A Naturalist’s Way

When Tom Eisner first accepted a job teaching biology at Cornell, he got a letter from his mother congratulating him and wishing him luck.  “It’s obviously easier to join the faculty than to get in as a student,” she wrote, and enclosed in the envelope was Tom’s letter of rejection from Cornell from several years earlier. 

Forty-six years later, Eisner tells the story of his journey to Cornell to students in his BioNB 420 class, “The Naturalist’s Way.”  “I still have that rejection letter,” he grins, and the whole class laughs.  He apologizes for not having a formal lecture planned—a guest speaker canceled at the last minute—but no one in the class seems too disappointed, and we all shake our heads enthusiastically when he asks if we want to hear another story.  The 50 minutes of class pass quickly, and even after 11, a crowd of students lingers at the front of the room until the 11:15 class is about to start, waiting to speak with Eisner or to ask him to sign a copy of his latest book, For Love of Insects.  The book is part scientific, part anecdotal, and filled with Eisner’s own photographs.  Even though many of us have no specific interest in insects, dozens of us have bought copies knowing it will be an enjoyable read. 

This year was the second time I’ve attended “The Naturalist’s Way,” a class I never would have taken had it not been for the recommendations of some friends.  As a sophomore wavering between a major in Communication or Natural Resources and nearly shying away from Natural Resources because it seemed to involve too much science, I’d have laughed at the idea of enrolling in a neurobiology course, especially a 400-level one.  But, at 10:10 on the first Wednesday of class last fall, I found myself in the Morrison Seminar Room in Corson-Mudd surrounded by a bunch of eager undergraduates (many my friends from Ecology House where Eisner serves as a Faculty Fellow), an even larger crowd of graduate students, and several of Cornell’s most accomplished professors and scientists.  I’d have been incredibly intimidated had the class not been graded on an “S/U” scale (or “pass-pass” as Eisner put it) with the grade based entirely on two one-page papers. 

Such minimal requirements also meant I could have slept in or eaten a leisurely breakfast at Trillium instead of going to class and I’d still have gotten two credits, but each Monday and Wednesday I found myself getting my bagel and orange juice to go and arriving early to try to get a seat in the front row.  In a class Eisner almost titled “Meet My Friends,” my classmates and I were all eager to find out what he and his friends—a group of talented guest speakers from across the fields of biology and ecology—would have to say.  A few short months later, we would all give Eisner a standing ovation after his last lecture and leave the class with a deeper appreciation and understanding of the natural world, and a feeling of hope that there are still enough people who care and can make a difference.        

Perhaps the biggest reason that we found Eisner to be such an incredible teacher is that for him, education has been at the center of a life full of adventures.  At 73, Eisner is in his forty-sixth year at Cornell, which, he jokes, means he’s been here longer than some of the plumbing.  “They’ll probably name some of it after me,” he added, noting that it might help him forgive Cornell for not accepting him as an undergraduate. 

By all measures, Eisner’s tenure at Cornell has been a success.  He is the Jacob Gould Schurman Professor of Chemical Ecology and the director of CIRCE, the Cornell Institute for Research in Chemical Ecology—a field that he, along with Jerrold Meinwald, a former Cornell chemistry professor, is credited with founding.  In his specific area of expertise—the chemical biology of insects and plants—he has made countless discoveries that have brought together the fields of biology, chemistry, behavior, ecology, and even engineering, and have increased our understanding about the processes and possibilities of the natural world.  His most famous example is in his work with the Bombardier Beetle.  After noting that the beetle squirts a jet of boiling liquid at predators when threatened, Eisner used innovative filming techniques to show that the beetle’s spray is fired in indistinguishably short pulses.  Just a few weeks ago, scientists at the University of Leeds in England announced that they plan to use Eisner’s research as the basis for new studies of the beetle’s combustion mechanism that they hope will provide insight into designing more efficient aircraft engines. 

Aside from being a scientist, Eisner is also a dedicated conservationist and activist; he has helped to save the Endangered Species Act (by convincing Newt Gingrich to defend the act in the Congress), protect numerous areas of wilderness throughout the United States, and establish the Congressional Fellows program to offer scientific input to policy makers in Washington.  He’s been a member and a director of just about every respected society in biology and ecology, and his record of accomplishments and awards—which include a National Medal of Science, one of the highest scientific honors one can receive in the U.S.—places him among the world’s most distinguished scientists.  He has written or co-authored hundreds of scientific articles and several books, and is also an accomplished photographer.  Outside the scientific arena, Eisner is a talented pianist, a devoted husband, father, and grandfather, and a genuinely interesting, funny, and enlightening person to know. 

