As the semester comes to an end, few pieces of news have brought me such intense and unbridled joy as learning that @Jim_Swan has received tenure @MITChemE. I have never (with intentionality) written a “#/n”thread; this is as good a topic as any to be the first! (1/n)

Jim is an incredible scientist and person: One thing (of the many) I admire about him (immensely) is how he couches such an intense ferocity of intellect within a fundamentally gentle and wonderful soul. (2/n)

No matter the topic of conversation, one comes to expect that he’s two steps ahead (and when that expectation is wrong, it’s often corrected under “two” —> “three”). This quality is inspiring for “big-picture stuff,” it’s (to me) the “stuff of movies” when it comes to... (3/n)

... “mundanities” like utterly clever changes of variable, which flow (at high Re) from his fingertips. And yet one never detects a hint of impatience (there is none)! What’s more, as is the case with so many incredible mentors with distinctive pedagogical philosophies... (4/n)

... any person who studies with Jim can’t help but assimilate a few “Swanemes” into their internal (and external) discourse. He has no shortage of delightful low-Re turns of phrase; my favorite all-purpose one is “you should convince yourself...” (5/n)

... a phrase that I still hear in my own head in Jim’s voice, ~half the time. This list could (and ought to) go on and on, but I’ll add just one more fond recollection, universally shared by his mentees: The sheer glee that Jim takes in being “in the trenches of science”... (6/n)

... is stunning and inspirational. I will never forget the Institute holiday when Jim came into the lab and treated himself to an afternoon of repairing a GPU fan (not going to say which company’s GPUs are prone to needing this) and debugging a thorny piece of code... (7/n)

... his giddiness and mirth after completing this pair of “in the trenches” tasks (expediently, I might add... this isn’t your archetypal “PI at the lab bench” story) was infectious and brightened an otherwise humdrum day. (8/n)

Jim is, to me and to so many, a role model as a scientist, mentor, teacher, thinker, and family man, amongst many other vocations (“chef” also makes the Top 20 list). @MIT and its students are lucky, to the moon and back, that Jim’s “Swan songs” are anything but. (9/n)