Stephen J. Gould's Last University Presentation
Courage and Professionalism on Earth Day, 2002
While climate science is the main focus of this site, attention to how science is presented to general audiences is part of the topic as well. This essay captures a major event reflecting my abiding interest in the process of communicating science.
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I’ve recently had the good fortune to reconnect with many former students and colleagues, including John Pastor up in Northern Minnesota, with whom I share a strong interest in writing about science for popular audiences. I have used John’s first book (What Should a Clever Moose Eat) in my classes. It is a very enjoyable exploration of the spruce-moose biome, as one former professor used to call it, and the interactions between plants, the animals that would eat them, and the North Woods in general.
When John and I worked together at the University of Wisconsin, we would make room each month to find the most recent issue of Natural History magazine, and read and discuss the monthly essay by Stephen J. Gould. So our shared interest in “popular science” writing, a term Gould did not like, goes back decades.
Fast forward to the spring of 2002. As a professor at the University of New Hampshire, I had the opportunity to offer a seminar for graduate students in the environmental sciences on communicating science to broader audiences. There was more interest in the topic than I expected, and the seminar was fully enrolled. As the semester wound down, we thought of inviting a speaker to campus as a capstone experience. Who to ask? Given the topic and the region, Stephen J. Gould seemed the best choice. Could we land him?
Turns out we could, and did. He was scheduled for Earth Day 2002, and a major event was created around his anticipated presence.
It turned out to be Gould’s last major college appearance. He died about a month later. I was so moved by his strength and personal response to his condition as well as the event and its aftermath, that I wrote the following essay in tribute. I did not create this right away or try to publish the story at the time of his passing. That would have felt like grandstanding over a tragic loss. As one colleague said – it would have been like academic ambulance chasing. At this remove in time, and for the purposes of this site, I think the story is worth telling now.
My thanks to David Foster of the Harvard Forest for an early reading and encouragement to publish this piece, and to John Pastor for a critical reading.
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“He has just had brain surgery!”
A graduate student in my popular science writing class at the University of New Hampshire had just checked Stephen J. Gould’s website. Dr. Gould was scheduled to visit with my class and then present a major university-wide lecture on Earth Day, 2002. His arrival was delayed, prompting the website visit, and the shocking news that it revealed. As the afternoon wore on with no word from Dr. Gould or his agent, we wondered if we would see him at all.
The class was an elective that built on my own and the students’ desire to understand and to practice how best to communicate science to general audiences. As a capstone event, we considered who might be the best practitioner of this art to come speak with us. Stephen J. Gould was the unanimous choice.
The presentation, in the University’s largest performance space, was scheduled for early evening. To pay for Dr. Gould’s appearance, I had used up lots of goodwill chips on campus, wheedled scarce funds from Deans, VPs and the President’s Office, advertised widely, and distributed free but required tickets that guaranteed a full house.
The students in the class would be the ushers for the event, but they would also get to meet and talk with our guest in the weekly seminar. Best of all, I would have the chance to meet one of my heroes, a true master of the craft of turning scientific fact into elegant prose. The agreement included an hour to be spent with my class before the talk, followed by a brief reception with those who were funding the event.
“He is bringing his mother!”
Another unexpected development. As the hour grew late and our star guest still had not appeared, I was in touch with his management agency and handler. While assuring us that he was on the way, his traveling companion was a surprise.
Gould had just published I Have Landed, his final book of essays, and one that included more of his personal story than he had been wont to present before. Both there and previously he had written about a serious bout of cancer at the age of 42 that almost took his life, a topic he isolated from personal tragedy by describing it as a lesson in statistical distributions and rare events - his remission being one of those events.
Until that student’s discovery on Gould’s webpage, we were unaware that he had suffered a serious relapse; that cancer had invaded his brilliant mind, and that exploratory surgery, just performed, had determined that nothing could be done. This, as it turned out, was to be his last university lecture.
Late afternoon brought the arrival of our guest, and yes, his mother was with him. The scars on his head were quite visible. He was shaky but focused. He sat in the seminar room and made at least an attempt to answer a couple of questions, but he did not connect with anyone there. He acknowledged no names, spoke no greetings.
The most memorable moment in the seminar followed a benign student question along the lines of “how did you get where you are?” Gould hesitated, and his mother, sitting next to him at the seminar table, gently said, “Tell them about the museum, Stevie.” And so he rolled out a standard Gould tale about visits to the American Museum of Natural History in New York as a child, and how that had affected him.
Due to the late arrival, there was not much time for the seminar part of the day, as the President and others were all waiting for the brief and informal reception that was to precede the presentation. I tried to introduce Gould to our President and others, but it was clear that nothing was registering at all. No conversation – I doubt he absorbed anyone’s name.
After just a brief stay and a bit of food, while sitting alone in the corner, Gould’s manager said it was time for him to prepare for the talk, and escorted him off to a quiet room, by himself.
About 30 minutes before the talk, I went with Gould, his mother, and his manager to the auditorium. The hall filled quickly, with all of those who had donated to support the evening’s event in the first few rows.
I sat backstage with Gould and we had a brief exchange. He was seated in a simple wooden chair, rocking back and forth as if in pain, and appeared to be unable to speak clearly. I did get to say how much I admired his writing; that I was a big fan, and that he was one of my idols. That was OK. I said my introduction would be flowery and adulatory, and I hoped he didn’t mind. He said he didn’t. The one spark in that short conversation, if it could be called that, was when I mentioned something about the Red Sox – and there was a bit of light in his face as he responded.
So, here are several hundred people seated out front waiting to see a genius at work. Many of them had supported the evening’s event, and on a campus without lots of money to spend on such things. And I was not at all sure what I was about to introduce to them.
When the time came to go on, I said that I was going to go out and do the introduction – that got a nod. I can’t remember all that I said in that introduction, but it was from the heart. As the introduction was coming to an end, I had no idea what would follow. I concluded with something banal like “And so, we welcome Dr. Stephen J. Gould.”
And out he strode! Fully erect, smiling, not a trace of limitation in appearance or voice. We had put a stool behind the podium in case he needed the support. He very visibly moved that stool aside and addressed the audience. The talk lasted more than an hour, and he took questions for another half hour, at least. He was lucid, humorous, dynamic, engaging, entertaining. I was stunned. Those in the audience who had not been aware of our afternoon saga, and that was most in the hall, did not know that he was ailing at all.
Gould used his famous drunk-on-the-sidewalk analogy for extinction, demonstrating by staggering across the stage. He also made a clear statement that even the relatively slow rates of extinction that we are now experiencing, multiplied over geological time scales, would yield a mass extinction event. It was one of the strongest statements I had heard from him about the loss of biodiversity – and very appropriate for Earth Day.
After 90 minutes or so I went back out and asked for a last question. When this was answered there was thunderous applause – the event was a huge success!
Gould strode off-stage and collapsed back into that same wooden chair, once again rocking back and forth. His mother came up onto the stage and into the wings, touched him and said, “That was very good, Stevie.” He looked at her, stood up, walked across the backstage area leaning on her arm, out the side door, into the limousine and was gone. I’m sure he never had the slightest idea who I was.
Gould died about a month later. He did make a couple more appearances in book stores and small venues, but was gone from us very soon.
It was a memorable, challenging and sad day, but in the end it was also an honor to host his last major university lecture, and to watch him rally, as a true professional, for this final, incredible, large-lecture performance.