Alumni Magazine - Spring 2008 - (Page 23)

Left: Delaney, at sea, with several bright yellow seismometers stored behind him. Right: A ocean-bottom seismometer records small, brief underwater earthquakes. The yellow “hardhat” encases a thick glass sphere ﬁlled with data loggers and batteries. things that a geologist has to know, I learned at Lehigh. And not only that, at Lehigh, I got a lot of encouragement to be creative. I had many remarkable professors.” One such professor was Larry Whitcomb, who taught geology. “An older man, he was one of those prim and proper professors with a little mustache, always starting out with a tie,” Delaney recalls. “Then, in the lab, he would transform; his tie would be gone, his shirt tail would be out, his hair would be mussed, and he was talking about fossils—I found that fascinating.” Delaney also recalls that in Whitcomb’s class—as well as in his other classes at Lehigh—students could ask many questions and receive thoughtful answers, an environment he has sought to re-create in his own classes at the University of Washington. “I strive to be accessible to students and to encourage their creativity, but also to encourage irreverence—a very delicate path for a professor,” says Delaney, who returned to Lehigh’s campus last fall for a reunion with former classmates. “I have always felt that the pursuit of truth is what is really important, not the defense of a position of authority.” Overall, Delaney hopes to ignite the same passion for discovery in his students that he feels himself, to instill in them the excitement of the scientiﬁc adventure, or, as he puts it, “the commitment to ﬁguring out how something works, the spark of enthusiasm for doing science in a fashion that makes you see something no one has ever seen before.” The best way to make an incredible discovery is to work in an area where people haven’t worked a lot, which leads Delaney to Galileo, a man who—with a single unexpected observation—completely rewrote the position of human beings in the cosmos. “If I have heroes, it is people who have made astonishing dis- coveries and didn’t even intend to, the best example being Galileo,” he says. Curiosity drew Galileo to explore the night sky and Jupiter’s moons. Today, a similar impulse drives Delaney to study the volcanoes on the ocean ﬂoor. “We are on the threshold of learning things no one knew before, and that is incredibly exciting,” he says. How much is left to be learned about the ocean? Delaney says it may be unbounded. “There is not much known about what is yet to be discovered,” he says. “In the oceans, there are multiple frontiers: We have not explored all of the ocean, and because it is constantly changing, we are also exploring the time domain. “But if life as we know it exists beyond Earth, it will most likely be on planets with oceans and volcanoes, so understanding the evolution of our own system is a step toward an even more profound discovery—whether or not we are alone.” LU “The whole basis of my career as a geologist was ﬁxed at Lehigh I learned the basic geology—mineralogy, the origin of volcanic rocks, thermodynamics—all of those basic things that a geologist has to know, I learned at Lehigh.” —John Delaney spring 2008 23

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Alumni Magazine - Spring 2008

Alumni Magazine - Spring 2008 Contents From the President's Desk Mailbox On Campus Research Arts & Culture Sports Alumni News Cover Story: In Galileo's Wake Technically Funny The Healing Game Looking for America The Last Word

Alumni Magazine - Spring 2008

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