The Barometer Online

Issue date: 6/4/08 Section: News

Media Credit: Jeff Wick Mary Jo Nye, OSU's Horning Professor of the Humanities and History, responds to a student's presentation in Milam Hall Tuesday.

It's late in the afternoon and the sun is barely peaking above the clouds outside Milam Hall.

Inside, Mary Jo Nye, Oregon State's Horning Professor, sits quietly in a graduate class of 11 students and listens to a presentation, steadily taking notes and rarely showing any facial expression.

The presenter jokes about a scientist's thorough study of dung, "he really knows his s---," he says, which causes Nye to peer over the top of her glasses and crack a smile.

Nye's scholarship interest is in the history of chemistry, the physical sciences and the scientific elite.

In 1994, Robert and Mary Jo accepted the opportunity to share the Thomas Hart and Mary Jones Horning Professorship of the Humanities and of History at Oregon State University and have organized the Horning Lecture Series ever since.

This is Nye's final course.

"I taught at the University of Oklahoma for 25 years and have been here at OSU for 14 years. That's a long time," Nye said. "I've decided to cut back and the only way to do that is to retire."

Linda Richards is a graduate student of Nye's who is studying nuclear history.

Prior to choosing Oregon State for graduate school, Richards contacted scholars around the country asking for help in researching her topic of nuclear history.

Nye was the only one to reply.

"She manages to knit science, controversies, history and politics together and to synthesize it in a way that's almost magical," Richards said.

"I'm really going to miss her; she's a fantastic teacher, very committed to every single student. She's the reason why I'm here."

Mary Jo's husband of 40 years and retired Co-Horning Professor at Oregon State, Robert Nye, is continuously amazed by her dedication to her work.

"Mary Jo is very much a scholar, with a scholar's temperament, a scholar's curiosity and a scholar's persistence. She's written several book-length projects in 35 years," Nye said.

"If Mary Jo is composing, she can continue typing and actually answer questions I ask her about unrelated topics. She can completely focus and engage in a dialogue. If she's working on some part of the scholarly process, she doesn't get up for hours. She just sits and works; it's quite astonishing."

Continued...

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