- Email: [email protected]
Ed Mason 1926–1994
iounudot MEMBRANE SCIENCE
II ELSEVIER
Journal of Membrane Science 100 (1995) 287-288
Letter to the Editor
Ed Mason 1926-1994
Ed Mason, a long-time member of the Journal's editorial board and the Newport Rogers Professor of Chemistry Emeritus at Brown University, passed away at his home in Barrington, Rhode Island, 27 October 1994. Ed was my "major professor" or Ph.D. advisor at Penn State a b'jillion years ago (actually 1954-57), and so his passing is especially meaningful to me. First, a few vital statistics. Ed was born on 2 September 1926 in Atlantic City, New Jersey. He majored in chemistry at what was then known as the Virginia Polytechnic Institute (now "VPI and State University"), and took his Ph.D. with Isadore Amdur at M.I.T. He then did a post-doc at the University of Wisconsin in the Hirschfelder-Curtis-Bird school, before joining the faculty at Penn State in 1953. After only 2 years at Penn State, Ed moved on to the newly created Institute of Molecular Physics at the University of Maryland. He spent the final 27 years of his professional life ( 19671994) at Brown University, with a joint appointment in Chemistry and Engineering. But the cold, hard facts don't begin to tell the story. Those of us who knew Ed, knew him to be witty, irreverent, totally in love with science and numbercrunching, extraordinarily bright, cheerful, young-atheart, modest, and an outstanding teacher. He didn't suffer fools well. Many years after I left Ed's tutelage, I remember him telling me, "Harry, I'm not taking on any more Ph.D. students. They're just too damn dumb. From now on, it' s just post-docs". As Ed's first Ph.D. student, I had to swallow hard. (In my case, of course, he was right!) Ed's field was the dynamic properties of fluids: diffusion, thermal diffusion, atomic beams, intermolecular forces, and the like. He was always at home with monstrous books filled with monstrous equations 0376-7388/95/$09.50 © 1995 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved
SSD10376-7388(94)00299-1
(Chapman and Cowling, Fowler and Guggenheim, Jeans, Kennard, Hirschfelder-Curtis-Bird, Lightfoot, and so on were the easy ones). You can tell a lot about someone from the cartoons they hang on their refrigerators. (What - you have none?!) And I remember three that Ed had hanging on the walls of his office at Brown, for years. All were by the cartoonist, Sid Harris, who did science spoofs for The New Yorker. All have two obvious scientists, dressed in white lab coats, standing at the blackboard, looking at horrendously daunting mathematics. In the first, Scientist I has just written down the most godawful mess of triple integrals, partial differentials, etc., that you've ever seen, and he's up to the "equals" sign - the right-hand-side of the equation is still blank. And Scientist I says to Scientist II, "This is the part I always hate". In the second, another mind-blowing set of mathematics fills the blackboard but this time the left hand side is connected to the right hand side by an "equals" sign. But just before the equals sign is a cryptic note, "And then a miracle happens", written, apparently, by Scientist I. In the caption, Scientist II is asking, "Can you be a little more specific here in step 2?" In the third, again, a blackboard filled with arcane symbols. This time, a huge, thick X has been scratched (apparently by Scientist II) over the entire mess filling the blackboard. In the caption, Scientist I says to Scientist II, "That's it? That's peer review?!" And that was Ed. When I chaired a Gordon Research Conference on synthetic membranes in 1980, I asked Ed to give the introductory talk. He had by that time taken up an interest in the field, and I felt he could not only enlighten us non-mathematical types but also make us less afraid of the mathematical scientist's art. And he did. That
288
Letter to the Editor/Journal of Membrane Science 100 (1995) 287-288
paper led directly, if tortuously, to the last paper Ed and I coauthored, "Statistical-Mechanical Theory of Membrane Transport", J. Membrane Sci., 51 (1990) 1-81. (100-plus equations) A voluminous correspondence preceded the publication of the paper, and Ed's letters, as always, were filled with wit as well as scientific insight. At one point, when it looked like we'd never make it, I remember writing to him, "Ed, let's just publish the correspondence. It's a heckuva lot more fun". Ed leaves a wife of 42 years (Ann (Laufman) Mason, four grown children, and four grandchildren. Ann has been a practicing midwife for 11 years, and she plans to continue. Ed and Ann were devoted Morris dancers for all of their married life. If fact, they first met, in Boston, at country dances. It seemed to be his one extracurricular joy. Ed was to have been honored at the annual meeting of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers in San
Francisco in November 1994. 'Tis a pity that spreading prostate cancer took him instead. He didn't rack up as many as awards as he might have. He wasn't one to blow his own horn. My wife and I were fortunate enough to see Ed and Ann just a month before he passed away. Over dinner that night, I asked Ed if he had any regrets - if he'd have done anything differently. "Heck no", was the reply. Ed felt quite happy with the life he'd led. He'd rather study supemumerary rainbows than lie on the beach at Bimini any day. He officially retired from Brown in 1992, but he kept coming into the office almost every day to write, think, and read his mail, right up to the end. We'll miss you, Ed: your wit, your keen mind, your writing. But, most of all, we'll miss your good humor. Harry Lonsdale B e n d , OR, USA
