Some brief thoughts on Yale and me
by Peter C. Ford
Ford@chem.Ucsb.Edu

I am a professor of chemistry at UC Santa Barbara. I came here after undergraduate studies at Caltech, graduate studies at Yale and a year of postdoctoral study at Stanford.

As an undergrad, long ago, I decided to attend graduate school in chemistry and chose Yale for two reasons: (1) it had an outstanding faculty in my area of interest and (2) it was on the East Coast. For a California kid, who had never been east of the Mississippi River, the latter was no small factor. (Sure, I could have considered Harvard, but then (and now) Harvard didn't seem quite right.)
For me, Yale proved to be a great choice. The Chemistry Department provided superb educational opportunities, an outstanding faculty and a stimulating student body. Such might have been found at a number of institutions, but at Yale, this was also implanted in an extraordinarily rich intellectual and cultural environment provided in large part by Yale but also by the relative proximity to New York and Boston. Furthermore, the rich traditions of Yale give one a sense of being part of an institution which has and has had a real influence on the conduct of commerce, government, and intellectual inquiry throughout the history of this country.

So my four years at Yale led not only to professional growth but also deeply influenced my personal growth in a very positive manner. As a graduate student of Yale University, one's experience is clearly different and much less immersed in the institutional mystic than that of a student of Yale College. Even so, few experiences since have matched the memories of Fall afternoons spent at the Yale Bowl.

Peter C. Ford Department of Chemistry University of California Santa Barbara, CA 93106 805-893-2443