When people find out that I was a student of Steve Gould’s they look at me with this curious expression of awe and pity. “Really?”, they say . . . “God, what was it like?” So when Tricia asked if I’d say something here today, it seemed only natural for me to speak of him from that perspective, that of his student.

One of my most vivid memories of Steve comes from my very first semester at Harvard. I had written a term paper for Steve that turned out to be the first draft of a manuscript that was subsequently published. It was the first thing I had ever turned in to him, and I slaved over it. Stephen Jay Gould reading something that I wrote? I was terrified. By the time I finally finished it, at 6:30 on the morning it was due, it was finely honed and polished, and I was proud of it. When it finally came back to me, I opened my masterpiece with hope and trepidation in the privacy of my office, and there on the first line, in the first few words of the first sentence, was a notation. “Years don’t have eyes”. The paper was about carbon isotopes at the K/T boundary, and I had begun it by saying “The ten years since publication of the seminal paper by Alvarez et al (1980) have witnessed a host of new developments in…”. Years don’t have eyes. I deflated audibly. I flipped through the rest of the paper looking for comments, but could find nothing other than a circle around a passive voice clause with the word “clumsy” written next to it, and another note that said, “Don’t reject the word ‘I’”. The paper was 46 pages long! And that’s all he wrote on it. Andy Knoll had read the paper too, and made all kinds of very helpful constructive comments in the margins, and apparently they had liked it because I got an A, but (sorry Andy!) at that moment I was really looking for what Steve said about it. Years don’t have eyes. That’s all he could come up with. I was crushed. I was wandering down the hall aimlessly with what must have been a pained expression on my face, and just as I went to push open a door, Steve opened it from the other side and came through. When he saw me, his face lit up and he smiled and said, “That was a goooood paper! You really know how to write!” I don’t think I’ve ever felt such a rush in my life. And so began my emotional roller coaster ride at Harvard . . .

Steve was perhaps the only person I’ve ever known who I can say, without a doubt, was truly brilliant, in every sense of the word. Everything that’s been said here today is testament to that. Steve’s contributions to the field were immense, helping to bring paleontology to the “high table” of evolutionary theory. As if that wasn’t intimidating enough for his students, he was also arrogant. He knew it, of course, and even joked about it often, grinning and saying, “No one’s ever accused me of being too modest!” So you’d think this combination of brilliance and arrogance would be just terrifying for his graduate students . . . and I suppose it was at first, but it was all self-imposed. One of the things I’ve always admired about Steve is that his support for his students was unfaltering. He never made any of us feel intellectually inferior; he always treated us as equals. . . . In fact, as one of his students recently mentioned to me, that was sometimes one of the hardest things to deal with – trying to live up to his high opinion of our intelligence and ability. But then his support and confidence in us was a great motivator as well – we knew he expected a lot of us, and we didn’t want to let him down, so we worked hard.

Work Ethic

And lord knows Steve worked hard as well. Brilliance alone would not have allowed him to accomplish as much as he did. I remember him saying once, “If you’re not stressed out, you’re not working up to your full potential.” You could see this in him – there would be times he’d be visibly exhausted from lack of sleep (rumor had it he only got about 4 hours a night), and he would fight to keep his eyes open as soon as he stopped moving for any length of time (e.g., during a seminar), but he never unplugged from what was being discussed, and always came back with a pointed question or comment about what had been said that went right to the heart of the issue and often forced all of us to look at the subject in a completely new and different way. The depth of his insight was mind-boggling.

Importance of life outside work . . .

Despite his immense contributions to paleontology and evolutionary theroy, that wasn’t the only important thing in Steve’s life. As you’ve heard, Steve had interests that ranged far and wide, from music to baseball to architecture, and that was something he touted to his students as well. Peg Yacobucci tells the story of the first time she met Steve, during her interview for grad school. She says she went all prepared to talk about potential research projects and evolutionary theory, and then Steve asked her, “So, what do you like to do outside of school?” Peg said she was like a deer caught in the headlights. “Me?, she said, “I went to school at the University of Chicago, where ‘fun goes to die’! What could I say?!” And then Steve proceeded to lecture her about the importance of having a life outside of your chosen field. And of course, he was right. Those are the things that enrich our lives, enliven our writing, and bring a new perspective to our science.

