milk and a plate of cookies by the fireplace. In the morning we’d find an empty glass and few crumbs on the plate—indisputable evidence of Santa’s visit. Once, when I was seven or eight years old, I shared my doubts about Santa’s existence with him. A little while later the phone rang, and it was Santa himself requesting a word with me. Grandpa had snuck down into his home office and used his office line to call upstairs and gently admonish me for my skepticism. This trick bought him—and me—another year of Santa Claus.

Grandpa Dick seemed to delight in entertaining us. We spent many summers and winter holidays at Dick and MJ’s house in Marlboro, Vermont, where he would go above and beyond. One summer, my sister and I dreamed of a treehouse. Grandpa and our dad Stephen went to work, and soon we had our treehouse. The following year, I wished for a zipline, and Grandpa went straight into town to get the materials. Before I knew it, we are all zipping between the trees.

Grandma MJ, who had a brilliant memory and a knack for good stories, reminded me of this episode that I had somehow forgotten: They were members of the conservation organization at South Pond in Marlboro. The group had gathered for one of their regular meetings. They were waiting for Grandpa to arrive when they heard frustrated grunts and peals of laughter coming across the pond. They all looked out, and there was Grandpa standing on the end of a canoe in the middle of the water, furiously jumping up and down, while we kids looked on from the beach. He was trying to show us how easy it was to tip a canoe. But to his surprise, after jumping up and down several times, the boat remained upright. So, he just kept jumping while we hooted from the beach. Finally, the canoe flipped over, and when he’d swum back to shore, he assigned us the task of scooping it out of the water while he went to the meeting.

From visiting the firehouse where Grandpa was a volunteer firefighter (which I thought was even cooler than bird specialist), to attending concerts at the Marlboro Music Festival, to swimming and canoeing at South Pond, to gardening with Grandma MJ, to watching Grandpa complete one of his 20-thousand-piece jigsaw puzzles only to swiftly destroy it, there was never a dull moment when I was with my grandparents.

Only now that I am a parent can I fully appreciate how much energy both Dick and MJ put into making my childhood special. They made it seem effortless. I only wish my daughter could have experienced some of these moments with them, too.

In their later years, as the challenges of old age began to mount, a lot of things changed for Dick and MJ. And, of course, my relationship with them changed too. But the time I spent with my grandparents during these years is just as precious to me. I loved talking to my grandmother. She was a brilliant conversationalist, incredibly observant, and able to recall everything—from the scene in the dining room the day before to a dinner party 50 years ago—in such rich detail that it was like she was reading pages out of a book. She would also listen closely, with great interest, to whatever I had to say and remember everything I told her. I could talk to her for hours and often did. I felt especially lucky to have her during the first lonely months of Covid when we kept each other company with long phone calls.

As for Grandpa Dick, even as his health declined, he continued to charm everyone he met. At their assisted living complex, he gained many new admirers. He pulled out chairs, held open doors, and even danced when the opportunity arose. He would chat with anyone who came and sat next to him on his sunny perch in front of the building. His canoe-tipping days were over, but he would still surprise me and make me laugh. It was only during these years, for instance, that I discovered how many languages he spoke. I would come by for lunch and sometimes when I talked about my day and what was happening at work, and he would respond in a different language—Spanish, French, Italian, German—depending on the situation I had described. At other times, he surprised me in a more subdued way by sharing memories of his childhood in New York and particularly of his mother, my great-grandma Lily, which I had never heard before. Sometimes he would ask Grandma MJ to help him remember something, and she would paint a vivid picture for him. Other times, they would both start humming the same tune or reciting the words from a poem or old advertisement or funny saying of someone they’d known. They had their own private language, and sometimes, I think, they communicated without speaking at all.

When Grandma MJ died, we knew Grandpa Dick would follow closely. He spent his last days and hours listening to poetry and recordings of Dante’s Divine Comedy, one of his favorites, moving his lips along with the familiar words. The rest of us watched over him and fussed and cried and told jokes and shared stories. He was surrounded by people who loved him—Monica, Dick and MJ’s devoted care attendant of many years; David, Stephen, Jamie, and Tim; Amy and Max; my sister and me—and holding tight to one of MJ’s nightgowns. He died a mere three days after she did. We miss him terribly, but we are grateful that he did not have to spend too long without her.

Deborah and I went to Chicago as postdocs in September 1969, and stayed there until September 1971. We arrived at O’Hare at midnight with a temperature in the high 80s and the usual humidity for a Chicago summer, which was rather a shock for people who had never been to the USA before. After an argument with a cab driver who didn’t want to go to the South Side in the middle of the night, we arrived at a dingy hotel on East 51^st Street, right by the Illinois Central Railroad tracks. The room had no air conditioning and faced the tracks. We were just getting to sleep when a long freight train with multiple locomotives came by with the usual hooting and clanking, making the building shake. This was repeated several times during the night, so we were more than somewhat frazzled by the time we got up. On looking out of the window, we saw that the building across the tracks was adorned with an advert for the “SureDeth Exterminating Co.” After a doubletake, we realized that the target was the abundant rat and roach population, not the trade rivals of Chicago gangsters.

Our next piece of Americana was to see the security man in the nearby A&P supermarket with two pistols at his side and a belt with bullets around his waist; it was the first time we’d seen guns outside a museum or the movies. We decided to take a ride downtown, where a bank was supposed to hold a money transfer for us (our life savings of approximately 200 bucks). After looking at the map of the transit system, we thought it would be nice to walk across Washington Park and take the Green Line elevated train. It became clear that this was not such a bright idea, as the neighbourhood on the other side of the park was very run down, with no other white people in sight (subsequent experience showed that one really shouldn’t be bothered about this – people in these poor neighbourhoods are nearly all very friendly). The view from the El going downtown was dispiriting, with many vacant lots and ruined buildings – rather like the eastern part of London of our childhood, after the wartime bombing (Deborah’s grandparents’ house was one of the few still standing on their street).

