Their research cuts impressive swaths, from the granitic depths of the earth to the flamboyant courts of 17th-century France. Although they’ve retired—in some cases, 20 years ago—they still teach, and they are visible, vocal participants in departmental gatherings. As 72-year-old music professor emeritus Albert Cohen puts it, “I’m active, living history.”
Cohen and Konrad Krauskopf, professor emeritus of geological and environmental sciences, are among the 101 of Stanford’s 664 emeriti scholars who were recalled to active duty for some part of the past academic year. Members of this hardy band maintain office and lab space on campus, participate in seminars and mentor graduate students. Krauskopf, at 90, must hold the attendance record at his department’s morning coffee klatch.
Krauskopf came to Stanford in 1935 with a doctorate in chemistry from a certain public university across the Bay, outwitting the Depression economy by earning a second doctorate in geology in 1939 and establishing his niche in the fledgling field of geochemistry. For years he explored the Sierra Nevada with hammer and hand lens, and he once came close to outsmarting a stubborn mule, which he recounts in an essay titled “Nine Days with Annie.” Krauskopf also is the author of several widely used textbooks, including Fundamentals of Physical Science, The Physical Universe and Introduction to Geochemistry, and he’s known as a down-to-earth scientist who can talk rocks in French, German and Portuguese.
Like many emeriti, Krauskopf and Cohen have been called on to teach Stanford Introductory Seminars. Krauskopf, a former member of a National Research Council advisory board on radioactive waste management, brought that experience to discussions about the “nasty problem” of nuclear waste. Cohen, who taught a course on French music after he retired in 1999, still gets jazzed when students demonstrate their engagement: “I thought I’d really made it one day when a kid walked out of class whistling a medieval tune by Guillaume de Machaut, the poet and composer of the 14th century.”
A masterful performer on both violin and treble viol, Cohen is a graduate of Juilliard and former Guggenheim fellow who is juggling five different research projects while also contributing articles to the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians and Cambridge History of Western Music Theory. It’s a tranquil pace compared to the 14 consecutive years he spent as chair of the music department, raising funds for, designing and launching Braun Music Center. Across campus, Krauskopf keeps up with stacks of professional journals and pursues the same quests that sent him clambering over outcroppings in his native Wisconsin as a lad. “What I would like to know about is the origin of granites,” he says. “We still don’t have the necessary instruments, but I’m convinced we will find some way of investigating what is happening at deep levels in the earth.”
Krauskopf and his fellow emeriti also serve as sources of campus wisdom. As a newly appointed dean who needed to know how the School of Earth Sciences operated, Lynn Orr says one of the first people he contacted for help was Krauskopf. “I sat down with Konnie and said, ‘I need to understand a lot,’” recalls Orr, ’69. “Emeritus professors like Konnie have a combination of historical perspective, the wisdom of having worked with many students over the years and the ability to rise above the daily fray. They occupy a niche that is invaluable to us.”
Will these emeriti ever really retire? “Please don’t push!” says Cohen. “In truth, I should like to continue being active in the field so long as my energy, my interest and my mind remain reasonably secure, and my work maintains its value.”
