In the spring of 1977, toward the end of my NASA postdoc, I found myself
attending the Symposium on Environmental Biogeochemistry conference in
Wolfenbüttel, Germany. It was my first international conference and my first time
overseas. The meeting was chaired by Prof. Wolfgang Krumbein and had a number
of intense, interesting sessions on ancient geobiology, extreme environments, and
geologic structures having biogenic components (i.e., stromatolites). I had little prior
exposure to these topics previously, and my appetite was whetted. Also, because its
location was proximate to the border that once separated West and East Germany
(this was at the height of the Cold War) there was a large scientific contingent from
the Soviet Union (aka: Russia) also present. In walking around the conference during
a coffee break, I espied a man of my age from that contingent, whose name I
recognized from the marine methane literature: Dr. Sergey S. Bellayev. I walked
up to him, and reaching deep into my brain, managed to retrieve a few words of
standard greeting and self-introduction in Russian that had not altogether gone down
the drain.
His eyes grew as wide as saucers because he assumed I was fluent in Russian, a
rarity among the American contingent. In actuality, because I have an “ear” for
sounds, all those tortuous hours spent in language labs endowed me with a refined/
educated pronunciation of the Great Russian Language (Balshaya Russkaya Yazike)
even though my vocabulary consisted of less than 100 words that I could barely
string together in a coherent sentence. Yet to his ears I sounded like the Russian
equivalent of trained English-speakers from foreign countries around the globe
whose refined accents could easily put them in from of a BBC microphone.
Sergey called out to his Russian colleagues and I was within moments surrounded
by their entire delegation, all speaking at once, and all trying to discern where this
American oddity gained this capacity. Soon their most senior person, Professor
Michael (Misha) Ivanov, came by and queried me, all while smoking a classic
paparossi. After establishing my credentials which I used all the RPI/NYU
Russian I had retained, he pronounced to his colleagues “Nash!” (literally . . .he is
one of us). I made a number of wonderful new friends and colleagues that day, which
was not at all bad for a kid who 12 years before had flunked Russian 2 and ruined his
summer by repeating the course.
30.4 A Real Job and a Bit of an Uphill Struggle
My first few years at the United States Geological Survey (USGS, 1977–1980) were
trying, especially since I had no lab. Moreover, I felt out of place, in that there was
little interest by the hierarchy in allowing me to pursue work on anaerobic processes,
especially methanogenesis. Yet somehow, I bootlegged and eventually published
research dealing with methane. These included the marine plankton/fish fart hypothesis (Oremland 1979), detection of methanogenic activity in Deep Sea Drilling
Project muds (Oremland et al. 1982c), and a refutation of Thomas Gold’s deep
methane hypothesis based on serendipitously collected field data (Oremland 1983).
640
R. S. Oremland
attending the Symposium on Environmental Biogeochemistry conference in
Wolfenbüttel, Germany. It was my first international conference and my first time
overseas. The meeting was chaired by Prof. Wolfgang Krumbein and had a number
of intense, interesting sessions on ancient geobiology, extreme environments, and
geologic structures having biogenic components (i.e., stromatolites). I had little prior
exposure to these topics previously, and my appetite was whetted. Also, because its
location was proximate to the border that once separated West and East Germany
(this was at the height of the Cold War) there was a large scientific contingent from
the Soviet Union (aka: Russia) also present. In walking around the conference during
a coffee break, I espied a man of my age from that contingent, whose name I
recognized from the marine methane literature: Dr. Sergey S. Bellayev. I walked
up to him, and reaching deep into my brain, managed to retrieve a few words of
standard greeting and self-introduction in Russian that had not altogether gone down
the drain.
His eyes grew as wide as saucers because he assumed I was fluent in Russian, a
rarity among the American contingent. In actuality, because I have an “ear” for
sounds, all those tortuous hours spent in language labs endowed me with a refined/
educated pronunciation of the Great Russian Language (Balshaya Russkaya Yazike)
even though my vocabulary consisted of less than 100 words that I could barely
string together in a coherent sentence. Yet to his ears I sounded like the Russian
equivalent of trained English-speakers from foreign countries around the globe
whose refined accents could easily put them in from of a BBC microphone.
Sergey called out to his Russian colleagues and I was within moments surrounded
by their entire delegation, all speaking at once, and all trying to discern where this
American oddity gained this capacity. Soon their most senior person, Professor
Michael (Misha) Ivanov, came by and queried me, all while smoking a classic
paparossi. After establishing my credentials which I used all the RPI/NYU
Russian I had retained, he pronounced to his colleagues “Nash!” (literally . . .he is
one of us). I made a number of wonderful new friends and colleagues that day, which
was not at all bad for a kid who 12 years before had flunked Russian 2 and ruined his
summer by repeating the course.
30.4 A Real Job and a Bit of an Uphill Struggle
My first few years at the United States Geological Survey (USGS, 1977–1980) were
trying, especially since I had no lab. Moreover, I felt out of place, in that there was
little interest by the hierarchy in allowing me to pursue work on anaerobic processes,
especially methanogenesis. Yet somehow, I bootlegged and eventually published
research dealing with methane. These included the marine plankton/fish fart hypothesis (Oremland 1979), detection of methanogenic activity in Deep Sea Drilling
Project muds (Oremland et al. 1982c), and a refutation of Thomas Gold’s deep
methane hypothesis based on serendipitously collected field data (Oremland 1983).
640
R. S. Oremland