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DOCUMENTS OF THE GENERAL FACULTY
REPORT OF THE MEMORIAL RESOLUTION COMMITTEE FOR
WILLIAM C. “BILL” GARDINER
The special committee of the General Faculty to prepare a memorial
resolution for William C. “Bill” Gardiner, professor,
chemistry and biochemistry, has filed with the secretary of
the General Faculty the following report.
<signed>
John R. Durbin, Secretary
The General Faculty
IN MEMORIAM
WILLIAM C. “BILL” GARDINER
William C. “Bill” Gardiner,
67, died at Brackenridge Hospital, Austin, Texas, on November
17, 2000, following a tragic bicycle accident. He was born on
January
14, 1933, in Niagara Falls, New York, to William C. and Charlotte
Gardiner.
Professor Gardiner was educated in the public schools of Niagara
Falls and received an A.B. degree from Princeton University
in 1954, graduating summa cum laude. He was elected to Phi
Beta
Kappa and Sigma Xi at Princeton. Gardiner attended Heidelberg
University
and Göttingen University in Germany on a Fulbright Scholarship
from 1954 to 1956. He received a Ph.D. in 1960 from Harvard
University under the supervision of George Kistiakowsky. After
appointments
as laboratory or research assistant with Union Carbide Corp.,
Max-Planck-Institute für Physikalische Chemie, and Harvard
University, Professor Gardiner joined the faculty of The University
of Texas in 1960
as instructor, having been recruited by Chairman Norman Hackerman.
He was promoted to assistant professor in 1962, associate professor
in 1967 and, professor in 1972. Gardiner received a second Fulbright
Fellowship and was named a Guggenheim Fellow in 1975, a Humboldt
Senior Scientist Award in 1979, and a Thyssen Fellow in 1982.
Professor Gardiner was the Lady Davis Visiting Professor at Hebrew
University,
Jerusalem, in 1985 and received the Japan Society for the Promotion
of Science Award in 1991. He was a member of a number of important
scientific organizations including the American Chemical Society,
American Physical Society, American Association for the Advancement
of Science, and the Combustion Institute.
During the course of his forty years as a member of the UT
faculty, Bill Gardiner achieved international recognition for
his contributions
to the science of combustion chemistry, as demonstrated by
a large body of work published in prestigious journals, his
books,
and
his numerous national and international awards. Professor Gardiner
pioneered new concepts for understanding the mechanism of combustion
processes by analyzing the complex interactions between elementary
chemical reactions and physical transport processes such as
turbulent flow, heat conduction, and diffusion. He approached
this important
problem by drawing from concepts in mathematics, physics, biology,
and chemistry. Part of his interdisciplinary work and his careful
studies of the rates and products of many important chemical
reactions in combustion chemistry are described in his well
known books and
are valued by colleagues worldwide. The publication in Scientific
American of two articles in two entirely different fields,
combustion chemistry and molecular evolution, in a two-year
period clearly
demonstrated the breadth and depth of Gardiner’s scholarship.
He carried out his research with colleagues in many countries
and influenced the lives and careers of undergraduates, graduate
students,
postdoctoral fellows, and senior scientists all over the world.
He was also famous for his teaching, which combined tough standards
and nurturing delivered in his completely unique style. He cared
deeply for his students.
His friends and colleagues will always remember Bill Gardiner
for his cheery ways, his striking sense of humor, and his love
of the
outdoors. He and his wife Regina enjoyed numerous hiking and
biking adventures. Bill was a competitive cyclist, often participating
in distance events such as the MS 150 mile ride from Houston
to
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Austin. He also enjoyed skiing, bowling, rock and mountain
climbing, camping and kayaking, and he was an active player
with the Lazers
soccer team.
Professor Gardiner is survived by his mother, Charlotte Gardiner;
his wife, Dr. Regina Monaco; his daughters, Grace Baker of
Houston, Charlotte Gardiner of Austin, and Amy Chanmugam of
Austin; two
grandsons, Rhett and Merritt Baker; his brothers, Peter Gardiner
of Sunrise, Florida, and John Gardiner of Oak Park, Illinois;
and by his first wife and the mother of his daughters, Gertraut
Schimanski
Gardiner; as well as by a large extended family and countless
former students and colleagues.