We eventually found the bank, who disclaimed any knowledge of our money. This was another shock, especially as Dick Lewontin was still away in Vermont, and Deborah’s job was out in the suburbs at Loyola University, so there was no-one who was responsible for us. It was not a pleasant experience to be almost destitute, and unable to pay the hotel bill. Eventually Bill Baker, the Chairman of the U of C Biology Department lent us some money, and the Department administrator, Bob Liess, sorted out what had happened (our UK bank had sent the money to New York). Things looked up after we achieved solvency, although Deborah’s job turned out to be a bust, as they had not got the promised lab going. She eventually got another postdoc with a not-very-active human genetics lab in the U of C medical school, and was able to spend a fair bit of time around the Lewontin group, including collaborating with me on a study of linkage disequilibrium in Drosophila melanogaster, using electrophoretic variants (see below). Her boss never seemed to notice what was going on his lab. Her own work was mainly concerned with developing new electrophoretic loci to add to the survey of human variation that had been initiated by Harry Harris, in parallel with the Hubby and Lewontin work on Drosophila pseudoobscura.

The atmosphere in the Lewontin lab, located in the west wing of the 3^rd floor of the old Zoology building on the main U of C campus, was incredibly stimulating (this later become my own space when Deborah and I moved to Chicago in 1985). Together with Tom Park, Dick held a large grant for population biology from the Ford Foundation, which funded several postdocs (including myself), and he also had a sizeable flock of graduate students, including Dan Dykhuizen, Curt Strobeck, Tsuneyuki Yamazaki and Eleftherios Zouros. Among the postdocs who arrived in the following year, I especially remember Dick Frankham, Ted Giesel, John Gillespie, Steve Jones, Stephen Saul (sadly deceased), and Monty Slatkin. Max Whitten, from CSIRO in Australia, was a sabbatical visitor interested in using population genetic principles to develop genetic methods for pest control, and many other well-known figures spent brief periods in Chicago. As a result of a visit by Tony Bradshaw from Liverpool, followed by Philip Sheppard, I got my first real job, as a lecturer in Sheppard’s genetics department at Liverpool. The group was very interactive and socialised regularly.

I was especially influenced by Tim Prout, who visited soon after I arrived. He was given the manuscript of the Franklin and Lewontin paper (then entitled “Is the genome made of genes?”), of which Dick was immensely proud, believing it had resolved the problem of the genetic load caused by a large number of balanced polymorphisms. Tim, in his characteristically blunt manner, burst into the lab waving the MS and exclaiming “balderdash”. Discussions of the paper with Dick and Tim gave me the idea of testing its prediction of extensive linkage disequilibrium among polymorphic loci by using a battery of electrophoretic loci. Deborah and I conducted the experimental work (on samples of Drosophila melanogaster chromosomes) over the two years of our postdocs, and finished the analyses after moving to Liverpool. In line with similar work by the Mukai and Langley groups, we failed to find evidence for the Franklin-Lewontin model, although some cases of significant LD were observed, probably due to finite population size effects.

One of the most exciting aspects of life in the Lewontin lab was the regular lunchtime seminars around a large table in the old Lillie Room on the 2^nd floor of the Zoology Building (now a lab), held jointly with Dick Levins’ group, and often attended by other faculty members, such as Leigh Van Valen, who had the odd habit of tossing a gauze plug from a Drosophila bottle at people whose remarks met with his disapproval. Dick could be quite combative, and had a habit of pushing his glasses up onto his forehead and barking “I don’t understand”, when he found fault with a speaker. Rob Caldwell, a postdoc with Levins, once lost his cool after such treatment, and responded with “Shit, man…”. However, Dick was very happy to be argued back at, and was always open to admitting that he was wrong, if you argued hard enough. I found this atmosphere of stringent questioning, and insistence on rigorous thinking and experimentation, to be a wonderfully refreshing change of atmosphere after the authoritarian regime in the Cambridge genetics department in which Deborah and I did our PhDs, where graduate students were expected to be seen and not heard.

As is well known, Dick did not believe in directing his students and postdocs, and never took credit for their work. He pretty much left his postdocs to develop their own research projects. Despite the numerous calls on his time, scientific and political, he was generous in discussing ideas, encouraging what he thought were interesting ideas for research, and giving insightful comments on manuscripts. His breadth of knowledge of genetics, evolutionary biology and statistics was stunning. He was also a pioneer of the use of computers in theoretical modelling, at a time when the programming of Monte Carlo simulations involved the use of machine language, which Deborah learnt to use in work we did in Liverpool, following Dick’s example. The lab had a terminal which communicated with a computer in Detroit, which allowed Basic programs to be run; under Dick’ tutelage, I found this very useful for numerical work.

In addition to my experimental work, I got interested in the theory of selection in age-structured populations, as a result of conversations with my office mate, Ted Giesel, and with Tim Prout. Ted was trying to develop a model of effective population size with overlapping generations, but his work was outclassed by Joe Felsenstein’s innovative 1971 paper, which paved the way for later developments. Tim rather stunned me by declaring that he didn’t believe in Fisher’s Malthusian parameters, which was the widely used method for modelling selection in continuous time populations. Somewhat to my surprise (and almost certainly to Dick’s, who probably had well-founded doubts about my mathematical competence), I was able to show how to derive the Malthusian parameter from a realistic model of an age-structured population, and to show that it could not in general be treated as a fixed parameter in non-equilibrium populations. I was also able to show how to use it to derive an exact measure of fitness in an equilibrium population, which had been obtained by an independent method by the Cambridge mathematician H.T.J. Norton in 1928. Dick was very excited by this work, which only took me a few weeks to complete, and encouraged me to submit it to the new journal Theoretical Population Biology, resulting in my first publication in 1970. With Dick’s encouragement and advice, and in collaboration with Ted Giesel, I was able to pursue various other aspects of selection with age structure, partly inspired by Dick’s well-known 1965 article on life-history evolution in The Genetics of Colonizing Species.

As is well-known, this was a turbulent period in American history, with the horribly destructive Vietnam war in full swing, and with US attacks on Laos and Cambodia being instigated by Richard Nixon. The two Dicks, with their Marxist fervour, were heavily engaged in anti-war activities, and I seem to remember going on a demonstration downtown with them. Although never Marxists, Deborah and I have always had strongly left-wing political views, and hated the disastrous war in Indo-China. Dick Levins visited North Vietnam, and came back with a starry-eyed view of the country, telling people that even tractor drivers knew quantum mechanics. It did not seem to occur to him that Communist regimes had a habit of forcing bourgeois people like professors to work on the land. He organised a project to distribute reprints of papers from the evolution and ecology groups to North Vietnam, which was regarded with some cynicism by many of us. I remember his postdoc Dave Culver coming up to me and mournfully announcing that my paper was not to be included. I survived the shock.

