During the school year, from 7:30 in the morning until 5:00 in the evening, Monday through Friday, and all morning long on Saturday, Dr. Stephan Pearson could be found in one of five places—in his office in a turret atop the massive gothic-style science building, in his lecture hall, in the physics laboratory, in the chemistry laboratory, or in the chapel.
Although the science building was a massive structure, the faculty offices within it most certainly were not. Tucked under staircases, blocked off in dead-end corridors, and squeezed into turrets, they impressed one for their coziness if not for their convenience. Dr. Pearson had been ceded the use of the southwest turret, one of two medieval projections on either end of the south wall of the fortresslike structure. To reach it one ascended a circular staircase from the fifth floor where the impressive and up-to-date science library was housed. One then ducked under a beam and emerged onto a narrow covered corridor on a flat flanking section along the edge of the roof. This led to Dr. Pearson’s turret firmly planted on the southwest corner of the building. It was about twelve feet in diameter on the inside and lined with an octagonal arrangement of bookshelves reaching two-thirds of the way to the ten-foot base of the conical ceiling. In the south-facing segment of the octagon was a tall window, the lowest section of which could be opened for fresh air.
Such an affair may seem cold and forbidding, especially during those long Minnesota winters, but in reality it suited the retiring disposition of the professor very well. Kay saw to it that the college provided him with a thick warm carpet on the floor and an electric fan-heater for use in cold weather. Twice a month she scaled the tower when Steve was in class to keep his workspace as clean and tidy as possible.
This last task might have overwhelmed a lesser woman. Every time she waded into the mess Steve could create in a couple of week’s time, she had the impression that a cyclone had struck. Books, papers, pencils, refuse of every description were lying in the same comfortable positions they had landed after being tossed or lost. Soon, however, Kay learned on which shelves the most used and consequently the most abused books belonged. She developed a system of separating the scattered papers into three categories—definite scraps, probable scraps, and probable essentials. The definite scraps (relatively few in number) she herself threw away. The probable scraps (a veritable mountain) she placed in a neat stack on the left side of the great oak desk right above the waste basket. And the probable essentials she placed on the right side of the desk up against the wall. Because of her dedicated efforts, both professor and students recovered papers that may otherwise have remained lost forever.
The turret office did indeed well suit Dr. Pearson’s disposition. He was the sort of scientist who, rather than involving himself deeply in particular laboratory investigations, had instead devoted himself to planning out his investigations’ next steps, pencil in hand. Technicians enough he had always had to carry out his instructions and report on results. He had been accustomed to spending many hours in the company of his well-trained fertile mind, visiting the laboratories that reported to him as often as necessary to check on progress or, occasionally, to conduct an investigation which for some reason he felt he should do himself.
His move to Christiania had, of course, curtailed this sort of activity, but it had replaced it with an activity that quickly engaged him to the full—teaching. His first challenge was to meet students where they were and not overwhelm them unintentionally. He must have succeeded in this. Every student of his that I had an opportunity to meet and interview after his death spoke glowingly of his classroom style during these years. They spoke of his encyclopedic grasp of every subject he taught and his infinite patience with students who were struggling. He never consulted notes. It was all in his head, neatly arranged, they told me. Furthermore, despite his towering intellect and reputation, he was always accessible to his students and the soul of kindness in every situation. But what they recalled most vividly was his ability to fire their imaginations. In the course of his lectures, he would regularly digress to paint a vision for his students of how humanity’s lot could be improved by the proper application the principles and the knowledge they were in the process of learning. He spoke of instant worldwide communication through a network of satellites (which he had designed on paper and illustrated for his students), of the elimination of famine and starvation through—among other things—the controlled culture of algae, of the potential of nuclear fission and atomic synthesis to produce limitless power for the benefit of all, and of a whole host of other possibilities he envisioned for a better future for the human race. He spoke with such radiance and confidence of this future, even in the face of the widespread panic induced by the threat posed by the Soviet Union, that the fear of nuclear war gave way in many of his students to enthusiasm for the many exciting prospects of nuclear peace. His first three years at Christiania saw the number of physics majors in the graduating class jump from five to twenty-seven and climb steadily from there.
He was not a dynamic lecturer, far from it. His voice did not even carry through the terraced lecture hall. It didn’t take long for the electronics man on his staff to rig up a portable microphone which he could unobtrusively hang around his neck. He didn’t try to be interesting. He just was, by virtue of what he said, not of how he said it. A principle could be ever so abstract, he almost always had a homely illustration of it at hand to make it easier to grasp and retain. Occasionally he would suddenly lower his voice and sever contact with the class, mumbling something to himself half aloud. This was an almost mystic moment for those in the class who were caught up in the spirit of the man. He never did lose his “romance” with theoretical physics and with mathematics especially, and their seductiveness could catch him at the most inopportune moments. The former students whom I was able to interview from this period in his life loved him for this and even held him in a kind of awe because of it.
Specifically, for what subjects was he responsible? A cursory reading of a number of the catalogues dating from these years reveals that he must have established a working partnership with the Departments of Chemistry and Mathematics, for he often moved over to teach one of their courses and was not shy about recruiting someone from their faculties on occasion to teach a course in his department. Each year he taught one class in general physics, a beginning course for science majors, but also available to fulfill the science requirement for nonscience majors. I am told that this class became very popular and was always oversubscribed. In addition, he regularly instructed a semester course in the three fields of thermodynamics, nuclear physics, and theoretical physics. Then, crossing into the Chemistry Department, he taught a two-year course in theoretical chemistry involving thermodynamics and molecular structure. And every year he taught one class in upper-division mathematics which included over the course of time such subjects as differential equations, advanced calculus, and theory of complex variables.
With all of these quiet endeavors lumped together in a pleasing and orderly fashion, Dr. Pearson’s life settled down into a regularity that was far from boring or routine. His mere presence at Christiania attracted several outstanding new faculty members within a few years so that, in addition to the fine man in electronics whom he had inherited, there were now also first-rate teachers of inorganic and organic chemistry, a capable new electronic physicist, and a lightning-quick Hungarian mathematician, a refugee whom he had met in Germany many years before. The quality of work proceeding from little Christiania with its fifteen hundred students was commencing to attract some notice in the world.
In his office by himself or with his students one on one, in his lecture hall, in his laboratories, or at daily chapel, reticent and diminutive Dr. Stephan Pearson seemed the very embodiment of self-possessing unaffecting genius, moving with his own brand of quiet eagerness in the well-ordered orb of his lofty calling, his grace-filled wife, and his peaceable religion.