I Met Dr. Goodenough

The Nobel Prize in chemistry has been awarded to three researchers, including Dr. John Goodenough, now ninety-seven years old. I remember meeting him more than thirty years ago, when I was in Austin, Texas, to which I had gone to pursue graduate study in physics, unsuccessfully, as things turned out. With my employment as a grader soon to expire, or perhaps expired, I was looking for other prospects, and managed an interview with him through some connection.

There had been some theoretical possibility of an assistantship, but I hadn’t studied what would have been necessary to make me useful in his research, so he didn’t offer me a position, and after my 1985-1987 sojourn at the University of Texas, I studied Materials at Penn State, getting a Ph.D. there, and occasionally hearing more of Dr. Goodenough, as I recall.