Dick was frequently absent from his office. One day, there was a phone call to him that came through to the electrophoresis lab where I was working. It was from the student newspaper, wanting him to comment on the announcement that Nixon was planning to sent 2000 undercover agents to spy on university campuses. They wanted a fire-eating, radical response from Dick, but I explained that he was unavailable. After a pause, they asked me for my view; I said I thought it was “a trifle excessive”. For some reason, this did not get printed.

Despite Deborah’s difficulties with her job, our two years as postdocs at Chicago formed one of the happiest periods of our lives, not least because of the inspiring example of Dick Lewontin, the amazingly talented people whom he attracted to his group, and the outstanding quality of the University of Chicago. We also grew to love the Hyde Park neighbourhood round the university, which has a village-like atmosphere in an inner-city neighbourhood, and were very happy to return 14 years later for a much longer stay.

Memories of Dick: A First Encounter

I met Dick Lewontin in the autumn of 1995, when, through an unusual and certainly unexpected series of coincidences, he offered me (whom he had never met) a desk in his lab in Harvard’s Museum of Comparative Zoology. I spent four months there, working on a book project on historical theory that was already five years underway, that would take me three decades to finish, and that is just now about to be published. Dick contributed to this project in many and varied, yet all essential ways. But my most vivid, and perhaps most telling memory of Dick is of our first discussion.

The series of coincidences that landed me in Dick’s lab is quite amusing (to me, at least), but I will only mention one aspect of it, namely: the person who suggested that I write to Dick about the opportunity to work on my project in his lab was one of his old friends and former colleagues – and also one of the most well-known historians in the field of modern European intellectual history, which is my area of study as well. While encouraging me to write to Dick, he explained that Dick often invites people to his lab who work in such fields as history, literature, politics, and sociology among others, in order to have the opportunity to talk about his wide-ranging interests outside of biology and genetics. He then paused; and after a silent moment he said softly and with a tone of reverence, “I think Dick Lewontin is the most intelligent person I’ve ever met.” Very familiar with this person’s work and reputation among historians, and familiar, too, with the work and reputation of some of the world-renowned people that he knows, I was somewhat surprised and most impressed by this comment. But as was evident in my first encounter with Dick, that estimation certainly proved true in my experience as well.

A day or two after I arrived in Cambridge and got settled, I went to the MCZ to meet Dick. He immediately wanted to talk about my book project, which he knew only from the short summary that I had sent to him. So, we sat down in his office and began what I had thought was just going to be a brief get-acquainted conversation. Some hours later I emerged from the windowless room in which we had been talking and walked out of the building into a lovely New England autumn afternoon—with a headache: a headache caused by having to think so hard, and across so many disciplinary dimensions, in order to follow and respond to Dick’s genially relentless, yet always insightful and challenging questions and comments.

Despite the headache, I did initially feel rather pleased as I walked homeward across Cambridge Common, through the beautiful autumn colors, into a stunning sunset, and musing that I had more or less held my own in the conversation. That pleasant feeling, however, lasted only the few seconds it took me to remember that this was my history project, while he is a geneticist—and also that I had been thinking about this project for a good five years, he for about five minutes. That was the first of many such headaches I got from conversing with him.

And from his interactions with all those in his lab – undergraduates, doctoral students, post-docs, those who kept the lab in working order, and invited guests like me – it is obvious that Dick’s heart was as big as his mind. At least as valuable as the intellectual contributions he made to all those who had the opportunity to work with him are the fact and example of his generosity and support. I’m sure I’m not the only one who would say that his interest in, his enthusiasm and encouragement for, what I was trying to do gave me the hope that I could do it, and the confidence to do it.

Charles Baudelaire claimed (with, I would argue, a good degree of validity) that ‘genius is nothing more or less than childhood recovered at will’. A corollary to Baudelaire’s claim might be found in Albert Einstein’s urging that we behold the universe and its contents with the gaze of inquisitive wonder and awed wonderment peculiar to ‘curious children before the great mystery into which we were born’.

I’m also sure that I’m not the only one who remembers the glint and gleam in Dick’s eyes, the pleased smiles and rather mischievous grins that emerged on his face, when recounting his encounters with some little-known fact, theory, or anecdote about topics ranging from genetics and biology to history and literature, society and politics, or when exposing the fallacies in what passes for ‘common knowledge’. Dick exuded the joy of learning, that child-like curiosity before the mysteries, both great and small, into which we were born. And therein, I would venture to guess, lay if not the only, then certainly one source of both his genius and his generosity.

July 6, 2021

Richard Lewontin’s ideas have guided me through much of my career as an evolutionary geneticist. I was neither his graduate student nor a post-doc, however. Nonetheless, I was fortunate to interact with Dick for about two years (2016 -2018) toward the end of his career, during which I got to know him and discuss with him sporadically on diverse topics ranging from his graduate student days with Dobzhansky, how he chose to work on his own topic for his Ph.D. dissertation, avoiding Dobzhansky's suggestions, levels of selection, niche construction, the inaugural ceremony of the Museum of Comparative Zoology and more. He was consistently honest, kind, generous, compassionate, self-effacing, and truly a down-to-earth human being. Although he was a faculty, he lent his moral support to custodians and other support staff to realize their cause for which they were full of praise toward him. He personally cleared an area for me in his library and allowed me to use his rich collection of reference material. Many of those books were signed and gifted to him by authors such as Stephen Gould, E. O. Wilson, Bruce Wallace, and others. Those authors have expressed their deep admiration toward him and his scholarship in all those autographed books. Spending long hours in his library also gave me an opportunity to take a detailed look at his collection and get a glimpse of his deep and extensive background in evolutionary biology, plant breeding, mathematics and statistics, philosophy of science, and so forth. As an evolutionary geneticist, I consider the time I spent “under Lewontin’s wings” represents the summit of my career, and I pride myself as his last “shishya” (disciple). A Sanskrit saying goes, “Yad bhavam tad bhavati” ( ~ you acquire what you desire). I am convinced that my long desire of working with him somehow materialized. I treasure and cherish the time I spent with him in my most serene moments. With his death, evolutionary biologists, geneticists, farmers, philosophers, social reformers, laborers, and people from varied walks of life have lost a strong, clear, confident, and compassionate voice of a gifted scientist, dedicated humanist, and truly an original mind.

