Jim Besancon – 50th Reunion Essay

Jim Besancon

46 Glen Street

Natick, MA 01760

jbesancon@wellesley.edu

508 572 6766

Spouse(s): Julia B. Speyer 1985

Child(ren): Jeffrey R. Speyer Besancon (1992), Elizabeth A. Speyer Besancon (1993), Rachel K. Speyer Besancon (1997)

Education: MIT PhD, 1975

Career: Professor, Wellesley College, 42 years

Avocations: Curiosity about how the world works.

College: Jonathan Edwards

What to say? I left Yale completely ready to dive deeply into geology. MIT was exhilarating, with the paradigm shift to plate tectonics happening across the world and at meetings and in class right in front of me. I stayed six years, then moved 13 miles west to Wellesley College where I’ve been teaching for 42 years. My recent work involves the migration of road deicers (salt) into surface and ground water. The best thing about being a professor is following your curiosity, which led to studies analyzing dust from Kuwait and Iraq, lead-bearing contaminants in Boston urban soils and Lake Waban, still unexplained optical changes in minerals, rearrangements of ions in solids, and teaching courses as varied as Nuclear Waste Disposal and Oceanography. I’ve taught students who were nominated for an Academy Award (best actress); been elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences; competed on the US Olympic team; been elected President of the American Geophysical Union (60,000 members worldwide); and won a Rhodes Scholarship. I did none of these. I retired June 30, 2018, with many plans for research projects, possibly write a book, spend more time for family and travel, and no late evening grading and writing.

I reminisce more this evening about the day I met Jim Rosenblum and Myron Thompson, my roommates in Bingham, and how much I learned about the world from them. I think Myron was the best-read person I had ever met. I remember Bob Kellam reversing the bathroom lock while someone was in the shower, locking him in. I remember how difficult I found some classes that first year, and how I discovered geology by filling an empty time slot in my sophomore schedule. After six weeks, I was completely hooked, and taught by an amazingly brilliant faculty and by graduate assistants who all went on to (scientific) fame. I remember Bob Wells and I being the only students in a lab course taught by Professor Dick Armstrong and student John Suppe, later chair of the Princeton department. I could have been the world’s worst architect had Drawing I not been full.

I married twice, and the second time found my perfect mate in Julia Speyer, whose degree is in chemical biophysics (yes, it exists, think wiggling fat molecules). We have three wonderful children, and next year my youngest graduates from Wellesley. We cross-country ski, enjoy music, look for hilly and cool destinations to walk in when our vacations coincide in summer (and year-round, after this June!), and enjoy evenings together. I read some, cook a lot, clean house too little, and sleep not enough.