On May 15, 2024, John R. Rickford, the J. E. Wallace Sterling Professor of Humanities, Emeritus and Professor Emeritus of Linguistics, engaged emeriti/ae community members with a lecture and slide presentation, entitled “Speaking My Soul: Race, Life and Language.” Rickford dedicates the lecture to his colleague and good friend David Abernethy who had recommended him for a Danforth Fellowship in 1971 thus allowing him to go on to graduate school and pursue an academic career. The talk follows...

On February 28, 2024, Myra Strober, Professor of Education, Emerita, and Professor Emerita of Economics (by Courtesy) at the Graduate School of Business, treated an audience of emeriti/ae community members to a wonderful lecture, entitled “Ninety Men and Me: Some Autobiographical Reflections.”

On Nov. 15, 2023, Michael S. Wald, the Jackson Eli Professor of Law, Emeritus, reflected on his 57 years at the Stanford Law School combining research, teaching, and university service. He also described professional periods of leave including at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the San Francisco Department of Human Services. He acknowledged his good fortune as a white male growing up in the 1950s within a highly supportive educational system and community, leading to...

On Apr. 19, 2023, Ann Arvin, the Lucile Salter Packard Professor of Pediatrics and Professor of Microbiology and Immunology, Emerita, a nationally recognized scientist, spoke to an emeriti/ae audience. She shared some of her experiences growing up on a farm and as a “faculty brat.” She commented on her undergraduate years at Brown University as a philosophy major, followed by an MD at the University of Pennsylvania, with just seven female students who found the patriarchy “alive and well,”...

On Feb. 15, 2023, Paul Yock, the Weiland Professor of Bioengineering and Medicine, Emeritus, treated an audience of emeriti/ae community members to a wonderful lecture, entitled “Tales of a Medical Gizmologist,” about his life and career. After a middle-class upbringing in St. Louis Park, Minnesota, he attended Amherst College and Oxford University, studying both science and philosophy, then attended Harvard Medical School and pursued a career as an interventional cardiologist first at UCSF...

In a lecture on Nov. 15, 2022, Clayborne Carson, the Martin Luther King, Jr., Centennial Professor of History, emeritus, spoke in the Emeriti/ae Council’s “Autobiographical Reflections” lecture series. He traced the path of his early life growing up in Los Alamos, New Mexico, undergraduate and graduate studies at UCLA, becoming a “historian” rather unintentionally, and his almost fifty-year career at Stanford. He described his early interest in the civil rights movement, focused principally...

On April 20, with an introduction by Professor Emeritus David Abernethy, Professor Emeritus William Durham presented a lively Abernethy Autobiographical Reflections lecture to Emeriti/ae at the Stanford Faculty Club. Durham’s lecture highlighted three widely distinct aspects of evolution from the biological, to the cultural, to the personal. First, stemming from the blue-footed booby photo of Professor Emeritus Lubert Stryer’s recent Abernethy lecture, Durham considered the origin of the...

On Feb. 16, 2022, Lubert Stryer, the Winzer Professor of Cell Biology, Emeritus, delivered a lecture entitled “Light and Life.” Born in China in 1938, he shared memories of his childhood in Shanghai during WWII. US visas for his family came through a few months before Shanghai was taken over by Mao. After high school in New York, he graduated at the age of 19 from the University of Chicago, where he met his wife, Andrea. After receiving his MD at Harvard, he devoted himself to basic science...

In a lecture on Nov. 17, 2021, Jerry Harris, Cecil and Ida Green Professor of Geophysics, Emeritus, speaks about “My Mississippi,” his meandering path through segregation, opportunity, despair, and hope. He briefly discusses his research on novel applications of seismic waves for characterizing and monitoring subsurface resources such as oil and gas as well as in carbon sequestration. Focusing primarily on his youth, Harris tells a vivid and compelling personal story of growing up on a farm...

Milbrey McLauglin, the David Jacks Professor of Education and Public Policy at Stanford University, Emerita, spoke to an emeriti/ae audience on April 22, 2021. She traced her life trajectory through college and an “awakening” of sorts in Kansas City, Kansas, to policy analysis at the RAND Corporation focused on disadvantaged youth, and quite “unintentionally” to a faculty position at Stanford where she was the founding director of the John W. Gardner Center for Youth and Their Communities....

Eve Vivienne Clark, Richard W. Lyman Professor in the Humanities and Professor Emerita of Linguistics presented a lecture via Zoom on Feb. 17, 2021 entitled “From French Literature to First Language Acquisition.” She discussed her early life and her education in France and Edinburgh, advice along the way from important mentors, and joining Stanford’s Department of Linguistics in 1974. She shared vivid examples of her extensive research on how children acquire language, the development of...

James Gibbons, Stanford Professor of Electrical Engineering, Emeritus, spoke in the Abernethy Emeriti/ae Lecture Series. In his talk he traces the origins and uses of the Tutored Video Instruction (TVI) process, which he developed in 1972 while serving on President Nixon’s Science Advisory Council. Originally designed to teach Stanford electrical engineering graduate courses to Silicon Valley engineers at off-campus locations, Gibbons outlines the positive learning outcomes achieved through...

