Tomorrow, my dad will be honored at Trinity University in San Antonio as a distinguished alumnus. We’re flying the whole family down to celebrate with him, but I wanted to take a moment to celebrate him here. Since I live on the web most of the time, and few of you know his story, I wanted to tell it.
The Trinity blurb is remarkably apt and pithy:
His occupation is hard to describe: mainly a scientist - at the intersections of the social and environmental sciences - but also a research program manager, provider of technical assistance, and institution-builder - with one foot in the world of research and one foot in the world of practice.
That’s about right. I remember learning the words “sustainable development” from him around the time he taught me to swing a baseball bat, which means late 1970s. My dad drew me into libraries in the 1980s, where I made first contact with networked computer systems, as I helped him find books and images for speeches he gave. His work picnics were places where I stepped on the feet of people who dated back to the Manhattan Project, which is part of being a national labs kid at a place like Oak Ridge.
My dad has gotten a lot of notice in his own fields, but the biggest thing, the thing that makes others realize that he’s a pretty towering guy, is when the Nobel committee formally recognized him as a co-laureate in the 2007 Peace Prize shared by the IPCC and Vice President Gore. Hiscareer is remarkable, and he’s not showing any signs of stopping.