Fifty years of chem at Duke

When James Bonk started teaching chemistry at Duke University, the periodic table had 100 or so elements. It now has 118 and Bonk is entering year 51 of a career so well-regarded on the Duke campus that his course was for many years known simply as "Bonkistry".

Bonk is a midwesterner by birth but fled to Durham after graduate school at Ohio State and never left. "You can only shovel eight-foot snow drifts for so long before the novelty wears off," he astutely points out.
Bonk recently talked to us about his career and the changes he's seen. Here are excerpts.

 What's the most dramatic change in how you teach chemistry?

I suppose you'd have to say the computer. In the good old days it was mostly chalk and a blackboard. But nowadays you have powerpoint and videos and dvds. You have a whole bunch of things that we certainly didn't have in the beginning.

Is that good, bad, or just different?

Well, I think it's a little of all. Certainly in my own case - using Powerpoint is so easy. But at the same time, the students can either pay attention to you or the Powerpoint. It's sort of a divided problem.  

And how has chemistry itself changed?

Again, the computer revolutionized it. Particularly the theoretical part of chemistry. Certainly we could do chemistry without a computer. In the old days, when you were really trying to decipher the facts of chemistry. You'd try to discover the facts, then organize them, then explain them.

The explanation side is what the computer has really revolutionized. It's a little bit like the weather. We're now predicting the weather based on mathematical models. Fundamentally, we do the same thing in the field of chemistry, using computers. We have a very mathematical model of the atom. That's really just exploded in the 50 years I've been around.

Does 50 years seem like a long time?

No, it really doesn't. But time is really a strange thing. Sometimes it seems like a long time. Most of the time it doesn't.

Any idea how many elements on the periodic chart when you started?

About 100.

And now?

About 118.

So there's been some progress.

We've made some progress! We certainly at this point know the elements that are out there really, once you go past 100, are not going to be particularly useful. They're extremely unstable. And when we say we've made something like 118 - once you've gone past 100, we're really making just countable atoms worth of it.

In some cases we've made certainly less than a dozen atoms. We know it's an element and we're able to do a number of things with it, but the fact of the matter is, aside from theoretical reasons, they don't have much practical value.

You teach large courses, Do you prefer that format?

 You do what you were brought up to do. I was trained to do the biggies. But I also do smallies. But for really 42 years I basically did big ones.

And now?

I do a class for non-scientists now. It's what I consider medium. It's about 150.

What do you remember about Duke 50 years ago, and how is it different?

It was a segregated university when I arrived. And the integration of the university was a very big change. Of course, the other big thing - it was primarily a teaching institution, not a research institution when I came.

It was a more regional university.

Right. That's a very, very big change. And it has been very, very good. And we really made the transition faster than I'd guess faster than any other institution.

How did that happen?

It came from the leadership of the university. There were certainly battles within the administration. The group that felt it really should be a world class research institution won out.

Has the chemistry department changed very much?

Not that much in size. We're not terribly different in size than when we came here.

But in terms of majors?

Those numbers have changed. That really reflects a change in the medical school. When I first came here there were basically two majors a pre-med could have. Biology or chemistry. Then later the med school realized they were being too restrictive.

There were really good students who didn't want to major in biology or chemistry, so they made that change. So now it doesn't matter what you major in as long as you take a core of courses in the sciences.

How has Durham changed?

Well again, integration. That's just absolutely huge. My very first memory of this area - I landed at Raleigh Durham airport, which was - I have no idea to even compare size. probably the control tower was the airport. It was quite small. But as you walked into the terminal, literally the first thing you saw was a restroom with a sign that said "whites only." It was not a great greeting.

 Any thoughts of retirement?

No. There really isn't anything I'd rather do than what I'm doing. It's one of those things, if you can find a job you like - well, I did. And 50 years basically says "job satisfaction." There really isn't anything else that appeals to me.