In a lecture on Nov. 20, 2019, entitled “A Fortunate Life,” David Abernethy, Stanford Professor of Political Science, Emeritus reflects on the advantages of being born into an American, white, middle class, Protestant family. His youthful commitment to doing something about sub-Saharan Africa led to summer experiences in Nigeria and Guinea with Operation Crossroads Africa and eventually to filling a new faculty billet at Stanford in African politics. He discusses changes at Stanford since...

Albert Camarillo, Stanford Professor emeritus of History, reflects on growing up as a Mexican American in the Los Angeles suburb of Compton and the profound effect of that environment and the opportunities it provided in shaping his scholarship and his life. He discusses racial restrictive covenants, changing demographics, school integration in the 1960s, and the value of playing team sports. As one of very few Mexican American students when he entered UCLA, he met his wife Susan and...

Lee Shulman, Ducommun Professor of Education, Emeritus at Stanford, reflects on his life and academic career, describing the chance-filled path he took from slicing pastrami in his parents’ deli to teaching at Michigan State and Stanford and then presiding over the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. He talks about his Yeshiva high school in Chicago, undergraduate and PhD experiences at the University of Chicago, his research interests in the philosophy and psychology of...

How does a Jewish high school student from Great Falls, Montana with "B" grades become a world-renowned scientist and founding director of Stanford's Institute for Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine? In these autobiographical reflections, Irv Weissman, Professor of Pathology and of Developmental Biology, describes his journey to Stanford Medical School and his decision to make medical research his life-long priority. He discusses his laboratory's work on blood-forming stem cells...

Professor Emeritus Ewart Thomas reflected on his growing-up years in Guyana, his education at University of the West Indies and Cambridge University, and decision to join Stanford's Psychology Department. He focussed on the key role friends and colleagues played throughout his life, encouraging him to perform at his best and to take leadership roles as department chair and as Dean of Humanities and Sciences.

Channing Robertson, Professor Emeritus of Chemical Engineering, explained how advisers from high school through graduate school urged him to move to the next educational level, enabling a once-unthinkable career in academia to become a reality. He discussed the opportunities Stanford presented to work closely with researchers in several scientific disciplines, achieving results a specialist in only one field could not attain. He also described being an expert witness in important trials...

Determined to oppose the habit of self-importance almost endemic to an autobiographical talk, Bill Chace instead discussed his life with irony, eloquence, and humor. A professor of literature who valued his teaching, he discovered he also liked administration and put to good use—as president of Wesleyan and Emory Universities—his observations during two decades at Stanford. He believes that leadership at a university must be fundamentally truth-telling.

Reflecting on his Stanford years and a long career of public service, David A. Hamburg, M.D., former professor and chair of psychiatry at Stanford, spoke about the establishment of his chimpanzee research in Tanzania, the kidnapping (and release) of 4 students, and coming face to face with problems of poverty, disease and revolution. He also discussed his time as head of the Institute of Medicine, National Academy of Sciences, President of Carnegie Corporation, and co-chair of Carnegie...

Jim Sheehan, Stanford Professor of History, Emeritus, describes the two ways in which he has lived in history: as a historian who studies the past, while at the same time living in a present that will become a part of history. He reflects on his Irish Catholic upbringing in San Francisco, Stanford undergraduate years in the 1950s, and doctorate in German history at UC Berkeley. He discusses his career academic focus on Germany within the broader context of European history.

Paul Berg, Stanford Professor of Cancer Research Emeritus and 1980 winner of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, spoke about: his arrival at Stanford in 1959, along with six colleagues from Washington Univ. in St. Louis, who created the open, sharing environment of the new Biochemistry Department; research on genetic processes and a search to understand cancer; work developing novel tools for manipulating DNA; and his role in organizing the important, public Asilomar Conference on Recombinant DNA...

Alain Enthoven, Professor of Public and Private Management, Emeritus in the Graduate School of Business reflects on his life and career. He discusses his contributions to a fundamental change in national and NATO defense strategy that reduced dependence on nuclear weapons and describes his contributions to the transformation of American health care finance.

Donald Knuth, Professor of the Art of Computer Programming, describes how his own experiences as a young student inspired him to become a professor. He speaks about the privilege of connecting with the best students and being part of the world's leading department of Computer Science when that subject was just beginning to take shape. Knuth talks about contributing to a revolution in the printing industry by making computers do new tricks, mentions some of his over 30 books and many papers,...

Donald Knuth, Professor of the Art of Computer Programming, describes how his own experiences as a young student inspired him to become a professor. He speaks about the privilege of connecting with the best students and being part of the world's leading department of Computer Science when that subject was just beginning to take shape. Knuth talks about contributing to a revolution in the printing industry by making computers do new tricks, mentions some of his over 30 books and many papers,...