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 wers 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.