The photo I’m contributing was taken in Moscow in 1978 at the International Congress of Genetics. A bit of backstory:

The 1973 ICG was held in Berkeley. At that event, the site of the next congress five years hence was to be decided. The USSR (as it was then known) was just coming out from the nightmare of Lysenko and to announce to the world the new environment for genetics, a strong case was made to hold the next congress in Moscow. The committee, however, wanted to make certain that all who wanted would be let into the USSR, in particular, Th. Dobzhansky (Dick L.’s mentor) had been denied a visa since he left in 1927. The committee asked for and received a guarantee that Dobzhansky would be allowed to attend. Dobzhansky died in 1975 so it was never an issue in the end. However, the Soviets did deny several Israeli geneticists visas, which led to a partial boycott, which obviously neither Dick nor I joined.

I was staying at the same hotel in Moscow as Dick and Mary Jane and I’d see them at dinner almost every night. Dick would go on and on about how happy and healthy all the people on the street seemed, an observation much at odds with what most of us saw.

While I never spent time in Dick’s lab, he was an academic older brother who influenced me as much or more than any mentor I ever had. It seemed a pilgrimage to come up to Cambridge to find out where evolutionary genetics was headed, and to be treated with warmth and generosity.

“Seeing the forest for the trees”: A Namkoong-Lewontin ‘white paper’ on the application of evolutionary principles for the management of forest genetic resources

I have spent much of my professional life as a forest geneticist in British Columbia. I met Prof Dick Lewontin in 1998, at the Society for the Study of Evolution (SSE) meeting at the University of British Columbia (UBC). After a day talks at SSE meeting, my friend and colleague, Prof. Gene Namkoong, who was the Department Head of Forest Sciences at UBC, had Dick and I over for dinner and drinks at his home. Gene was a well-known forest geneticist at North Carolina State University, and the US Forest Service, from 1966 to 1992, had a long-standing friendship with Dick, following a sabbatical visit at the University of Chicago in 1968. Upon realizing that Dick was attending the SSE meeting in Vancouver, my colleagues and I at the BC Forest Service, in Victoria, requested him to extend his stay in BC and invited him to give a talk at the Forest Biology Conference being held at the University of Victoria. Lucky for us, Dick enthusiastically accepted our invitation.

Following the SSE meeting, Dick and I took the enjoyable ferry ride from Vancouver to Victoria. I had the honor of hosting him and introducing him at the Forest Biology conference. Beforehand, I asked Dick what kind of introduction he thought would be good, given he was new to an audience of forest scientists. He said: “keep it short”, and then told me about the best introduction someone ever gave him (a former grad student, I think): “Our next speaker is Dick Lewontin, and in case it isn’t obvious after his talk, he’s a pretty good geneticist”. I wanted to steal that introduction (I thought that was very funny), but I didn’t. Dick gave a wonderful presentation and he definitely ‘stirred up’ the audience with his classic ‘genes and environment’ talk. I had read his writings on that topic well before the presentation (e.g., “The Triple Helix: Gene, Organism and Environment”) and anticipated his talk would challenge conventional thinking on niche theory, etc., and the outcome, in my view, was perfect!

I spent three days with Dick during the conference was one of the highlights of my career. I can only imagine what it would have been like to have been a graduate student, post-doc, or long-time colleague; “priceless”, I am sure. I asked Dick so many questions, and I still remember every detail about our conversations. We talked about his views on molecular vs. quantitative genetics and his ’political battles’ with other scientists and institutions but also about life, family, and so much more (e.g., drinking good vodka right from the freezer was an absolute must!).

Sadly, about four years after the SSE meeting in Vancouver, Prof. Namkoong succumbed to cancer. Before he passed on, Gene asked me to help him with an unfinished manuscript and suggested that I complete it with Dick’s input[1]. I contacted Dick regarding Gene’s wish. He was more than willing to help, and it was a fitting tribute to his friendship with Gene and their concerns about conserving and exploiting genetic diversity in nature. I am forever grateful to have met him and benefited greatly from the valuable insights he provided on the paper about genetic management of natural and plantation forests.

_______

[1] Namkoong, G., Lewontin, R.C. and A.D. Yanchuk. 2004. Plant genetic resource management: The next investments in quantitative and qualitative genetics. Gen. Res. Crop Evol. 51: 853-862.

I feel the warmth expressed in all of the stories shared here, and it’s obvious that Dick and Mary Jane had a multifaceted influence on us all. They are greatly missed! My condolences go out to the Lewontin family for their loss.

Back in 1980, Dick saw something in this young woman from the Midwest (me, that is) who didn’t have a clue as to what it was like to work at an institution like Harvard. He hired me as a research assistant. I was too naïve to be intimidated, and because of his encouragement I got to exercise some “resourcefulness muscles” I didn’t know could be so useful. (Where else could one learn about buying malt and Karo syrup in bulk, yanking out drosophila salivary glands, working alongside roaches in every drawer, and avoiding the few coffee cups containing something very dark and slimy, potentially years old, growing in them near the coffee maker?)

In his hands-off-but-fully-engaged-when-you-needed-him manner, I learned from Dick some ways of being that served me well in life. Here are a few of the more practical gems (some gave me pause back in those days):

· On fixing the refrigerator: Give it a good slug. (Personally, I didn’t adopt this technique even though I saw it in action under the moose head next to Dick’s office. He punched it on his way past, and I hesitate to admit that this fix actually worked.)

· On reading written/published material: Don’t believe everything you read.

· On working late: GO home—I remember him saying, Harvard doesn’t appreciate it. I didn’t always succeed at this over the years, but was reminded to work toward that elusive work/life balance.

· On keeping priorities straight: Hold hands with your significant other as often as possible. (In other words, let them know daily that they are always #1.)

In all seriousness, without the support of Dick (and the patient teaching of Geoffrey Chambers in the early 80s), I may not have followed the career path I did; my job choices were indeed influenced by the interest I cultivated in protein variation in the MCZ and later in the microchemistry facility in the Biolabs. Following the years at Harvard, as a technical writer and editor, my work traversed analytical instruments and synthesizers to genetically engineered proteins to cellular therapies. Even 10 years after I left the lab, Dick wrote me a note to ask if I had any tips on the PCR (he knew I was working at a company who made the chemistry kits).

