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So my name is uh William S. Heaps. Although I go by Bill Heaps, I graduated from Rice in 1968 and I was in Baker College while I was there. And I think I have a unusual story, longer story than most people may have because I had

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a connection with Rice. From the day I was born. My grandfather was a one of the early faculty members at Rice in the physics department. I think he joined around 1914. He had finished a phd at Princeton and there were a number, there was some kind

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of a connection that existed between Rice and Princeton at that time. Maybe I, maybe Houston had come from Princeton. Not sure. But in any case, he, he came down here and started teaching and, and started a family. My father was born in 1917 and his younger

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brother Neil, who incidentally is still alive, was born in 1921. And uh they both attended Rice as well. Uh I don't remember what years they graduated but late thirties for my dad and early forties for Neil. Um And um so then I was born in 45

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and you know, as soon as, as soon as I was old enough to be cognizant of things, one of the, one of the things we frequently did, we lived in Dallas, but we'd visit in, come down to Houston to visit, see grandma and grandpa. And it's

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clear to me, grandpa was a professor at Rice University. So I got taken over to Rice University frequently and visited the campus over and over and went to the, went to the labs and went to the Cohen House for dinner and things like that. So it

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was a, as I say, it was part of my life from the get go, you know, as I got a little older, I, you know, I discovered that not only was rise a college but it was kind of an elite college, you know, for really, really

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smart kids and, and uh that, you know, it was an honor to be able to go to Rice. And uh so I kind of hoped to go. I was uh I was uh a smart kid but a lazy kid problematic. So I did what I did

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well in, in high school, but I certainly wasn't close to being the valedictorian or anything like that. I know that lackadaisical attitude has kind of pervaded my life for uh forever and ever and ever. But anyhow, I showed up, I showed up at Rice in, in

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uh in the fall of 1964. And I told him that I was gonna major in math because I'd had a lot of success in math, uh you know, during my high school career and stuff. But somehow when I walked through the door and they asked me

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what I wanted to major in physics came out of my mouth. So there it was and physicist I became um so let me go back to talk about grandpa a little bit. Uh He was a very popular professor and he, he had a big personality and

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uh I've heard people describe his physics lectures as lively, which it may seem like a misnomer or, but uh and I guess not a misnomer but a improper adjective to describe a physics lecture. But he did like to, he did teach the physics introductory physics and

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he, he spiced it up with a lot of demonstrations, laboratory demonstrations in the, in the large uh physics conference hall. And they were sort of spectacular things, you know, and uh made it a lot of fun and I think many, many people enjoyed, enjoyed his lecture

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and I know he had a quirky sense of humor for, for all his life. And uh anyhow, over the years I've bumped into people. My Heaps, the Heap's name is unusual and people occasionally would ask me uh if I was related to Professor Heaps at Rice

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University and I, he was my grandpa and they uniformly, they had nice things to say about him. And uh uh some years later when I started my career, uh I was, went to work for NASA and there was a woman uh in the, in the building

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with me uh at NASA who uh informed me that she was a Rice graduate. And uh I said, yeah, that's nice, you know. And she said, and uh I'm a physics major and I said, oh, ok, me too. And she said, yeah, the reason I'm a

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physics major is because I took your grandpa heaps as physics 100 class. And I enjoyed it so much. I decided I want to be a physicist. So, anyhow, I think grandpa heaps has done well by Rice over the years. And uh I think they're not putting

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too many people around anymore that remember him. But the, but the stories that were told about him were uh all very positive. And uh I think it gave a lot of people a really good feeling about Rice. So, anyhow, when I embarked on my career at

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Rice, you know, as you say, I'd been a smart kid and I'd done well in school and, you know, and I was competitive, but I knew I was coming to rice and it was, I knew that everybody, there was gonna be some kind of semi genius

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and it was kind of scary to me and I was worried about whether or not I would be competitive. Uh But I, you know, after I got here and got the lay of the land and started doing the homework and I realized that, you know, I