UT President Larry Faulkner, a former student of Gardiner,
remembers him as a superb teacher – one of the best he ever had. Faulkner
says, “He had a remarkable grasp of the material he was teaching
as well as an exceptional way of presenting it….Gardiner
was a scholar of exceptional quality, and I think you can’t
lose a person of that nature without being diminished.”
Bill’s life was, of course, much fuller and richer than
described by the brief summary provided above. In an attempt
to paint a more
complete picture, we wish to share our personal and individual
remembrances of Bill. What follows was written without prior
consultation among the three of us. The picture of our colleague
that emerges
is one of great intellect, boundless energy and enthusiasm,
passion for learning and teaching, and genuine care for his
family, friends,
colleagues and students. We find it remarkable that these elements
of his character were evident to all of us, representing three
generations of physical chemists who worked closely with Bill
over the course of his nearly 40 year career in the department.
Stephen E. Webber
I first encountered Bill Gardiner while interviewing at Texas
and even had the opportunity to meet his family, because I
was invited
to his home for dinner rather than the more usual dinner out
with a few of the departmental members. It was a pleasant affair
but
there was an undercurrent of serious intellectual discourse
and intensity, which was always present in any of Bill's activities,
including his serious lifelong involvement with bicycling.
The
University of Texas Department of Chemistry was a different
place in those days, and Bill stood out as being considerably
less
laid back than most of his contemporaries. Before I came to
Texas I
was able to spend a year in London as a postdoctoral fellow
and had the opportunity to have lunch with W. A. Noyes, Jr.,
who
had arrived at Texas a few years earlier after a long and very
impressive
career at the University of Rochester. He had taken charge
of recruitment of physical chemists for the UT (and, in fact,
our
guest for lunch
in London was a potential recruit). Over lunch Noyes said,
indiscreetly perhaps, that Gardiner was "one of the good ones." I
later understood what that meant: the laid back young faculty I
had visited with during my interview were gone when I arrived,
having been denied tenure, which probably was an effect of Noyes'
demand that excellence in research or research potential be the
primary criterion for tenure. From my point of view, the recruitment
efforts and decisions about retention as influenced by Noyes were
instrumental in the ascent of the Department of Chemistry (and
Biochemistry) in the national rankings that started in the mid-1960s.
Bill Gardiner was then one of the "young guys" who
contributed strongly to this increased visibility and national
impact. However,
Bill's contribution to our international impact may have been
stronger.
Bill had been a student in Germany, studying with Manfred Eigen,
where he acquired a fluent command of German, a second major
field of research (the application of biophysical approaches
to the study
of molecular evolution), and a German wife (I'm not sure that
these all occurred at the same time...). Bill was someone who
enjoyed
the international aspect of science, especially the opportunity
for people to study in other countries, where there was so
much to be learned beyond the specifics of the science itself.
It seems
clear that his own positive experiences in Germany influenced
this interest considerably. It was always the case that his
lab became
one of the homes away from home for many of our foreign students,
especially Europeans. Many of these students continued to visit
or hang around Gardiner's lab even if they were working with
other professors for their Ph. D. Bill's influence on our Ph.
D. students
extended far beyond those in his own research group.
Bill was a rigorous thinker and was quick to disarm any wishful
thinking about the proper explanation of some research results.
He could almost always be counted on to ask the first question
after a seminar, and the question was often just a little more
pointed than the seminar speaker might have hoped for. He also
wanted our classes to be rigorous and challenging to even the
best students. As a consequence he often went into topics or
approaches
to a subject that were "not in the book." This did
not make him the most popular teacher in our
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department even
though
even the most critical students had to admit that his lectures
were clear and spirited, albeit rather advanced. As a consequence,
our best undergraduate and graduate students tended to think
of his classes as among the best they had at UT, and our mid-range
to weak students would try to arrange their schedules to avoid
his section of physical chemistry. Eventually this was not
possible as he was the one to develop a section of the physical
chemistry
sequence designed for biological science majors, including
biochemistry, and those students were obliged to take it. Many
of us later
built
on this foundation to produce the kind of course that would
be the most useful to life sciences/biological sciences majors.
