I had an extraordinary Chemistry professor during my Freshman year at Kansas State University. He was the head of the Chemistry Dept & essentially owned the entire third floor of King Hall. He told us a story of his own undergraduate work. This is a story that he presented as absolutely true - and named himself as a direct participant. I can only present it to you as he told it to us.
His undergrad work would have probably taken place in the late 1930s or early 1940s. He said that he and 4 or 5 friends would hear tall tales and would try to investigate them as best they could. They’d try to figure out how to turn the lake green for St. Patrick’s day and how to create various explosives… that kind of thing. They were the Mythbusters of their time. (although this story was related to me decades before the Mythbusters existed.)
They all had jobs working for professors on campus, so they all knew one another more personally than just as pupil / teacher. The group of young men had all signed up to take Anatomy & Physiology during the next term. Through their employment, they learned that there would be no cadaver for them. This all happened before there were enough people who donate their bodies to science. Sometimes you’d have a cadaver and sometimes you would not. Well, they were a little upset that students as fine as they would not have a cadaver, so they did the necessary research and labor in the middle of the night & they next day, right before the start of classes, without a word, the corpse simply appeared in the Anatomy Lab.
The professor proceeded as though this was a perfectly normal term… until they arrived for their final exams. The professor said, “The following students will stay after the exam.” and then he read off a list of their names.
They completed their exams and, when all of the other students had departed, the professor stood before them and said, “You are no longer my students. I am no longer your professor. And, so, I think this is the right time to tell you that she (pointing to the cadaver) was my daughter. … And you WILL be putting her back.”
And, he left them. And, they put her back.
(Flashing forward about 40 years) My professor leaned forward and said that he’d learned that day what it was to be a teacher. This man had so wanted his students to learn - and learn properly - that he had not said a word. That was what dedication was. That was why we students needed to ask questions if we had them and the level of commitment we owed to our work. It is the very definition of Gravitas.
I have returned to that campus twice over the last few decades. Each time, I went to King Hall & found some unsuspecting chemistry graduate student & kept this story alive.
