Larry-Gilbert
Then:
Chair of Biological Sciences, Northwestern; NSBE faculty advisor; PhD, Cornell University, NSF Postdoc Fellow, University of Bern.
Now:
William Rand Kenan Professor Emeritus of Biology, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.
What are your memories of Project Survival?
It was just an unbelievable thing. Jim Reisa and Warren Muir came to see me - I was chair of the biology department at that time. They said they had this idea for an (earth-day like) event - they wanted to invite some really good people. I knew some of the people they should ask - Paul Ehrlich, Lamont Cole, Adlai Stevenson - and gave them a list. I told them they'd have to try and raise some money. They asked me, "Can you help?" I told them they would have to get started, but I could guarantee $10,000 -12,000 from the department. As department chair I had a (discretionary) fund. I agreed to guarantee it so they could get started - there would be speaker's fees to pay and other expenses. They had very little time to pull this together.
What do you remember of the actual event?
It was incredible. Tech was overflowing - there were TVs set up in several rooms to handle the overflow. People had come from hundreds of miles away. They just kept coming. Ninety percent of the people coming were college age and even some high school. It was a young persons' thing. After the evening lectures, there was music, and then people broke up into smaller groups for seminars and discussions that went all through the night until the morning. It was just fantastic. The students did everything, including cleaning the place up afterwards.
I understand you proposed an Environmental Research Center for Northwestern.
I tried to get a center (for environmental research) started. We had the momentum. It would have been the first in the country. I really felt that if you can get people who are committed then you have to do it, you have to follow up.
I always felt that the wholesome part of biology was important. Everything is interdisciplinary now. While I was provost at UNC, I was in charge of the university's centers. They had ten centers that had been established for a while at UNC, and they were the places that brought in the money and the research talent. Now the whole idea is interdisciplinary - I think that's the way it's going, the traditional department structure is going to disappear; centers will usurp the traditional departmental structure.
Final thoughts:
Reisa, Muir, Sigwart and those guys just had it in themselves to do this thing - and they did a great job. I was very proud of them. I mean, how could you discourage young people like that? This was not an easy thing to pull off. But they had this fervor, this commitment. This was not a hobby for them - this was their life! Taking the risk, helping them get started was one of the best decisions I ever made.
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