Bill was also among the first members of our department to
take advantage of the potential of PCs on science, designing
a course
which allowed students to use these new tools for everything
from quantum mechanical calculations to Web page design to
the use of
mathematical programs to solve more complex but realistic physical
chemistry problems. All this seems routine now, but Bill started
it, so far as I know.
I also have a strong recollection that Bill was one of our
faculty to speak up strongly in favor of the split of Natural
Sciences
and Liberal Arts. This split was very controversial when it
happened, and it was against the will of a strong dean, John
Silber, who
was not above punishing a faculty member whom he considered
not quite up to his standards (that is, didn't agree with him).
Bill
was typically outspoken about something he felt deeply about,
and he didn't think that the administrative structure as it
existed
at that time was ever going to allow the sciences at UT to
grow to their potential. I think he was probably correct.Alan
Campion
From my perspective, chemistry at UT experienced two distinct
transitions in quality and expectations; the first was described
above, and
I was privileged to join the faculty in the early 1980s, during
an era in which the University underwent another major transformation
and the Department of Chemistry joined the ranks of the top
20 nationwide. It is clear that meeting Bill during our interviews
left indelible impressions on the three of us. My guess is
that
this was a common experience for all prospective faculty who
met with him. Most scientists know a great deal about a few
things or a little about a lot of things; Bill knew a lot about
a lot
of things. Until you realized that there was no malice intended,
in the precision with which he asked questions and the degree
to
which they were on target, even in fields far from his own,
the effect was intimidating. I left my interview wondering
why I
hadn’t
thought through my research proposal more carefully.
As well known as Bill was for his research, I found his interest
in developing new graduate courses over the past decade or
so to be really inspiring. He was always known for being a
superb
classroom
teacher (demanding but helpful). Bill developed and taught
two new graduate courses that I believe are among the most
important
contributions that have been made in graduate education in
several decades. As mentioned above, computational chemistry
had been
the province of specialists until a few years ago. The combination
of supercomputer workstations with the availability of accurate,
robust, and user-friendly commercial software has made computational
approaches an important addition to the chemists’ toolkit.
Bill recognized early on, however, that without proper instruction
these tools could end up being like Nintendo (his term), fun
but not useful (or even misleading) for serious science. He
created a hands-on course in computational chemistry that reviewed
the
basic quantum and statistical mechanics thoroughly and then
went on to show students how to use the most powerful and popular
software
efficiently and intelligently.
The second course that Bill created, and several of us team-taught
with him, was a graduate course in experimental physical chemistry.
Such a course would have been unnecessary (even unthinkable)
30 years ago, where all of us were expected to learn the nuts
and
bolts of designing, building, and conducting experiments. Although
we had the help of professional technicians, we were all expected
to know elementary machining, glassblowing, and electronics.
The evolution of physical chemistry over the years has resulted
in
the use of sophisticated instrumentation (molecular beams,
ultrahigh vacuum, and femtosecond lasers, for example) the
construction
of which is beyond the capability of most research groups.
Consequently we have all relied increasingly on commercial
instrumentation
to
carry out our work. Essentially all of these instruments are
computer controlled, removing the experimentalist one more
step from the
experiment. Although this development was recognized, at least
anecdotally, by several of us, Bill was the first to take action
and to propose that we teach our students what I have come
to call the essentials of measurement. Led by him we developed
a
course
that included statistics, noise, electronics, optics, spectroscopy,
lasers, and surface analysis –
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the modern tools of our trade.
