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Rate this memorial to a Harvard professor
| cerebral regret | 03/21/18 |
| cerebral regret | 03/21/18 |
| Primrose striped hyena state | 03/21/18 |
| provocative rebellious psychic | 03/21/18 |
| cerebral regret | 03/21/18 |
| Rose charismatic ceo | 03/21/18 |
| idiotic temple filthpig | 03/21/18 |
Poast new message in this thread
Date: March 21st, 2018 1:08 PM Author: cerebral regret FACULTY MEETINGS obviously engage academic issues and entail legislation, but they usually begin with a Memorial Minute (or several)—brief summaries of deceased colleagues, highlighting their intellectual work, character, and service. An especially deft sample of the genre was delivered in memory of Farish Alston Jenkins Jr., the late Agassiz professor of zoology in the Museum of Comparative Zoology (concurrently appointed professor of anatomy at Harvard Medical School), who died in 2012. (The committee for the Minute was, inexplicably, chaired by Kathleen M. Coleman, Loeb professor of the classics—perhaps a demonstration of Jenkins’s interdisciplinary reach. See coverage of his work with a graduate student, and on a pathbreaking fossil discovery.)
The Minute begins bracingly:
What a wishbone is for, how fish became four-footed, why part of your middle ear once belong to a snake’s jaw—these are some of the conundra that Farish Jenkins solved in over 40 years at Harvard as an anatomist, zoologist, and vertebrate paleontologist.
He’d been an artillery officer in the Marine Corps, and “the precision with which he went about everything in civilian life, from keeping his shoes highly polished to classifying fossils, matched the image of a military man.” Enchanted with Africa, where he did fieldwork as a graduate student, “he led nine tours of Tanzania in support of the charity Focus on Tanzanian Communities.”
For his work on Ellesmere Island, 887 miles from the North Pole (work therefore limited to the month of July), “he found it prudent not to venture out of camp without a Winchester rifle as protection against polar bars and a flask of vodka to reinforce resolve.” While at work:
In the Arctic, Jenkins wore his signature Czechoslovak rabbit-fur hat with earflaps; elsewhere, he was never without an elegant Stetson. He lectured in a three-piece suit, his tie secured over his crisp white shirt with a gold pin. He was a fabled lecturer, enthralling generations of students with his “Captain Ahab” imitation, in which he read aloud from Moby Dick while stomping up and down the lecture hall with a peg leg strapped to his thigh to illustrate the role of the arch tendon in absorbing shock. Sometimes he drew bones and muscles on his trousers; at other times, he put on a body stocking mapping the segmental nerves. He would inspect the shoes of student in the front row to determine the characteristics of their gait.
Jenkins’s dedication to pedagogy was legendary; in 30 years of teaching anatomy in the Health Sciences and Technology program, he used to drive to the Harvard Medical School at 4:00 A.M. to prepare meticulously detailed three-dimensional anatomical diagrams on the board with colored chalk—including black for shading—that he sharpened with a pencil sharpener to create especially fine effects. He graded his students’ papers and exams himself. His laboratory overlooking Oxford Street was filled with neatly arranged fossils and often redolent with heirloom apples from his farm in New Hampshire, harvested as gifts for his students.
No wonder those who knew him miss him.
Professors today: safe spaces and microaggressions. |
Date: March 21st, 2018 1:17 PM Author: cerebral regret (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3924640&forum_id=2#35652934) |
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Date: March 21st, 2018 1:21 PM Author: Primrose striped hyena state (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3924640&forum_id=2#35652958) |
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Date: March 21st, 2018 1:33 PM Author: provocative rebellious psychic Ellesmere Island is inhabited year round. He sounds like a wuss for only going in July. (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3924640&forum_id=2#35653054) |
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Date: March 21st, 2018 1:37 PM Author: cerebral regret (internet tough guy) (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3924640&forum_id=2#35653081) |
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Date: March 21st, 2018 2:11 PM Author: Rose charismatic ceo redolent - not a fucking word (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3924640&forum_id=2#35653354) |
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Date: March 21st, 2018 2:12 PM Author: idiotic temple filthpig (http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=3924640&forum_id=2#35653363) |