Regularly, I would find Dick standing alongside the big map table with chalk in his hand and in the middle of making a point. The bridge of his glasses would be sitting halfway down his nose, or the temple tips would be tilted up an inch or so, causing the side hairs above his ears to stick out. Eventually, he would scrunch his fingers in the hair on top of his head while thinking, and leave it tousled like that. Unaware of how it appeared, this was his problem-solving look (always in the blue work shirt and khaki pants, of course). I treasured the times I could sit down at the map table and listen to the ongoing debate.

There were several days when someone from out of town would come into the lab looking for Dick around lunchtime and he was nowhere to be found. As many have mentioned, he met Mary Jane every day for lunch. When my parents were visiting, we ran into them in Harvard square, holding hands, and Dick even took the time to have coffee with us. Since I had driven my car in that week, he asked me to give him a ride to pick up his car from the shop…I ran a red light because I was so nervous and Dick made note that this was in keeping with Boston driving.

There are so many great remembrances, but, lastly, one cannot think of Dick’s lab without remembering (or shuddering at the thought?) how well we coexisted with the roaches. This was probably pretty common on campus, but I’m sure we fed them extra well in the fly kitchen. (I chuckle when I recall seeing several ancient professors hunched over, discussing and pointing at a roach in the middle of the floor in the faculty club dining room.) We had “roach parties” where we cleaned, distributed roach motels, and painted Teflon liquid on the legs of chairs, tables, and lab benches in a feeble attempt to keep them on the floor, at least. One evening after dark when I went in to do something in the lab, I flipped on the light in the fly food kitchen and the whole floor, wall-to-wall, was undulating with roaches; they were as surprised as I was...

In closing, I still smile and reflect on how those days changed me. I have a deep appreciation for Dick’s humor and enthusiastic support, for all I learned from him, and for bringing together so many fascinating people. I cherish those times. Thank you with all my heart, Dick. RIP.

I am frequently asked about the disposition of Dick’s correspondence and other scientific materials such as his reprint collection. Here is an up-to-date account.

Dick intended that his papers be housed and accessible at the American Philosophical Society (APS), the home of the “Genetics Project,” an effort to collect the papers of many distinguished geneticists. He signed a deed-of-gift to the APS in the 1970s and reaffirmed it in 2007. Copies of much of his correspondence were sent there in 1980 and are accessible to scholars. In 2017, when Dick was ailing and no longer had need of his correspondence files, Charles Greifenstein, Curator of Manuscripts at the APS, contacted the Harvard Archives about how to transfer the originals and later materials that had not been previously transferred. He was told that the university has strict rules about what can be given to other repositories, with the main types of restricted material anything “to do with student grades and administrative files about Harvard departments or institutes.” As a result, all documents would need to be reviewed by archives staff prior to release to the APS.

Those of us involved with the disposition of the Lewontin papers were surprised by the demand to vet them as we knew that such a rule had not been applied, even very recently, to several other retired or deceased scientific colleagues of Dick. On raising this issue, I was told that the policy had always been on the books but that the decision to rigorously enforce it was recent. At the time, I accepted that there was nothing personal/political in the demand to review the papers and remove university records.

As it turned out, archives staff went far beyond the stated remit and in late May 2018 removed not only those documents relating to students, personnel decisions, and administration but apparently all folders that included even a single suspect document, resulting in gaping holes in the collection. In some cases, all folders falling under a particular letter of the alphabet or a segment of letters (e.g., Ka-Ke, Kf-Ki) were removed, as well as entire folders for individuals. Thus, the folder labelled “E.O. Wilson” was removed, with the inserted folder removal form indicating that it included materials relating to students. I strongly suspect that such material is a tiny fraction of the contents of the Wilson folder. On discovering that a large number of correspondence files had been removed, I protested and was told that the windowless room where the filing cabinets were stored was unpleasant (true), and that it would have taken staff too much time there to do a fine-tuned job.

Eventually, with much help from Steven Orzack, the correspondence files that remained were boxed and transferred to the APS (which also accepted Dick’s entire reprint collection). Although these materials have not been fully processed, the APS can arrange for a researcher to examine them. The person to contact about using the papers is now Dave Gary, Associate Director of Collections (dgary@amphilsoc.org).

The materials removed by Harvard archivists were shipped to storage. There are 16 boxes of materials in off-site storage: http://id.lib.harvard.edu/alma/99155950982003941/catalog

They are catalogued as "Harvard University Records created by Richard Lewontin", with the dates of the materials being 1959-2016. No folder list is publicly available.

The situation in respect to access to these materials is murky. From links at the bottom of the Hollis record, it seems possible to request access to the 16 boxes, but this would be at odds with the restriction note in the record. (At Harvard, access to university administrative records is restricted for a period of 50 years from their creation date, while student and personnel-related records are closed for a minimum of 80 years). For details, see:

https://library.harvard.edu/how-to/access-materials-harvard-university-archives#collection-availability

As can be seen in the accompanying photo, the folder removal sheets inserted in place of each removed folder encourage researchers to contact the Archives at archives_reference@harvard.edu for instructions on how to obtain permission to view restricted materials. I am informed that the exact process depends on a variety of factors, including the originating office or department, the applicable restriction (50 vs. 80 year), and the researcher’s affiliation with Harvard.

I very much hope that the Harvard archivists will conduct a more fine-grained review the materials they sequestered and soon return to the APS those that do not fall under Harvard’s access-restriction policy. However, I do not know of any concrete plans to do so.

As an undergrad in the MCZ at Harvard, I was taken by the buzz and excitement in Lewontin’s lab, around 1985-1986. His lab took up the entire third floor of the MCZ Laboratories – a space now shared by my own lab and that of Jim Hanken. (Yes, big shoes to fill – too big.). Lewontin’s lab had a few years earlier made the transition from allozymes to DNA sequencing. One could sense the excitement of innovation and discovery: Steve Schaeffer was mapping Drosophila pseudoobscura genes, Peg Riley looking at Xdh variation. The “inebriometer”. In Rodney Honeycutt’s lab in the Biological Laboratories, I was restriction mapping mtDNA of African rodents, but I had to expose my radioactive x-rays in Lewontin’s area. I bumped into Peg once coming out of the dark room and was amazed at the four lanes of dark bands running down the film – my first view of a DNA sequence. Steve taught me southern blots in Lewontin’s lab – a technique that I still feel has its rightful place in biology even today, not to be made irrelevant by genome sequencing (a point that my graduate students tend to ignore.)