Bill’s goal was to get the students to understand that measurement
is the result of the interaction between the instrument and the
physical system of interest, and that the numbers we get come from
someplace fundamental and not “the computer.” It’s
especially tragic to me that we were just completing our first
experiment with this course when Bill died. I think that his
enthusiasm for the idea was catalytic, and I sincerely hope
that one of us
will carry on his lead in this important endeavor.
John F. Stanton
I first met Bill Gardiner on a cold morning in January of 1993.
I was in Austin for a job interview, hopeful that I would receive
an offer from the department and largely oblivious to the unusual
nature of the overnight dusting of snow the city had received.
It was the second day of my interview, the dreaded "chalk
talk" in which job candidates are forced to think on their
feet and present an overview of the research directions they would
pursue as an assistant professor. My "chalk talk" was
attended by remarkably few faculty, only one of whom had not
interviewed me the previous day. The unfamiliar face was the
source of the
most in-depth and penetrating questions, and he came up to
me afterwards and we talked about a subject that was obviously
near
and dear
to him: the reactions of radicals at high temperatures and
the associated mechanistic pathways. It was immediately clear
to
me that this man was extremely bright and enthusiastic about
science
as well as having a very dry and wonderful sense of humor,
the sort of colleague that I really wanted to have. It was
Bill Gardiner.
Two stories come to mind when I think of my late friend. The
first occurred about two months after my arrival at UT in the
fall of
1993. I was sitting in my office one early afternoon after
a lecture when Bill came by and asked me to lunch. We walked
out
of the building,
and drove to the Eastside Cafe in his jalopy. Bill revealed
a lot about himself that afternoon. He definitely obeyed a
strict
diet,
eating only the healthiest foods. He enjoyed "testing" me,
asking me lots of questions that he either knew the answer
to or had a strong opinion about (scientific, historical or
political).
Perhaps he did this to everyone. I don't know. However, I am
pretty
sure that I passed his test, at least in the sense that Bill
and I had similar opinions about a lot of things. Until his
death, Bill was by far the faculty member who most frequently
knocked
on my door and came in for a chat. I learned a lot in those
discussions, and we formed a strong bond. The last thing I
remember about
that
lunch was the Einstein story. Apparently, Bill once sat next
to him in a movie house in Princeton while Bill was in school
and
Einstein was in his latter years at the Institute for Advanced
Study. Bill told me that the white-haired gentleman had arrived
with his daughter to watch a double feature. The first was
a movie of the Disney genre, the second something more serious.
I think
it was a Western, but I am not sure. Evidently, Einstein enjoyed
the Disney movie very much, but muttered something in German
to his daughter shortly after the second show had begun and
they
left
the theatre. The image of Einstein watching a Disney movie
with a gleam in his eye still makes me smile.
The second story took place at Bill's apartment in South Austin.
He invited my family and me to brunch one Sunday afternoon.
Other members of his family were there, as well as some students
from
his research group. At the time, my eldest daughter was three
and the younger girl was a newborn. By and large, when children
are
invited to dinner parties or other social functions organized
by academicians, it is something of a drag for them. Not this
time.
Bill paid more attention to my three-year-old than anyone else
who attended the brunch. After her five minutes of interest
in the food, Bill got down on the floor with her, showed her
things
and seemed to genuinely enjoy himself. A bit later, he returned
from his bedroom with two beautifully wrapped presents for
my girls! I realized at that time that my initial take on Bill—that
he was an undeniably bright and enthusiastic scholar in addition
to being a wonderful human being—was right on the mark.
My daughter probably has no recollection of that day, but the
stuffed
animal that was inside the wrapping paper still has a place
in her room. Just as Bill has a place in all of our hearts.
This memorial resolution was prepared by a special committee consisting
of Professors Alan Campion (chair), Stephen E. Webber, and John
F. Stanton.
Distributed to the dean of the College of Natural Sciences,
the executive vice president and provost, and the president on
September 2, 2003. Copies are available on request from the Office
of the General Faculty, FAC 22, F9500. This resolution is posted
under "Memorials" at: http://www.utexas.edu/faculty/council/.
