A standing-room-only crowd of colleagues, former and current students, friends and admirers filled the main auditorium of the Center for Theatre Arts Nov. 17 to talk science, honor Thomas Eisner, the Schurman Professor of Chemical Ecology, and hear tales of his 43 years at Cornell.
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| At a symposium in his honor at the Center for Theatre Arts Nov. 17, Thomas Eisner, left, the J.G. Schurman Professor of Chemical Ecology, thanks symposium participants John Law, University of Arizona entomologist, center; and Roald Hoffmann, Cornell's Frank H.T. Rhodes Professor of Humane Letters. Barry DeLibero/University Photography |
The customary name for the honorary presentation of scholarly papers by one's colleagues, Festschrift, was "too German" to suit Eisner, whose family had fled Nazi Germany before the war, and his suggested label, "a pre-posthumous wake," was too morbid for the event's organizers. So they had settled on "A Symposium Celebrating the Career of Thomas Eisner: Learning From Nature."
Three distinguished colleagues who certainly learned from nature led off the 4 1/2-hour session with plenary lectures. Harvard's Edward O. Wilson, an Eisner pal since their graduate-school days, discussed in detail his hopes for "consilience," the attempt to reconcile all forms of human inquiry. Fotis C. Kafatos, currently chief of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory who, as an undergraduate student of Eisner had published his first scientific papers here, revealed a molecular-biology strategy to turn the tables on the malaria parasite and its mosquito vector.
The third plenary speaker, University of Arizona Regents Professor John G. Hildebrand, compared the olfactory systems of moths with humans, and was the first to cite the scientifically productive relationship between the honoree and his laboratory assistant (and wife of 48 years), Maria Eisner. Showing a published photo of the pair smooching and alluding to a notorious Democratic Convention kiss, Hildebrand said: "Al Gore's got nothing on Tom Eisner."
But the heart-felt remembrances really flowed with "brief remarks" by additional friends and colleagues, including Cornell presidents emeriti Dale R. Corson and Frank H.T. Rhodes.
Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology Jerrold Meinwald, who had preceded Eisner on the Cornell faculty in 1952, recalled: "Five years later something happened that changed my life." The young entomologist had been escorted to the chemistry department by a faculty member who, in Meinwald's recollection, said: "He (Eisner) may from time to time have some problems in chemistry and you may be able to help him out." Together, the "Tom-and-Jerry" team helped each other invent a scientific field, with Eisner making biological discoveries and Meinwald explicating the underlying chemistry. "I have all my life been a student of Tom Eisner," Meinwald proclaimed. "He taught me to appreciate the significance of chemistry in the biological life around us, how life really works and what is really fun."
Meinwald and Eisner would hash out insect-chemistry problems over lunch at the Statler, the chemist recalled. And their musical collaborations were nearly as productive, with Eisner playing piano (installed in the laboratory) to Meinwald's flute. "The top administrators don't want to know how much time Tom and I spent doing music," Meinwald said.
Several symposium attendees observed that Eisner could easily have earned a living as a concert pianist or a nature photographer -- had he not concentrated on biology. Those two arts, which are now difficult for a biologist battling Parkinson's disease, would be on display later that night in the Johnson Museum of Art when President Hunter Rawlings hosted a smaller fete. Professor of Music Malcolm Bilson gave a piano recital, and nature photographers Susan Middleton and David Littschwager showed pictures of imperiled plants and animals, highlighting Eisner's advocacy for the federal Endangered Species Act and his passion for conservation.
During the afternoon symposium, whale biologist (and amateur cellist) Roger Payne called Eisner "a renaissance man of science, art, music and life" and also recalled Eisner's penchant for promptness and a practical joke when Payne was his teaching assistant in Biology 1. Payne was already in trouble for showing up late when a snow-filled Ithaca winter forced him to bunk in the laboratory instead of driving to the country home he shared with a young Katy Payne. The top of a lab table was his bed and it must have been tolerably comfortable because Payne slept very late -- and arose to find Eisner and a hushed class seated patiently around him.
Nobel laureate chemist Professor Roald Hoffmann took the audience further back, to his and Eisner's mutual experience of fleeing the Holocaust and eventually reaching America, where they attended college and both sought careers in education.
Immigration history repeats, Hoffmann said, and today "the children of Russian cab drivers in New York City and the children of Korean grocers" are at Cornell. So are some of Eisner's best students, he added, here from Uruguay where the family of Hans Eisner found wartime asylum. "Tom knows why it is such a joy to teach these people today," Hoffmann said. "While we remember the children who did not survive, we are shaping our own constellations. And teaching others."
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