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Apr. 13th, 2019 09:37 amEarly this week I drove with my PI to WV to visit an emeritus professor in our field who is 96(!!!) years old. Not only is he 96, but he's still sharp and still doing research and getting out and about and holy crap I hope I'm still going strong when (if I get to) 96. He made some notable achievements, including putting together a well-known ID key for our plant pathogen, and agreed to give us not only his entire culture collection for our pathogen (including a ton of species we don't have), but also the original slides he made when making his key for us to digitize. It's a HUGE amount of work and it was surreal to be driving down a mountain with someone's 30-year body of work in the trunk.
It was interesting to get to talk to him. We'd communicated over email before but this was the first time I got to meet him in person. It was a little mind boggling to hear him say things like "Yeah, when I was working back in the 50s..." I can't help but feel like if I was talking with a tree, the conversation would go something like this, with references made to times so beyond when I existed that it takes a moment to wrap my head around I'm talking with someone who was going strong then.
He also had some moments of sheer hilarity. Not five minutes after we arrived at his place he was offering us whiskey and scotch and saying "LET'S DRINK." We ended up spending the rest of the evening chatting about science and the people he's worked with. It was a bit of a rough trip at times (the unfortunate decision was made for us to head back at 4:30PM. We got back LAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAATE ow I think I'm still recuperating a little), but I'm really glad I went. Opportunities like this don't come around every day.
It was interesting to get to talk to him. We'd communicated over email before but this was the first time I got to meet him in person. It was a little mind boggling to hear him say things like "Yeah, when I was working back in the 50s..." I can't help but feel like if I was talking with a tree, the conversation would go something like this, with references made to times so beyond when I existed that it takes a moment to wrap my head around I'm talking with someone who was going strong then.
He also had some moments of sheer hilarity. Not five minutes after we arrived at his place he was offering us whiskey and scotch and saying "LET'S DRINK." We ended up spending the rest of the evening chatting about science and the people he's worked with. It was a bit of a rough trip at times (the unfortunate decision was made for us to head back at 4:30PM. We got back LAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAATE ow I think I'm still recuperating a little), but I'm really glad I went. Opportunities like this don't come around every day.