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was going to be ok. And then I, I could, I could compete, I could stay up with these guys. And, um, there were probably about 15 people majoring in physics. And, uh, uh, as I say, I was not a hard working guy, but I think that

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just on the basis of my kind of native ability, I sort of was, I was sort of probably the in the middle of the pack somewhere seventh or eighth best guy in the, in the physics department. And uh so anyhow, I was able to hold my

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own and enjoyed the classes very much. Uh Professor Rorschach was a family friend because he'd known my grandpa. And uh so I had him for a professor and I had some other younger guys uh for physics professors too and they were uniformly. They were, they were

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good. We had like my physics classes. Uh I did have one sort of detriment detriment to my career was that I had a, I was in love with a girl who went to the University of Texas. And so this meant that frequently on weekends I was

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AWOL from the Rice campus and uh I was able to get away with this to some extent, although my junior year I had classes on Saturday and, uh and uh I, I didn't show up for some of those things and, and uh, it definitely affected my,

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my grades. But anyhow, I got through it, everything was ok. I was competitive and eventually when I did graduate, I graduated cum laude. Although I'm sure that was, was probably the very last guy on the cum lade list because I know I was, that was a

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pretty solid b average most of the time. Ok. Anyhow, so moving along, got out of, got out of rice, got into graduate school. Went to the University of Wisconsin. There was a uh there existed a connection between the Rice Physics Department and the Wisconsin Physics Department.

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Uh There was one of the big professors here at Rice. A guy named King, G. King Walters. I think he had come down from Wisconsin and there were several guys who had graduated from Rice who were on the faculty up at Wisconsin. Anyhow, when I was

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asking people where I should go to graduate school, uh The advice I got from any number of people was go to Wisconsin and uh they didn't talk about the weather which would have been nice, but it was a good school. It was a very large graduate

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school and they had almost all disciplines and I really didn't know what I wanted to do. And so it was, I thought it would be good to be, go someplace where no matter what I decided I would be interested in, it probably would be available. So

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anyhow, I got to Wisconsin and once again, now I'm in graduate school in physics. And once again, and once again you look at that and you're saying, well, that's a group of pretty smart guys and I'm worried, am I gonna be competitive? And you don't know,

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uh, but, and started out taking courses and I discovered that, you know, that I was, I could keep up and I was ok and you know that I was, I was gonna be, I was probably gonna be able to at least manage the coursework uh for

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the phd program there. Uh After the first semester, they give everybody an exam at Wisconsin called the preliminary exam. And you have to pass this exam if you want to continue on in the graduate school. And so, you know, all 50 of us went into a

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room and took an exam that I think it only lasted about three hours or something like that, but it's kind of a scary deal. Uh But anyhow, I emerged as the high score on the preliminary exam. Um And um I'm pretty sure this didn't have anything

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to do with uh my innate ability vis a vis the other students. But I think it had a lot to do with the fact that I had gone to rice and I was better prepared than most of the other people there to, to take on the

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next level of work. Um But anyhow, side the point pass the preliminary exam took years and years and years to finally get my thesis written. But eventually I got out, uh, and, uh, I had gotten married in the time and when I got out it was

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hard to get a job in physics. There. Not, weren't very many. So, had a little bit of difficulty landing a new position. But eventually I got a, eventually I got a job at the University of Maryland in the chemistry department because there was a guy there

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who was interested in using lasers to make measurements of chemicals in the atmosphere. And, and I had become something of a laser. Actually, this is the early days of lasers when I was there and I become something of an expert in, in uh laser technology while

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at Wisconsin. So, uh anyhow, he got hired at the University of Maryland as postdoc to, to uh work on his experiments to build this instrument and we built an instrument and it was moderately successful. And uh but the guy and I'm not gonna mention his name,

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but he was a slave driver, not fun to work for, you would call you up in the middle of the night to talk to you about stuff and you know, demanded that you work 12 and 14 hour days and all this kind of stuff. And admittedly,