Despite the recognition Eisner has received, he is always unassuming.  When I told him during one of our weekly Ecology House Faculty Fellow dinners that I wanted to write about him and “The Naturalist’s Way” for a class assignment, he told me I should let him recommend a few other people who might be more interesting.  Then he told me that if I did want to write about him, he was at least going to have to tell me stories that he hadn’t told in class yet, and he launched into an account of his first year teaching at Cornell, reminiscing about the time he and his teaching assistants—including Roger Payne who later did pioneering research in whale acoustics, and Irwin Brodo, now one of the foremost experts in lichens—stripped the campus’s magnolia trees of flowers for a lab.  He added that during that first year, he managed to rack up a possible Cornell record for the most parking tickets given in the shortest amount of time, because he didn’t realize until he was called in to the head of the department’s office that even faculty needed parking permits on campus.  

Eisner had come to Cornell to take a position teaching an introductory biology course for non-biologists, one of the first courses of its kind offered anywhere, and by the end of the first year he says he was in love with teaching.  “The electricity of that first year was amazing,” he remembers, and 46 years later, his passion for sharing his love of the natural world with his students has not diminished. 

            After teaching introductory biology for many years, Eisner eventually took a different position in entomology and began teaching a general chemical ecology course.  In 1966 he began teaching the course that is now BioNB 221, an introductory course in behavior that he coordinated for many years and still helps to teach.  His latest course, The Naturalist’s Way, was taught for the second time this fall and is Eisner’s most creative venture in teaching so far.  The course attracts students from a huge range of fields and approaches natural history and biology in a low-key, multi-disciplinary way that gives students a chance to learn from some of the most accomplished individuals in biology and ecology. 

            Eisner’s work at Cornell as a scientist and a teacher is but a continuation of a life-long passion for the natural world.  The first few years of his life were somewhat tumultuous.  He was born in 1929 in Germany, but the family moved to Spain when Hitler came into power.  Only a few years later, however, the Spanish Civil War began.  Eisner remembers playing outside the family’s home and hearing explosions so close that he was tossed out of his sandbox onto the ground.  Soon after, his family left everything behind—including their dog—and piled onto a crowded ship bound for France, where the Eisners would stay briefly before heading to South America.     

Although moving around so much gave young Tom a feeling of instability as he made friends and then had to leave them behind, he describes his childhood as a very enjoyable one.  His parents, he says, were blissfully happy together and encouraged his interests from a very young age.  His father was a pharmaceutical chemist who enjoyed making homemade perfumes, and his mother was an artist.  Their influence and a passion for insects that he discovered during his youth in Uruguay would later help to shape Eisner’s career as a chemical biologist and his fanaticism about photography, and his mother’s work would play a huge role in his later interest in connecting biology with art and using art as tool to inspire interest in science and conservation.

            “I always thought growing up was a privilege and getting educated was its purpose,” Eisner says, telling the class about his youth in Montevideo.  With the exception of the last year he spent there before emigrating to the U.S.—during which he says he skipped a lot of class, played billiards, and took up smoking because he knew he’d be leaving before the school year ended—he dedicated himself to his academic studies, piano, tennis, and collecting insects. 

            Eisner couldn’t have been more excited when his parents told him and his sister that they’d be going to the United States.  He looked forward to being able to go to college, but he was even more excited that in the U.S., he’d be able to get a driver’s license.  A huge fan of Humphrey Bogart, he watched Casablanca dozens of times to practice his English. 

            When the time came to leave Uruguay, he said goodbye to his friends and, with his family and several other families, boarded a freighter for the 12-day trip to Boston.  The ship encountered several big storms during the trip, and Eisner remembers walking along the deck with his father during one.  A young crewmember was painting part of the boat and knocked over the can of paint when the ship was tossed by a big wave.  Instead of getting angry, a higher-ranking officer nearby left his post to help clean up the mess.  “That,” Eisner remembers his father telling him, “is why we’re going to America.” 

            When the ship reached Boston, the Eisners found Americans to be genuinely welcoming, except, Tom says, for the baggage handlers at the dock, who seemed determined to break everything in the luggage coming off of the ships, which included the butterfly collection that Tom had carefully put together in Uruguay.  Though disappointed, Eisner’s excitement returned later in the day when he visited Harvard’s campus.    He imagined himself there as a student, but he wasn’t sure whether he’d study chemistry, music, or natural history.  At the time, he says, the idea hadn’t even occurred to him that he could spend his life studying insects. 