The Lewontin lab then had the famous moose head, bedecked with all manner of trinkets from across the globe (and, perhaps, the trash can). The highlight of my undergrad career was giving a lab meeting as a senior in the open area section of Lewontin’s lab, beneath the moose head, with all manner of intimidating postdocs and grad students in attendance at the great table. I was forced to wear some sort of hat during my presentation, but I can’t remember the details.

Much later, in 2003 when I was just moving to Harvard and taking up some of Lewontin’s old space, I remember seeing some moving men carting down the elevator various paraphernalia from Lewontin’s lab, a big sign, a table. Was I feeling guilty? Yes. As far as I was concerned, they should have enshrined Lewontin’s lab (and Ernst Mayr’s office in the MCZ proper) for eternity and made it into a museum exhibit – not an idea the administrative gods at Harvard would look kindly on. I was lucky, however, that my first office in the MCZ was right opposite Lewontin’s mailbox. During the years 2004 to about 2012 or so, he would often say hello when he picked up his mail. Predictably, in those brief visits I would want to pick his brain about some rarified insight into population genetics or the history of the field. Inevitably, however, he would want to pick my brain about the birds at his bird feeder in Vermont. I dutifully obliged with what knowledge I had of New England birds, and waited for the next opportunity to bask in the presence of greatness.

Lewontin was a reader for my undergraduate thesis (1986). I still have his hand-written comments, in which he praised me for becoming an “expert” in the intricacies of Paup and other analytical methods. As usual he was being very generous. I had taken his statistics class, with none other than Hamish Spencer as my TA. Lewontin predictably would begin each lecture fairly kempt and clean, in his light blue shirt and khaki pants – code for some political stance I couldn’t fathom then - but end with chalk dust covering his chest, belly and face. Using the chalk board extensively and gesticulating and pondering with his chin in his hand often produced comical results. His lectures gave me a very deep first impression how intimately tied philosophy and statistics were – with political ramifications. Hamish’s sections were organized and showed me what real mastery of a subject was all about – chalkboards full of summation signs outlining analysis of variance. But it was also instructive to me that so many in the MCZ and in Lewontin’s orbit – Steve Orzack, Rob Blieweiss, Geoff Chambers, Dan Perlman – were bird watchers. This community showed me that being a scientist was not in conflict with hanging out with friends and enjoying the outdoors.

My senior year, I deeply regretted that I could not take population genetics from Lewontin. I so wanted to, but the biology degree required that I take physics, which I had put off until that same fall semester. As an undergrad in the MCZ at that time, one could sense that, even if the MCZ was a bit of a sleepy place, history was being made, or at least being articulated, especially in Lewontin’s classes. His commanding view of the field and his kindness to students was a rare combination that we should all try to emulate.

Dick Lewontin was one of my heroes; the scientist, socially responsible human being, and teacher I aspired to be and still aspire to be.

I first met Dick in 1963. I was a just starting graduate student at the University of Michigan. He invited me to the University of Rochester to talk with him about my research on the “t-allele” polymorphism. In 1960, Along with L.C. Dunn, Dick had published a paper on the evolutionary dynamics of the “t-allele” polymorphism in natural populations of house mice. Their study was, I believe, the first time computer (Monte Carlo) simulations were used in evolutionary biology.

Now, nearly sixty years later, I vividly recall that meeting. It was my first job as a “consultant”, my first paid-for flight, free hotel room, and dinner. Mostly, however, I remember Dick treating me as a colleague, not a student, listening to what I was saying and not just rattling on. I recall thinking, boy was he sharp and at the advanced age of thirty-three?

The next big thing I remember about Dick was his talk at the University of Michigan in 1966. He presented the results of the enzyme electrophoresis study of variation in Drosophila pseudoobscura he did with John Hubby. Wow!!! In 2016 Brian Charlesworth and colleagues wrote a fine review of that study and its implications for evolutionary biology (Genetics, Vol. 203 1497–1503), and I won’t rant about that.

However, as I see it, the 1966 article by Lewontin and Hubby, along with the 1965 article by Zukerkandl and Pauling, "Molecules as documents of evolutionary history" (Journal of Theoretical Biology 8(2):357-66) revolutionized population genetics and evolutionary biology. While breeding studies suggested that there was standing genetic variation in natural populations of animals and plants, until Lewontin and Hubby's 1966 article, we didn't have a clue about how much variation there was. Until the protein sequencing studies, we didn't know the rate at which evolution proceeds. Before that time, developing phylogenies and determining relationships between and within species were art forms.

In 1969, Arthur Jensen wrote an article in the Harvard Educational Review, “How much can we boost IQ and scholastic achievement”. The thesis of that article is that intelligence, as measured by IQ tests, has high heritability and, therefore, cannot be changed by environmental means like compensatory education. That would have been bad enough; the imitations of and problems with the inferences made could be readily addressed. However, in that article, Jensen asserted that racial differences in IQ, particularly between whites and blacks, can be attributed to genetic differences.

When the Jensen article was published, I was teaching a seminar at Brown University. We discussed that article, its failings, and what I considered Jensen's racist and/or opportunistic motivation for raising the racial issue, which was not essential to his thesis. The article, however, had a profound effect on Blacks. One student in my class came up to tell me that he had white ancestors. This perspective ultimately led to this student being ostracized by the Black students, having a nervous breakdown, and leaving the university.

It wasn't until 1974 or so that the Genetics community went after Jensen and the political and social implications of that 1969 article. In 1970, however, Dick published an article, "Race and Intelligence" in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientist. That beautifully written essay put Jensen’s article and the problems with its inferences in its place. In 1971, I taught for a week at Tugaloo, a Black college in Mississippi (big liberal I am). My primary purpose in going there was to talk about the errors and racist bullshit of the Jensen article. I was not able to give that talk. The Black faculty did not want a white man to talk about that article and subject. Fortunately, I was armed with multiple copies of Dick's Bulletin of the Atomic Scientist article, which I distributed.

