William McGuire has passed away at the age of 82. His NY Times obituary is here. An earlier tribute is here, whence this remarkable anecdote:
At the University of Illinois, his first faculty position, he entered into a bet with a colleague who seemed perpetually anxious about publishing and obtaining tenure, that he, Bill, would not publish a single paper until after receiving tenure. So Bill did his work, and wrote his papers, but did not submit them for publication. The evidence is in his vita—10 papers appeared in 1961, the year after he was tenured.
Another remarkable fact, from this Yale Bulletin story:
His research has received 40 uninterrupted years of funding from the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health.
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In a total coincidence, earlier in the day I told John the following story about a political scientist who’ll remain nameless here. This happened thirty or more years ago. It goes as follows.
A walks into the office of B, a freshly-minted Ph.D. and brand-new faculty member. A sees a large stack of papers on one of B’s shelves.
A: “Wow. That’s a lot of paper. What is it?”
B: “Those are copies of seven papers that I’ve finished and I’m going to send them out for publication.”
A: “Gee, that should get you off to a good start.”
B. “No. I’ve studied what it takes to get tenure in this department, and it looks to me like if I get all seven published, I’ll be fine. But I know my colleagues will want me to stay busy over the years, so I have a plan. I’m going to submit one paper per year. That way I can take it easy for the next six years and still make tenure.”
He did, and apparently he did.
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