William McGuire
William McGuire has passed away at the age of 82. His NY Times obituary is here. An earlier tribute is here, whence this remarkable anecdote:
At the University of Illinois, his first faculty position, he entered into a bet with a colleague who seemed perpetually anxious about publishing and obtaining tenure, that he, Bill, would not publish a single paper until after receiving tenure. So Bill did his work, and wrote his papers, but did not submit them for publication. The evidence is in his vita — 10 papers appeared in 1961, the year after he was tenured.
Another remarkable fact, from this Yale Bulletin story:
His research has received 40 uninterrupted years of funding from the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health.
Comments
In a total coincidence, earlier in the day I told John the following story about a political scientist who'll remain nameless here. This happened thirty or more years ago. It goes as follows.
A walks into the office of B, a freshly-minted Ph.D. and brand-new faculty member. A sees a large stack of papers on one of B's shelves.
A: "Wow. That's a lot of paper. What is it?"
B: "Those are copies of seven papers that I've finished and I'm going to send them out for publication."
A: "Gee, that should get you off to a good start."
B. "No. I've studied what it takes to get tenure in this department, and it looks to me like if I get all seven published, I'll be fine. But I know my colleagues will want me to stay busy over the years, so I have a plan. I'm going to submit one paper per year. That way I can take it easy for the next six years and still make tenure."
He did, and apparently he did.
Posted by: Lee Sigelman | January 15, 2008 03:32 PM