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he was under a lot of pressure because he promised more than, than he could reasonably expect to deliver. But it was up to us to try to help make those promises come true. Anyhow, spent two years with this guy, we built a machine that he was

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trying to build, we operated it, it worked a few times. And uh that was good. But the University of Maryland hated him because he was always sort of overextended on grants and stuff. And so he decided that he wasn't gonna be able to continue to work

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for Maryland. And so he decided to move his group to Georgia Tech. And he invited uh uh he invited all of his postdocs to go down to Georgia Tech with him. And we would have been, you know, given some kind of assistant professor position, which, you

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know, would have been a pretty nice thing, but I really, really, really, really, really didn't wanna continue to work for him. And uh it turned out that about three miles up the road from University of Maryland was NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. And I got word

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that they were looking to start up a new group to uh study the problem of the ozone layer. And they were interested in people that, you know, knew things about atmospheric instrumentation. And there, I was so I managed to finagle a job over at uh NASA

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and uh and I'm very happy about that because I didn't have to go to Georgia Tech, didn't have to deal with the old boss anymore. And um yeah, so I'm in that same situation. Ok, here I am, I'm at NASA. It's a whole bunch of really,

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really smart people. Am I going to be competitive or not? You know, can I keep up, can I hold my own a little worried about that? And, you know, once again I found out after a while that, yeah, I was just, I was like everybody else,

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all, everybody had a phd and we were all pretty smart guys, pretty confident and I was, you know, as good as any of them. And so uh uh I felt good about that and I've looked back on these, these experiences of going to a new place

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and worrying about, you know, relative standing and relative abilities. And it dawned on me that in my entire career, the highest concentration of really, really, really smart people that I've ever been surrounded by in any of these spots was at Rice. The people at Rice were

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just amazingly brilliant and capable people to a man and uh not at NASA and not in graduate school. Did I ever meet the meet the lack of that anyhow? Um I don't know if I have much more rice material to say I had a wonderful career

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uh at NASA. It was a perfect job. Uh I managed, I managed to uh navigate my way through NASA where I didn't ever have to work on gigantic projects that involve 300 people and 5000 meetings and all of that kind of stuff. I managed to always

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just get support to try to develop new instruments capable of making new measurements in the atmosphere. And I was kind of in charge of those projects. And so it was sort of my own boss for almost my entire career. And uh later on, after 25 years

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or so, I got into, you know, lower level management is what was called a branch head for a few years. Uh And uh I thought I was OK as a branch head. But once again, I, I was more interested in in the engineering and the science

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than I was in the management of people. And, and uh so after five or six years, I went back into, uh I went back into the uh uh lower ranks as a worker bee and continued to develop instruments for uh me measurements in the atmosphere. And

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by this time, the, the big deal was uh carbon dioxide and uh greenhouse gasses and stuff. So I designed instruments to um to um measure greenhouse gasses, carbon dioxide and methane. And these were tough instruments to build and uh highly competitive. And uh uh I had

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some success but it got to be more and more and more struggles, more and more people piled on and wanted to do this type of work. I had people that were working for me whose livelihood was dependent upon me successfully writing proposals. And I was getting

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on with that. And my wife also got sick that sick with cancer. So, uh, after 37 years at NASA, I hung it up. I spent the last few years taking care of my wife who did eventually pass away. And, uh, um, the only other thing

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I can say is that, uh, having the death of a loved one makes you realize how fragile life is and how important relationships are and how important the, the people I've known and loved for all my life have been and some of that group in includes

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the rice community people. So I uh try very hard to get back here to Rice um for reunions. And even though this year this is 55th reunion, it's a pretty small group, but it's still nice to talk to those people. Rice was small enough that I,

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I knew them and I, I remember them and uh uh we have things to talk about after 55 years and the good news is that, you know, the ones that show up it here, at least all had successful and happy lives and some of them did

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amazing things. And uh it's just great fun to come back and I'm glad I'm here and I guess that's the end of my story. Thanks for the opportunity.