II ELSEVIER
Journal of Membrane Science 100 (1995) 287-288
Letter to the Editor
Ed Mason 1926-1994
Ed Mason, a long-time member of the Journal's editorial board and the Newport Rogers Professor of Chemistry Emeritus at Brown University, passed away at his home in Barrington, Rhode Island, 27 October 1994. Ed was my "major professor" or Ph.D. advisor at Penn State a b'jillion years ago (actually 1954-57), and so his passing is especially meaningful to me. First, a few vital statistics. Ed was born on 2 September 1926 in Atlantic City, New Jersey. He majored in chemistry at what was then known as the Virginia Polytechnic Institute (now "VPI and State University"), and took his Ph.D. with Isadore Amdur at M.I.T. He then did a post-doc at the University of Wisconsin in the Hirschfelder-Curtis-Bird school, before joining the faculty at Penn State in 1953. After only 2 years at Penn State, Ed moved on to the newly created Institute of Molecular Physics at the University of Maryland. He spent the final 27 years of his professional life ( 19671994) at Brown University, with a joint appointment in Chemistry and Engineering. But the cold, hard facts don't begin to tell the story. Those of us who knew Ed, knew him to be witty, irreverent, totally in love with science and numbercrunching, extraordinarily bright, cheerful, young-atheart, modest, and an outstanding teacher. He didn't suffer fools well. Many years after I left Ed's tutelage, I remember him telling me, "Harry, I'm not taking on any more Ph.D. students. They're just too damn dumb. From now on, it' s just post-docs". As Ed's first Ph.D. student, I had to swallow hard. (In my case, of course, he was right!) Ed's field was the dynamic properties of fluids: diffusion, thermal diffusion, atomic beams, intermolecular forces, and the like. He was always at home with monstrous books filled with monstrous equations 0376-7388/95/$09.50 © 1995 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved
SSD10376-7388(94)00299-1
(Chapman and Cowling, Fowler and Guggenheim, Jeans, Kennard, Hirschfelder-Curtis-Bird, Lightfoot, and so on were the easy ones). You can tell a lot about someone from the cartoons they hang on their refrigerators. (What - you have none?!) And I remember three that Ed had hanging on the walls of his office at Brown, for years. All were by the cartoonist, Sid Harris, who did science spoofs for The New Yorker. All have two obvious scientists, dressed in white lab coats, standing at the blackboard, looking at horrendously daunting mathematics. In the first, Scientist I has just written down the most godawful mess of triple integrals, partial differentials, etc., that you've ever seen, and he's up to the "equals" sign - the right-hand-side of the equation is still blank. And Scientist I says to Scientist II, "This is the part I always hate". In the second, another mind-blowing set of mathematics fills the blackboard but this time the left hand side is connected to the right hand side by an "equals" sign. But just before the equals sign is a cryptic note, "And then a miracle happens", written, apparently, by Scientist I. In the caption, Scientist II is asking, "Can you be a little more specific here in step 2?" In the third, again, a blackboard filled with arcane symbols. This time, a huge, thick X has been scratched (apparently by Scientist II) over the entire mess filling the blackboard. In the caption, Scientist I says to Scientist II, "That's it? That's peer review?!" And that was Ed. When I chaired a Gordon Research Conference on synthetic membranes in 1980, I asked Ed to give the introductory talk. He had by that time taken up an interest in the field, and I felt he could not only enlighten us non-mathematical types but also make us less afraid of the mathematical scientist's art. And he did. That
288
Letter to the Editor/Journal of Membrane Science 100 (1995) 287-288
paper led directly, if tortuously, to the last paper Ed and I coauthored, "Statistical-Mechanical Theory of Membrane Transport", J. Membrane Sci., 51 (1990) 1-81. (100-plus equations) A voluminous correspondence preceded the publication of the paper, and Ed's letters, as always, were filled with wit as well as scientific insight. At one point, when it looked like we'd never make it, I remember writing to him, "Ed, let's just publish the correspondence. It's a heckuva lot more fun". Ed leaves a wife of 42 years (Ann (Laufman) Mason, four grown children, and four grandchildren. Ann has been a practicing midwife for 11 years, and she plans to continue. Ed and Ann were devoted Morris dancers for all of their married life. If fact, they first met, in Boston, at country dances. It seemed to be his one extracurricular joy. Ed was to have been honored at the annual meeting of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers in San
Francisco in November 1994. 'Tis a pity that spreading prostate cancer took him instead. He didn't rack up as many as awards as he might have. He wasn't one to blow his own horn. My wife and I were fortunate enough to see Ed and Ann just a month before he passed away. Over dinner that night, I asked Ed if he had any regrets - if he'd have done anything differently. "Heck no", was the reply. Ed felt quite happy with the life he'd led. He'd rather study supemumerary rainbows than lie on the beach at Bimini any day. He officially retired from Brown in 1992, but he kept coming into the office almost every day to write, think, and read his mail, right up to the end. We'll miss you, Ed: your wit, your keen mind, your writing. But, most of all, we'll miss your good humor. Harry Lonsdale B e n d , OR, USA