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Today's Featured Biography

 
Howard DeVoe

YEARBOOK CAPTION
Howard's favorite expression is "It's all relative." His pet peeve is people who block the stairway. Howard's future plans include Oberlin College and a course in chemistry. He is Co-Editor-in-Chief of the Green Lantern. He participates in the Thespian Club, A Cappella Choir, Green Quill, Student Gov't. and Science Searchers.
"Knowledge is more than equivalent to force."

How delightful to be able to make contact this way with classmates from long ago! I'm still as tall and skinny (well, almost) as you may remember; but I'd like to think, much less awkward socially. I'm in good health, keeping busy and enjoying life.

After Pleasantville, I received my bachelor's degree in chemistry at Oberlin (with junior year abroad at the University of London), and my Ph.D. at Harvard. Did postdoctoral research for a year and a half at Berkeley, then moved to Maryland to work in a research group at the National Institutes of Health. In 1968, I left NIH to become an associate professor of chemistry at the University of Maryland at College Park, where I've been teaching ever since.

You might be interested in a couple of projects related to high school chemistry. Soon after coming to the Univ. of Maryland, I joined several colleagues in producing a modular high school instructional program, "Interdisciplinary Approaches to Chemistry," which ran through two editions and enjoyed good sales for many years. My contribution to the program was the textbook "Communities of Molecules, a Physical Chemistry Module," complete with lab experiments. More recently, I've been working with a group of high school teachers to run the Chemathon, an annual chemistry competition at the university for local high school students. You're invited to visit the Chemathon Web site at http://www.wam.umd.edu/devoe/chemathon.html.

Presently I spend most of my free time at the computer, finishing the text and figures for a college-level textbook of chemical thermodynamics to be published by Prentice Hall.

I have three wonderful children from my first marriage. John, the oldest, and his Australian wife divide their time between Australia, northern California, and Guatemala. Donald got his Ph.D. from Berkeley last year and has joined the mechanical engineering faculty at the University of Maryland. Dorothy is a social worker and lives with her husband in Bethesda, Maryland. No grandchildren yet, sorry to say.

For the past 18 years I've been married to my second wife, Stephanie, the love of my life. She's a programmer/analyst in Washington, DC, and enjoys making jewelry and beadwork for sale at craft fairs. We recently moved into a new Victorian-style house with a view of the mountains, located in a neotraditional community in historic Frederick, Maryland. Here I enjoy hiking, gardening, cooking, and books. We plan to retire here eventually. The attractive individuality and small-town character of the homes on our street remind me a little of Bedford Road, whose old houses I've always admired. I'm tremendously saddened by news of the premature loss of some of our classmates. I look forward to reading the biographies, and wish everyone the very best.
Posted 1999

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