Dedication to teaching

One thing that comes up over and over again when I talk with students of Steve was his unfailing dedication to teaching, particularly with respect to the large undergraduate survey course that he taught. Steve was so unlike many other research professors, who often treat teaching like a chore and put into it only the minimum required effort. Steve taught us to value and aspire to excellence in our own teaching. In all the years I was at Harvard, I don’t recall him ever missing a lecture, and he was just as diligent about his office hours. His current students, Tamara and Sofy, tell me that in the last semester of teaching his big History of Life course, he missed 2 classes because of brain surgery and chemotherapy. Good excuses, you’d think, for canceling class. But he insisted on making up those lectures at the end of the semester, and he gave the last one only a week and a half before he died.

Everyday life

Steve was very much one of the group when I was in school, and he was game for a little fun now and then. He had a good sense of humor, and we weren’t above a bit of shenanigans on occasion. Like the time Ken Schopf surreptitiously replaced Steve’s slide of Anomalocaris with this one for his lecture on the Burgess Shale to his big undergrad course. . . . The slide became a paleo-lab classic, and Steve in his Anomalocarismobile would get posted randomly about the building for years thereafter.

Another facet of Steve that endeared all of us to him was his curious passion for those yellow marshmallow chicks called “Peeps” that appear every year around Easter. God knows why, but Steve loved those things! Each year, one of us would have to be sure to pick up a box or two and bring them in, and Steve would be like a kid in a candy store, tearing into them and stuffing two of them into his mouth at once, with a big grin on his face. When I was thinking about what I’d say here today, and talking with other grad students, everyone to the person brought up the peeps. Makes you see a different side of Steve, no?!

Here’s another side. . . . At that time, in the early 90s, Steve wasn’t exactly what you’d call a snappy dresser. But he’d never be caught dead in a T-shirt, except for the kind that peeked out from under the open collar of his slightly rumpled dress shirt. I feel privileged to have been witness to what Steve claimed was the first (and perhaps the only) time in his adult life he ever wore a T-shirt by itself. I share that with you here. The occasion was the birthday party of our then collection manager, Ron Eng, who had a penchant for black pants and T-shirts. We all decided to appear en mass dressed the part, and Steve played right along with us. The only black T shirt he had was one with Anomalocaris printed on it that was hanging in his office as a souvenir. He donned it and joined the crowd, saying more than once, “I feel fucking foolish!”, but smiling the whole time.

Many of you will also recognize another paleontologist in this photo who should still be with us here today. . . .

Ken Schopf sent me a few mental snapshots from his memories of Steve that I wanted to share with you as well:

• suddenly bumping into him in the darkened hallways of the MCZ, scaring the hell out of each other at 2am

• sitting in adjacent offices- me routing against the Yankees just as loudly as he was routing for them

• how he taught me what a Luddite was, and that it was more than ok to be one

• his awkwardness at parties

• the willingness he had to be “one of us”, a student, as well as a teacher

• the way he always offered his support for the music I played and in the same breath called it “Philistine”

• watching him devour “peeps”, and other strange foodstuffs

• the enormous depth of his passion- for paleontology, people, and life.

Closing

A close friend of mine once told me that when we lose a truly special person, we all have to stand up a little straighter and work a little harder and try that much more to be a better person ourselves, so as to fill the void left by that person. Steve was a truly special person. He taught us to strive for excellence, to remember that there’s more to life than just work, and to cherish our humanity. The world will be just a little bit less special without him in it.

After Tricia says her closing words, I’d like to encourage everyone here to take a few minutes over a beer and share your favorite Steve story with the folks around you. I’ll bet we all have one. Whether you knew him or not, I’ll bet everyone here has something to say about him – he’s one of the few people in paleontology for whom that’s likely to be true. Let’s all take this opportunity to remember Steve Gould – his tremendous contribution to the science, his dedication to students, family, and friends, and his endless fascination with and passion for life in all of its wonderful complexity. Let’s raise a glass in celebration of his life, his accomplishments, and what we have learned from him. We will miss him. I will miss him.

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