Eulogy by Dr. Bill Scott—
Thank you, Kitty and family, for asking me to give this eulogy for Marty. It’s a privilege and honor.
Marty and I met in the mid ‘70s. He came to Indianapolis to be a faculty member at newly established IUPUI. I had just joined Lilly as a research scientist in drug discovery. We would occasionally cross paths at meetings and Lilly’s yearly Grantee symposium. It wasn’t until 20 years later that a desire to incorporate his research into my work at Lilly brought us into close contact. For the next almost 30 years I came to know Marty as a teacher, collaborator and gentle friend.
What did I learn from Marty? I could tell you in detail about his scientific accomplishments – his numerous publications, his pioneering work in the synthesis of amino acids, the building blocks of life. Or how for 30 years his research was funded by a prestigious Research Project grant from the National Institutes of Health. Or how the influence of Marty’s work would be publicly acknowledged and honored by a Nobel Laureate in his acceptance speech.
As important as these scientific achievements are it is Marty’s personality and impact on people I want to honor and celebrate today. I could give as examples the wonderful, caring and accomplished children Kitty and he raised, but that is their story. I know him best through our scientific work together, watching him teach and mentor students at IUPUI, and as a friend. Well, as a unique and somewhat idiosyncratic friend! Who of us in the chemistry department hasn’t heard his presence announced by the rumbling in the hallway of Marty’s office cart on wheels – boxes of files and a portable computer carefully balanced for his trek between car and office.
I would get to know the contents of those many boxes well over the 20+ years since I came to IUPUI in 2002. They would often contain multiple drafts of manuscripts and associated literature references connected to our research together. Boy, when I say multiple drafts I mean it! Marty would want things perfect, some of us would say “Gold plated”. He was a talented and critical editor and I encountered a lot of red ink in the course of those multiple drafts. It is either a sign of his humility, or obedience to custom, that his edits insisted on eliminating the first person and present tense. Many “we decided’s” were crossed out and put in the passive “it was decided”.
More and more as time went on, work became connected to developing and implementing our Distributed Drug Discovery program, which we call “D3”. D3 combines, in one package, the strengths of Marty’s research and teaching with my experience in drug discovery. It’s a program that simultaneously teaches students across the globe chemistry and biology. At the same time students see the application of their knowledge and skills to the critical humanitarian need to find drugs for neglected and infectious disease. Thanks to Marty, D3 has been implemented world-wide – in Russia, Poland, Spain, Czech republic, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Mexico and multiple schools in the US.
Some of you are familiar with Marty’s interest in genealogy. He traced his family lineage back to 1833 and a small poor village in Western Ireland.
One of my themes today will be another side to Marty’s genealogy – his lineage looking to the future, not through his family but through the students he has taught and mentored. Surely his virtual presence educating those D3 students across the world will be part of his growing tree, but I’d like to focus on the many undergraduates, graduates, postdocs and visiting scientists whose lives he directly influenced home here at IUPUI. Marty had a special love for teaching and mentoring undergraduates – through the classes he taught, lecturing students in the organic synthesis labs, or especially in the one-on-one contact he had with students in our undergraduate research group. He was a teacher who held his students to high standards yet was always ready to help when they didn’t live up to those standards. As part of his gentle spirit, he would gently but critically mentor them. He once told me that if someone was a C student when they arrived he worked hard to get them to be a B student.
When we notified many of his former students of his death it was uplifting to receive back so many wonderful reflections on how he changed their lives. A few excerpts:
Andre, one of several students we hosted in the summer who came from historically black universities and colleges, in his case Morehouse College, later obtained a Ph.D. in Material Science and Engineering. He wrote that the summer he spent here was “his introduction to chemistry research and Marty was kind enough to teach him organic chemistry in the mornings before conducting lab work in the afternoon”.
Shelby, an IUPUI student who went on to obtain a degree in Pharmacy, wrote “Marty was a great teacher and prime example of leaving the world better than he found it.”
Ahmed, now in medical school, said he believed he “inherited Marty’s enthusiasm and love for chemistry and teaching”. You hear that – inherited! Ahmed as yet another branch of Marty’s genealogical posterity!
Priya – a top 10 IUPUI undergraduate Marty sponsored – helped implement our D3 program in a workshop we conducted in Havana. She served as a teaching assistant during the day and socialized with the Cuban students after hours, fulfilling another D3 goal of bringing students together across cultures and geography. She is finishing her medical training at Mt. Sinai in Manhattan and obtained a masters in bioethics from Harvard. She wrote she wants to keep Marty’s values alive in her career. Keep that tree growing Priya!
I could talk for hours about other undergrads Marty deeply influenced, like Chris from Nigeria, now a Ph.D./MD from Dartmouth practicing medicine in Michigan; or Eric from Carmel, Ph.D. in hand, Director of Discovery Chemistry Research and Technologies at Lilly; or Steve, who returned to IUPUI to get a Bachelors degree, then to the University of Pennsylvania for a Ph.D. and then a job at Pfizer, before coming home to Indy and a job at Corteva.
Just a little more about Steve. As an undergraduate he prepared and presented at a National meeting of the American Chemical society a poster on his D3 chemistry work. His work caught the eye of Amelia Fuller at Santa Clara University. Hers was the first of four US schools to join the D3 effort. Through Steve, then Amelia and all her students, and the D3 network to come, Marty’s legacy lives on.
Marty supervised 35 masters students, 5 Ph.D.’s, and 19 postdocs and hosted 4 visiting scientists. I’m sure Marty is especially proud of Geno Samaritoni. He was looking for a job after leaving Dow Agrosciences in 2007. Marty brought him into his group where he was quickly baptized by fire overseeing a massive D3 undergraduate lab with 80 students synthesizing over 80 new compounds in replicate. Geno had for a long time wanted to obtain a Ph.D., and now later in life, Marty gave him that opportunity as his advisor. Geno obtained his Ph.D. in 2015. He is now the D3 Project Leader and fulfilling, through his mentoring students in the undergraduate labs and the D3 research group, his role growing the O’Donnell tree.
I can now see, in my imagination, Marty in the back of the room signaling me with one of his hands, as he did in seminars when I was running over. With hand movements like a quaking duck, he signaled it was time to move on. He got impatient with people who talked too much!
So I’ll close his eulogy with this: Reflecting on the essence of Marty – in his interactions with family, students, collaborators, and society at large – these words in the bible that Paul spoke to the Corinthians, came to mind. Although you’ll often hear them said at weddings, for me they capture Marty’s spirit and character: “love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.” Your love, spirit, and legacy lives on in all of us, Marty. Thank you! Job well done!