            Eisner also hadn’t realized that he couldn’t just go to a university, he’d have to first be admitted.  After applying to Harvard, Rochester, Amherst, and Cornell, he was turned down by all four because he couldn’t speak English well enough.  Disappointed but undeterred, Eisner instead decided to go to secretarial school in New York City, where his family was staying with a relative.  “It was a great experience,” he says.  “I was the only male in a class of vivacious young women!”  He did his best to impress them with his Latin background, even faking a Spanish accent. 

            A chance sequence of events with a car dealer the Eisners met on vacation in the Adirondacks led to an academic breakthrough for Tom.  While working the gas pumps at the dealership where the Eisners had bought a car (making them feel “utterly Americanized” Tom remembers), he heard about Champlain College in Plattsburg, which was serving as an emergency school for World War II GIs who were back from the war.  Tom and his father drove to Plattsburg and Tom was admitted to the school on the spot. 

            He describes his two years at Champlain as “glorious.”  The teachers were young and full of enthusiasm and the students were united in hope for peace, he remembers.  At Champlain, he took his first substantial biology course and finally learned about evolution, a concept he’d only been introduced to briefly before, and he explored his political beliefs among his fellow students.  “They had just fought the war to end all wars, and many of them were injured, physically and psychologically.  It really had an influence on how I thought about things politically,” he said.  Eisner says he toyed with joining the Communist party, but didn’t want to forgo Prokofiev, who was one of the musicians not accepted by the party.  Instead, he decided to support the Progressive party and Henry Wallace, and today he remains an emphatically liberal Democrat. 

After finishing his two years in Plattsburg, Eisner reapplied to all of the schools that had turned him down and was admitted to each one.  He chose Harvard, a decision that would shape the rest of his career.  After finishing his undergraduate studies, Eisner went on to work towards his Ph.D., studying social insects, in particular ants.  At the time, another outstanding young Harvard scientist named Edward O. Wilson was also working on ants and he and Eisner became close friends.  Eisner says Wilson “was years ahead intellectually and gave me something to shoot for.”  The two took a two-month road trip together, during which they chased bears away from their car and Eisner says he became a field biologist and a conservationist all at once.  “I became committed… I realized that we better do something about the disappearing world,” he said.  From that point on, he says he focused everything in his life on that goal, from finding research that would give him time outdoors, to courting a woman who shared his passion for environmental issues and activism.  Eisner married his wife Maria in 1952, and they continue to work together closely today, collaborating on research and working on Tom’s books.              

After finishing his Ph.D. in 1955, Eisner stayed at Harvard for two more years doing research with a grant from the National Institute of Health.  Then, in 1957, he finally got his opportunity to come to Cornell, a school he had always loved, he said, because it’s “a good school with a campus in the middle of nowhere!”  Though his contributions to the research world have continued to be great since he came to Cornell, it’s his infectious enthusiasm for teaching and genuine approachability that make him stand out among professors. 

Eisner sees teaching as the cornerstone of the university, and he believes that professors should have a balance of responsibilities that allows them plenty of time to work on their research, but not to the exclusion of doing the best job they can in teaching their classes.  He realizes that teaching may not come naturally to everyone, but he believes students notice when the effort is made, and he feels that it is of immeasurable importance for students “to be taught by the people who do the work they’re teaching about and are the ones out there getting their hands dirty.” 

Students taking “The Naturalist’s Way” with Tom have the opportunity learn from someone who has not only been “out there getting his hands dirty” in biology, entomology, and conservation for half a century, but who also sees biology as more than just the pursuit of knowledge in a lab.  Eisner says part of the motivation for the creation of The Naturalist’s Way was what he describes as the “molecularization of biology,” the tendency to see molecular and chemical biology as separate from organismal biology and natural history. 

“There’s not a schism—each domain is relevant to the other domain.  Natural history can only stay with it if it incorporates molecular biology,” he says, giving an example of watching moths mating: one could look at the encounter from a strictly descriptive angle and hypothesize about what might be going on, or one could look deeper into the situation and study the chemical cues that are critical to the moths’ success.  The goals of the course, which Eisner says is targeted to undergrads, are threefold: to show that natural history is alive and important to science today, to show that a good naturalist welcomes and incorporates the molecular side of biology, and to help students come to grips with the disconcerting reality that nature is currently being slaughtered but there are steps we can take to change that. 

