Tulane University students who signed up for a course on natural selection and The Origin of Species may have thought that their instructor was carrying on a family tradition: “Darwin and Darwinism” is taught by Steven P. Darwin, a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology.
“I’m sure some students register thinking they’ll get the story from the horse’s mouth,” says Mr. Darwin, who has checked the family tree and says he is not related to the 19th-century naturalist.
Mr. Darwin is, however, among several college professors who have particularly apt names.
Randall Toothaker (pronounced “tooth-acher”) teaches dentistry at the University of Nebraska Medical Center’s College of Dentistry alongside his partner in private practice, Jeffrey B. Payne (The Chronicle, April 25). Charles J. Love has been a cardiologist for more than 20 years at Ohio State University’s College of Medicine & Public Health. Richard E. Smalley, a Nobel-winning professor of chemistry, physics, and astronomy at Rice University, is a giant in the field of nanotechnology.
“It’s been pointed out to me that it’s ironic,” Mr. Smalley says of his surname. “It’s a little silly.”
Some observers think not. Since the late 1990s, New Scientist magazine has taken note of “nominative determinism,” the phenomenon of people whose career choices could have been inspired by their surnames. Just this year the magazine said: “We keep trying to get away from nominative determinism, but the world seems determined not to let us. Why else would the Bush administration appoint Margaret Spellings as the U.S. secretary of education?”
Ken Rainwater, a professor of civil engineering at Texas Tech University and director of the Water Resource Center, says he “just gravitated toward the water issues” after entering college as a prospective mathematics major.
Mr. Rainwater is from bone-dry West Texas, and he speculates that if you grow up in a place where a resource is scarce, “you might feel something about the preciousness of that resource. It seemed to be attractive.”
Other professors with apt names say any alignment with their jobs is a fluke. Barbara Stump, a research associate at the arboretum at Stephen F. Austin State University, in Nacogdoches, Tex., says she was interested in gardens before she ever met her husband. “I think it’s just a happy coincidence that I found Mr. Stump,” she says.
And as far as Mr. Darwin can tell, there was nothing specific that led him to evolutionary biology.
“Unless it was subconscious, I never felt really compelled,” he says. “I wasn’t much interested in science until I got to college.”
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ALSO APTLY NAMED
- Kathleen Book, assistant professor of education, Wartburg College
- Robert L. Bugg, cover-crops analyst who has done research on insects at the University of California’s Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education Program
- Mary Case, forensic pathologist at Saint Louis University School of Medicine
- David H. Crumb, assistant professor in the hotel-management program at Rochester Institute of Technology
- James S. Fellin (pronounced “felon”), an adjunct professor who teaches forensic accounting at Carlow University
- Ernest B. Fish, director of the Texas Tech Wildlife and Fisheries Management Institute
- John M. Grammer, associate professor of English, University of the South
- Michael S. Greenwood, professor of forest-ecosystem science, University of Maine
- Merrin E. Jump, director of marketing promotions and group fitness, Miami University (Ohio)
- David W. Music, professor of church music, Baylor University
- Stephen J. Pope, associate professor of theology, Boston College
SOURCE: Chronicle reporting
http://chronicle.com Section: Short Subjects Volume 51, Issue 40, Page A6