In 1974, Dick published "The Genetic Basis of Evolutionary Change". It is a magnificent treatise; I could not put it down. An evolutionary biologist from England, Bryan Clarke, however, described what Dick had written in that book about the mechanisms responsible for the existence of inherited variation in natural populations as "doing pirouettes on the fence." Somehow, Dick had not gotten the word. In evolutionary biology, one champions hypotheses, not test them, or even seriously considers alternative hypotheses, as Dick did well in that book and beyond.

When I was living in Massachusetts, I would occasionally visit Dick in Cambridge, would meet him and Mary Jane at a restaurant in Brattleboro, and he would visit us in Amherst. I loved sitting around yakking with Dick and his group at Harvard, a group that included historians and social scientists, as well as population genetics, other evolutionary biology students, postdocs, and visitors. After I moved to Georgia, I would see Dick relatively rarely. There are so many things about which I would love to have talked to him. Alas! I will miss him greatly.

Y’all be well,

Bruce

I consider it a privilege to have attended the online symposium, “Celebrating Lewontin” on 29^th March 2022 at Harvard University.

I am a historian of science with a special interest in J. B. S. Haldane, another great evolutionary biologist like Lewontin, but belonging to the generation before him. During the course of my research it was important to learn about Haldane as a person, and his scientific work, as seen by others in his field, especially by his contemporaries and friends. It was for this reason that I contacted Prof. Richard Lewontin. I was not successful in getting his e-mail address. May be he did not have one. So I wrote an old-fashioned letter addressed to him at the Museum of Comparative Zoology, the Agassiz Museum. That was in May 2005. I was not very hopeful of getting a response. But to my delight, a long reply came back, also by post, in which he described his association with Haldane, interspersed with his views on Haldane as a person and his scientific work. As a bonus he also sent me a file containing their mutual correspondence, in which they had discussed Haldane’s work (with Haldane’s comments on political events of the day thrown in). It was even more special for me, as some work in progress which Haldane had sent to Lewontin, was in Haldane’s own handwriting.

Lewontin explained how he got to know Haldane personally, at the International Congress of Genetics held in The Hague, the Netherlands. As to Haldane’s contributions to modern biology, Lewontin acknowledged that Haldane, along with R. A. Fisher and Sewall Wright, was one of the founders of modern evolutionary genetics. But, he remarked that Haldane had a different approach towards addressing the relevant questions. It was characteristic of Haldane, Lewontin remarked, to make a mathematical model of the particular phenomenon of interest, not build a general over-arching theory. Lewontin felt that this characteristic was in keeping with his training in a huge variety of biological areas; and the hallmark of his personality was to know something about everything. In conclusion He added that Haldane was a biologist who recognised the immense complexity of biological organisms, and was prepared to deal with the same in their fullness, rather than trying to simplify them in the interest of coming up with a general law.

What came across was that Lewontin, in spite of being such a well-known biologist, was kind enough to help me to such an extent. It showed that he valued his friendship with Haldane and respected his scientific contributions. He was also aware of the importance of preserving the footprints left by such interactions in the annals of science. For me it was a heart-warming experience to benefit by interacting with a person of Lewontin’s stature. He had spent some of his precious time to put down his thoughts about a colleague and friend in science, to add value to the history of science.

Dr.Veena Rao

Centre for Human Genetics

Bangalore

India

E mail: ranividyanand@gmail.com

I began graduate school at Harvard in 1976, in large part with the hope of learning from Dick Lewontin. I’d seen him on a Nova show talking about race, and I thought, what a cool anthropologist! On the show he was reflecting on how Islamic scholars had once ruled the roost, proving that anyone from any culture could produce great science. I didn’t really want to become a bench biologist, so instead I joined the History of Science Department, where I got my PhD with a thesis on the origins of the ideal of “value-free science.” Dick was actually the first prof. I visited when I got to Harvard—that would have been in the summer of 1976—and I remember asking him what he thought about René Thom’s catastrophe theory, and he was pretty blunt in answering “not much.” We ended up talking instead about dialectical materialism, which he (and soon thereafter I) thought was much more insightful.

My closest interactions with Dick were through a course we taught together for about 8 years (co-taught with Steve Gould and Ruth Hubbard) called “Social Issues of Biology” (“Bio 106”). We’d invite different speakers to talk about things like race and IQ (Gould), or radical agriculture (Dick Levins), or global warming (Michael Oppenheimer), or feminist critiques of science (Ruth Hubbard), or the social history of medicine (Dave Rosner or Barbara Rosenkrantz), or biological warfare (Matt Meselson) or the militarization of science (George Kistiakowsky). That was a wonderful class, and one that, more than any other, formed my subsequent scholarly career. Gould and I would administer an IQ test to the undergrads according to protocols from circa 1920, and my job was to go around and urge everyone to “hurry up,” rapping their desks in the process. Dick would sometimes come to sections, and he was never one to suffer fools gladly. Dick would sometimes say that all we could really hope for was to educate five or ten percent of the students, and we should be happy with that. We talked a lot privately about dialectical materialism, and I even included a long chapter on diamat in my PhD thesis, before realizing this probably wouldn’t fit terribly well with philosophical fashions. (I contacted a couple of leading “dialectical materialists” when I first visited East Germany circa 1977, and got turned off pretty quickly by them pushing me to embrace real existierende Sozialismus—and the photos they had on their walls of military weaponry).

Dick had lots of clever insights, including some that were breathtaking in their beauty and simplicity. We talked a lot about the corruption of science—by Big Ag or Big Sugar and Big Tobacco—and I remember him saying at one point that cigarettes should just be banned! We often talked about the poverty of pop ethology and sociobiology and their psychological confreres á la Jensen and Eysenck and Rushton. Dick had equal scorn for Democrats and Republicans; he liked to say that the Democrats were the party of big business, and the Republicans were the party of small business. Dick didn’t always have the highest regard for his Harvard colleagues, and he used to joke that he’d never had an intellectual conversation after leaving the University of Chicago. He also made fun of academic honorifics: he claimed to have living proof of Matthew effect, since people would credict him (as the senior bigwig) for a paper, even if his coauthor was first author.

