Opening Comments

Steve was the public face of paleontology. (I tried to tell my children this when Steve visited us in North Dakota – but it wasn’t until we were watching the Simpsons one night that they believed me.)

Steve was an important public figure, and after his death on May 20 there were many public commemorations of his life:

• Obituaries in newspapers, magazines, and scientific journals

• Retrospectives on radio and television

• A service in New York City shortly after his death that mostly involved family and friends

• Harvard’s own commemoration of the loss of “one of the stars in its constellation.”

Although several fields of study have claimed Steve as their own, he was first and foremost a paleontologist:

• He received the Schuchert Award for “excellence and promise in paleontology” twenty-two years ago

• He stood at this podium as our President fifteen years ago and related the decline of the .400 hitter in baseball to macroevolution

• Today he was honored posthumously with the Paleontological Society Medal.

He was one of us.

He was also a very private person, despite his public persona, and today it is time for our own private celebration (as paleontologists) of his life and work. Nonpaleontologists are welcome to list in on our conversation as several students and colleagues of Steve share their memories of him and perspectives on his life and work.

I wanted to find an appropriate way to close this session of remembrance – the New York City and Harvard events included music by the Boston Cecilia Society, of which Steve was a member.

Music was such an important part of Steve’s life that I really wanted to include it, but I couldn’t figure out what to do or how to do it. Then the thought came to me that I had sung something recently that might be appropriate – part of the Requiem by Maurice Duruflé. My church choir performed this in commemoration of the 9/11 events, events which I understand touched Steve deeply.

The opening words are Christian (“Pie Jesu Domine”) and that worried me at first. But then I remembered how, when Steve visited me in North Dakota, we into the 1880’s Inkster Presbyterian Church where my husband was minister and Steve played the organ and I sang hymns, and I thought Steve wouldn’t have objected.

The words are Latin, which Steve could have readily translated for us: “Grant them rest eternal.”

Pie Jesu Domine

Dona eis requiem, Dona eis requiem.

Pie Jesu Domine

Dona, dona eis requiem, requiem, requiem eterna.

Rest in peace, Stephen Jay Gould.

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