Annual Reviews Audio Presents An Interview with Richard Zare Annual Reviews Audio. 2010 Mia Lobel: Hello and welcome to Annual Reviews Audio; a podcast First published online on February 5, 2010 from Annual Reviews where insightful research begins. I’m your host Mia Lobel. Today, we’ll speak with Richard Zare, Co-Editor of the Annual Reviews Audio interviews are online at Annual Review of Analytical Chemistry. Professor Zare is a pioneer www.annualreviews.org/page/audio in the field of laser chemistry and spectroscopy. He has taught at Copyright © 2010 by Annual Reviews. Stanford University for more than 30 years and has been Chair of the All rights reserved Department of Chemistry there since 2005. The American Chemical Host: Mia Lobel Society recently awarded Zare the Priestley Medal for his many years of service in the field of chemistry. He was also just awarded the Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics, and Engineering Mentoring. Professor Zare, it’s a pleasure to have you. Richard Zare: Well, it’s wonderful to be able to speak with you. Mia Lobel: So you’ve had a long and prestigious career in the sciences with many years ahead of you still, but what is your first memory of science, the thing that first got you interested? Richard Zare: Well, it’s hard to know where to start. There are 1 certain memories, whether they’re called science or not, but they certainly characterize me. I remember having a fight with my father and later on urinating into his aquarium that contained tropical fish, which killed them all. Mia Lobel: This was a science experiment at the earliest stage? Richard Zare: I think that was an early science experiment and a toxic one. Later on, my mother would enjoy sleeping late and maybe about age five, I was cooking for my younger brother. And I would make eggs primarily, but my eggs were always experiments. I tried to find out whether my brother liked eggs with ketchup, eggs with sugar, eggs with vinegar, and so on. I kept making up different creations and trying them on my brother; my poor brother. Mia Lobel: This was the scientific method at it’s best for a young, young boy? Richard Zare: Well, I’ll tell you it’s one of the better forms of chemistry because you can taste as you go along, and normally you can’t do that safely in most chemistry. Mia Lobel: Let me ask you, what did you learn from peeing into the fish tank? Richard Zare: That it doesn’t have a good effect on tropical fish. Mia Lobel: I see, I see. So you went on to study Physical Chemistry at Harvard, but along the way you’ve become involved in many different sciences. Can you talk— Richard Zare: Actually, what I did is I took a double major as an undergraduate at Harvard. It was a major in chemistry and a major in physics. Mia Lobel: I see, so all along the way you’ve been very interdisciplinary in your science work. Can you talk about why that’s important to you? Richard Zare: I think that problems do not come with the names of departments on them. I think that it’s very important that we have departments, because departments are the keepers of the truth for a particular field. And I urge everybody to be well grounded in some area, deeply grounded in some area and therefore to be involved in getting a—working with a department and getting a degree and so forth. But you have to have a spirit of not only knowing something well but willing to ask others and learn from others to solve problems. To me the really important thing about a PhD is that it trains you to become an independent problem solver. And you don’t have to know everything. Unfortunately, those days have passed, but you have to be able to be inquisitive and be bold enough to ask others for help. Mia Lobel: Now let’s talk a little bit about your mentoring work. You recently received a Presidential Award for your mentoring. What does that award mean to you and what have you done? Richard Zare: Well, it was very thrilling. Last week I had a chance to meet President Obama and shake his hand and to listen to his deep commitment to support and improve education in the United States. The United States has students now that are ranking something like 25th in the 2 Zare world in comparison to other students of similar age, like 15 year olds. We can’t afford to continue to do this and think that we’re going to be a leading nation. This is really important for the future of this country that we improve our education. Mentoring however is—that’s the big picture— the mentoring however, is generally one-on-one. One person at a time; though there can be—as opposed to teaching which is often one-to-many. But mentoring really involves one-on-one, and understanding people, and trying to work with them. Mia Lobel: And what does an effective scientific mentor do? Richard Zare: May I say that it’s very much related to what is effective teaching. The most important thing is not necessarily information but inspiration. You really try to inspire things. And you try to tell people and show people that they have a way to succeed about what they’re interested in doing. First of all, you want to encourage them to find that they love, something that they care passionately about, immerse themselves in it, and really work at it. And that type of immersion I think, a lot of happiness results. Mia Lobel: Now you’ve done a lot of work in your own lab to help young women specifically pursue an academic career in the sciences. Can you talk a little bit about what you’ve done and why this is important to you? Richard Zare: Well, it’s certain—important to me, not only women, under-represented groups— What’s really important is that we use the entire pool of human talent in the country, and if we say we’re not going to work with women then we’ve cut off about 50% of that talent. So that’s ridiculous. We’ve got to work with women and as Chair I’ve been very interested in making my department family friendly. To do this, as first year as Chair, I instituted a new policy for maternity in which women who were graduate students who were going to have children were given paid leave of 12 weeks, so that they could really take care of things and for the coming new child in their life. It’s been interesting because not only has this been very helpful to women in my department, but I’ve had a number of men thank me for this. Now you might say, “Why are they thanking me?”, unless they’re a man married to a female graduate student who’s about to give birth. And the answer is not that. What I’ve done is something else. I’ve actually helped break a taboo topic, which is to talk to your thesis advisor about the fact that you might be becoming a father, and that those entail extra responsibilities which will require you to change how much time and when you can be in the laboratory, for example. Mia Lobel: Now that’s a pretty unusual stance to take when the sciences have typically been pretty rigid as far as how much work you have to put in, how many hours, how many, you know, how much lab time. Why is your perspective so different? Richard Zare: I think if we want to have careers in this field, we have to be welcoming. And there’s no good time for a woman to have a child and have a career. Whenever a child comes it interferes with a career. And men do not give birth; women do. There’s an asymmetry here and you know, viva la asymmetry here, it’s not going to change. We have to recognize it and work with it. And I think we can. I don’t think that just the number of hours is what leads to success. It has to do with effective hours and creative hours and I think there’s a great confusion that goes on in the heads of some people that it should be equated just the number of hours. There’s a tradition of that sort, particularly in chemistry, and it needs to change. www.annualreviews.org • An Interview with Richard Zare 3 Mia Lobel: What do you think is the most encouraging thing in science education, today? Richard Zare: To me, the most encouraging thing truly, is the fact that starting with the study that Norm Augustine led in which I was a coauthor, Rising Above the Gathering Storm, there’s been a sense that I think is shared by both Republicans and Democrats that we have to do more in education. We must do more than we’ve been doing. We are failing as a country and we can’t afford to let this go on. Education is slow. We once were leading many other countries. Particularly because we believed in giving general education to everyone, whereas education at the time in Europe was only for the elite. Well, we’ve passed those days and we now have to come back to recapture them.