Gould and Lewontin were two of my guiding lights by this point, and I was an instant convert to punctuated equilibrium (from 1976). And all of us loved the meteoritic explanation for the extinction of the dinosaurs. Bio 106 had a close link to Science for the People (for which I worked briefly)—we were all feminists and quasi-Marxists, and anti-apartheid and anti-colonialist. And while Gould and Lewontin were paired on race and feminism and other other matters radical, they didn’t see eye-to-eye on many things. Gould’s Marxism was more cultural, and lighthearted; Dick’s was more serious, and ontological. Lewontin sometimes even chided Gould for implying that people do science “just for fun.” I got to know both of these guys pretty well (I’m not sure why, but I can’t bring myself to call them “men”), and while Gould was all flowers and ebullient prose, Dick struck me as the more warm and personable fellow.

I got a job at Penn State in the late 1980s, for example, and Dick came to my house (in State College) and immediately lofted my two-year old son (Geoffrey) into his arms, cradling him like it was his own son. Gould turned one of Londa’s articles (“Why Mammals are Called Mammals”) into a column, but Dick always seemed the more menschlich to be around. Dick was also supportive of my work on Nazi medicine. The whole impetus for my first book (Racial Hygiene, 1988) came from our Bio 106 excavation of eugenics: here we were attacking American eugenics, but where was the history of the really big eugenics, in Nazi Germany? I remember coming back from a Fulbright year in Germany (in 1981) and Dick looked at me and said I looked too much like a German. I told him about a scholar in East Germany who had claimed to have developed a hormonal “cure” for homosexuality—the drug was dubbed “Hetero-forte,” tongue-in-cheek—and Lewontin wanted us to write that up together, which we never got around to.

Dick’s most interesting bond (for me) was with Richard Levins. Those two shared a deep commitment to dialectical materialism, and Levins would stand up and lecture to us on radical agriculture, rat-a-tat tat without notes, hands clasped behind his back. Levins was to Lewontin as Lewontin was to Gould—philosophically at least, along a stiff-to-soft axis. Levins was as pro-Castro as Lewontin was pro-Soviet, though I’m not sure how much of that ever got put down in print. Dick used to talk about how he and Levins were both Levites, and no doubt related; he often talked about the pendulum swing of whether Jews were a race or a religion, and more than once told me about how some of his older Harvard colleagues were willing to welcome Jews, so long as they were sufficiently “white.” I remember thinking about how odd it was that so many of my guiding lights at Harvard were Jewish: the two Dicks of course, but also Ruth Hubbard, Stephen Jay Gould, Everett Mendelsohn, Matt Meselson, Barbara Rosenkrantz, and I Bernard Cohen—that was puzzling to a guy coming from Kansas City and before that Texas, I would not have been more surprised if all eight had been Muslims or Buddhists.

I remember Diane Paul chiding Dick (to me) as a kind of intellectual Stalinist, and there is an element of truth in that. I’ll never forget how disappointed he was with the fall of the Wall and the Soviet Union, he was over at my house in the final months of Gorbachev, and I’ll never forget how bitter he seemed; Dick clearly felt that Gorbachev had betrayed the spirit of the revolution. I remember being both amused (and slightly disappointed) to find him so disgruntled. His was a brand of Marxism I always found a bit strange: I was more of a moralist but Dick really had this notion that capitalism was doomed (eventually) to fail, by the iron laws of social motion outlined in Das Kapital. I always considered that a flaw and a parochialism in his otherwise critical vision. Politics, though, was not his forte: Dick was primarily interested in the dialectics of nature, and in that it is hard to find his equal.

Intellectual mentors can be like surrogate parents for a young scholar; perhaps that is even sad for certain fathers. I never followed Dick closely in the tradecraft he practiced, and never even really cared for his population genetics (I think he misfigured DNA forensics, for example). But as a model of scholarly integrity and a creative source of inspiration, and a joiner of truth and justice, Dick always figured big for me. I’m not sure I was ever close enough to be called a friend, but as a student I’ve always been proud to call him my teacher.

As a PhD student in the mid 90's at Stony Brook with Walt Eanes, I used to take the Long Island ferry over to CT and drive up to Cambridge to visit Harvard now and again. Andrew was a great host in introducing me to the fold, and I used the lab as a home base for sorting flies and for my fly food while sampling around the New England area. It also gave me a chance to meet and chat with Dick. As his reputation held, he always found time to talk, and even if it was 15 minutes, conversations quickly moved to substance and query. I learned how to cut to the chase and fast forward past the bland. He always ended our conversations with "Ok, but what's next?" (the way he ended his epilogue at the infamous DickFest in 1998). I came to anticipate that and started my stories with the "what's next" part as if I was being interviewed by the local newspaper. I've used that type of conversation with my students until today...get to the big picture first, not last.

My favorite personal memory of Dick came a few years later. When I took a NSF joint postdoc at the University of Maryland and George Washington in 2001, I invited Dick to come to College Park and he chose to use it to promote his Triple Helix book. He graciously agreed to give a University plenary and gave an evening open-presentation in the largest auditorium on campus visited by faculty, students, and community folk. I hosted him throughout his 2 day stay and we caught up. He was particularly interested in my jump from Drosophila to human population genetics just after the human genome draft was published in 2001. He also warned me well in advance of the difference between the two cultures. On the evening of the plenary, we had a reception attended by many and in an open circle of people in the middle of the room a conversation sparked up about mentoring and evaluating dissertations. I remarked about how much I enjoyed being a student at Stony Brook because of the incredible dialogue and open theater to be confrontational, and how important that was to science. However, it felt as if times were changing and not all students were interested in that often combative way of interacting, and maybe change was in the air. As almost on cue, Dick jumped in and said how much he disagreed and if we didn't stand up for that type of dialogue that science would become weak and unsupported. Our back-and-forth, in front of a group of a about a dozen onlookers, was the perfect example of how important that confrontational interaction is. The look on some people's faces was terrifying, but what eventually became clear was that Dick and I were actually having a conversation! I drove him back to his hotel later that night, and said goodnight and hoped his flight the next morning went well. And this is the part I'll never forget. Dick turned to me in the car and apologized. He said he was sorry if I felt attacked or that if he was too over the top in front of others in arguing with me. He said he agreed that times were always evolving. I was floored but not surprised. We chatted a bit longer, and when I walked him to the hotel front door, he hugged me and said how much he enjoyed his stay.

This is who Dick was; no matter who he spoke with, he was always a gracious and reflective individual. He was never afraid to speak his mind and give his opinion, but he also cared what you felt too. He never forgot that we were scientists, but also human beings. I try to imitate that type of mentoring and interaction with my students and colleagues. I remain critical, but constructive. Thank you Dick.