Murray Goodman

Joseph Taulane, Laboratory Director, the Goodman Group, June 7 2004

Marshall mentioned that Murray had presented lectures to 5th grade kids. I was with him when he did this and I?ll tell you that we put much more preparation into those lectures than lectures for undergrads or graduate students. Young kids are a hard act to play. It was not so much that he wanted the students to learn everything he was presenting but rather he wanted to inspire them to want to learn more in the future.

That is what he did; he inspired the graduate students and postdoctoral fellows in his group.

He led by example, not mandate. He encouraged us to do the right thing, not the easy thing or the quick thing, but rather the right thing with our science and our lives.

He took great joy in the achievements of his students, and, followed with pride the careers of students and fellows as they left the laboratory and moved on to other opportunities.

While one left the laboratory, because that is what we were supposed to do, no one ever left the Goodman Group. The group is a dynamic enenity some 50 years deep, and still growing. Murray knew us all as people. He knew our families and remembered the names of our children, our parents and siblings. Yet to us he was always Professor Goodman, never, Murray. Many times he told me he followed in the footsteps of two great men, Melvin Calvin, his graduate advisor at Berkeley and later Herman Mark as he began his career as a young professor at the Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute. It was their example of mentoring young scientist that inspired Murray to do the same and our lives have been made better for it. While a list of some 500 publications and many patents serves as a record of Murray?s research accomplishments, in fact his true scientific legacy is the impact he had on all of us and the impact that we will have on those who follow. This is the greatest tribute we can pay to Murray Goodman the Mentor.