Eisner says the class is still in somewhat of an experimental phase and he concedes that to run every class with such minimal requirements would be disaster (though he jokes that he thinks not wasting paper is a good excuse for not giving exams).  Still, “The Naturalist’s Way” succeeds because it brings together natural history and biology from such a wide variety of angles that students will almost undoubtedly encounter something in the class that piques their interest and sparks their passion.  While Eisner gives some of the lectures in the class—and fills in others with life anecdotes when necessary—guest speakers whose specialties range from writing to photography to land management to education teach many of the classes.  This year’s speakers included writer Diane Ackerman, artist Loretta Roome, former Cornell President Dale Corson, Cornell biologists Katy Payne, Harry Greene, and Tom Seeley, and even some students working on their own projects in biology and conservation.  Speakers can present almost whatever they want—and Tom admitted before one lecture that he had no idea what the speaker was going to say—but they’re asked to consider what nature means to them and what it means to be a naturalist. 

Students, accordingly, are challenged to consider the same questions with each new lecture, and Eisner says the response has been amazing.  The course’s near-perfect evaluations and attendance are some indication—Eisner added a third lecture to the two-credit course this year and despite the lack of formal requirements, still had to move the class to a larger room to accommodate the interest—but he says the true sign of the course’s success is the tremendous interaction that he has had with students enrolled in “The Naturalist’s Way.”  In a course he says is designed to draw students “who are seriously thinking about what to do with their lives,” Eisner says he’s met enough individualists with strong views and convictions and a healthy amount of insecurity that he knows that when he’s “sitting down in hell, things are going to be good here on earth.” 

Fortunately for future classes of Cornellians, Eisner is still thinking of more ways for the Naturalist’s Way to grow and improve.  While he jokes that most of the Cornell administration has no idea about the class and “that’s probably a good thing,” he hopes to add a sequel class that will involve more student participation and more discussion of what’s in store for our environment in the future.  He maintains that the current level of destruction of nature for human development without constraints is “shortsightedness to the extreme,” but he seems hopeful that if students can learn now to find common ground and work for a shared set of ideas, there will be much more hope for the future. 

In addition to dreaming of new ways to make his classes even more meaningful, Eisner is enjoying the recent release of For Love of Insects, and he’s putting the finishing touches on another book about 75 different survival strategies in Arthropods, which will likely end up next to For Love of Insects on quite a few bookshelves.  He’s applied for another five year extension on his NIH grant—the same one he had at Harvard in 1955—and says he’s “scared silly he won’t get it,” because he’s had it for so long, and he’s adjusting to living with Parkinson’s, which he says is just part of life.  “Don’t make a big deal about it,” he tells me as I take notes.  Finally, he adds with a grin, he’s continuing to help the democrats get elected whenever he can. 

Overall, Tom Eisner says he couldn’t be happier.  “I’m blissfully happily married, I’m happy that my children are usefully occupied, and I have a grandson at Cornell who calls me up when he can’t start his car—and it started when I told him what to do,” he says.  If that’s not enough, Eisner absolutely loves what he does as a Professor at Cornell.  In his typical humble way, he ends our interview by telling me how much he loves life at Cornell, and that he can’t for the life of him imagine what he’s done to deserve such an existence. 

 

Afterthoughts

            I’m still frustrated with this essay, and I still don’t think it accomplishes what I wanted it to accomplish when I first started working on it (which was even before it was assigned)!  Something I think I’m only starting to learn this year, thanks to this class and one other writing-intensive class, is how to revise.  It’s hard… it’s like fighting with my paper, ripping it apart and putting it back together while trying to make it look better than it did before. 

            I think this draft better incorporates a lot of the little stories that Tom has told, either in class or during the dinners I’ve eaten with him.  This draft is a bit less chronological and hopefully less book-reportish, though I’m sure it still is to some extent.  Damn.  I realized that my book-reportish tendencies probably come from my four years of writing news stories for newspapers, so I’m having trouble getting out of the habit. 

            I also realized while working on my revision that I really am a fan of the “while…” or “although…” sentence structure.  I never noticed that before, but I found myself doing it in the revision, but I think I at least noticed it more this time around and tried to be more creative.  Like starting sentences with “It was…” or “There was…” or something like that, I’ll probably have to pay attention to it for a while and then it’ll start driving me nuts when I see it too much. 

            Hmm… what else?  I don’t think this essay is as analytical as it could be.  It might just be a collection of stories.  I hope the implications of Eisner’s life and work are somewhat more apparent, though I’m not really sure they are. 

            I would say this is still not a final copy, but it’s final for now.  J