I got the sad news that last Sunday night Prof. Tom Dunne of Reed College passed away in his sleep of natural causes (age 89). Tom was my undergraduate thesis advisor and one of my favorite people in the world. 1/n

There was to be a symposium honoring Tom on March 13th (which was postponed due to the COVID-19 crisis), but you can find a short biography of Tom at this website: http://www.acsportland.org/newsletters/newsletter-mar.pdf. I can add a couple of stories that Tom told me. 2/n

Story 1: Tom was a postdoc with Al Cotton at MIT and he was among the first people to solve a crystal structure with Cotton. It seems hard to believe given that Cotton published something like 1000 crystal structures. But as far as I can tell it's true. 3/n

Tom said that the hard thing was that the diffraction patterns were captured on film and you had to assign an intensity to each diffraction based on a set of intensity standards. He said he just about went blind doing the first structure and swore he would never do it again.

So for the second structure, he hired the kid brother of his girlfriend to do it for something like a nickel a diffraction peak. Apparently the kid had good eyes and the r factor was much better on the second structure than on the first! "Best $35 I ever spent" he said. 4/n

Story 2: I was cleaning out the lab one day and Tom came in to keep me company and give me moral support. He said it reminded him of the time he was cleaning up the same lab, and had found a half liter of sodium-potassium (NaK) alloy left over from a previous project. 5/n

NaK is pretty terrifying. It is highly reactive toward water, just like Na and K alone. But NaK alloy is a liquid--so much more reactive since the surface doesn't passivate as well. Tom called up his retired colleague Arthur F. Scott and asked for advice. 6/n

Arthur Scott is a bit of a Reed legend. He was a well recognized chemist in his day and a champion of radiochemistry. He was also responsible for Reed's nuclear reactor. He was the president of Reed during WW2 and both the old and new chemistry buildings were named for him. 7/n

At the time of the story, Tom is in his late forties and Scotty was in his late seventies. Apparently, Scotty said two things: (1) to take the NaK out by the loading dock and pour it slowly into a bath containing isopropyl alcohol. And (2) 'I want to come watch.' 8/n

Tom and Scotty meet at the loading dock and Tom says it is the most beautiful day--not a cloud in the sky, which is not a given in Portland. After a bit of setup, Tom starts pouring the NaK in using some long tongs and fireproof gloves. And it's vigorous! 9/n

It's going a bit wild, but it seems that it will work. But just then, Tom and Scotty look at each other because they both hear the sound of rushing water. They look up the sloped driveway leading to the loading dock and see a wall of water coming down the hill! 10/n

"So what happened?" I asked on the edge of my seat. "What do you think? I poured the rest of the NaK in, grabbed the flaming bath, and ran for higher ground!" "Were you okay?" "Burned the hair off my forearms, but otherwise yes" 11/n

But where did the water come from? It turns out that the nearby Studio Art building was nearing completion and they had installed a fire hydrant as part of the project. The fire department decided that it was a perfect day to test out the new hydrant. 12/n

They didn't consider that someone was downhill from them disposing of half a liter of NaK! Well, why would they? 13/n

So, there's two of the many stories that I heard from Tom over the years. I miss him already, but glad that I was lucky enough to have him as my thesis advisor. Rest in peace. 14/14