The following note was sent to commemorate the retirement of Prof. David Rigney from active academic service at Ohio State. The felicitation ceremony for the occasion took place on Oct 5, 2007 at the Faculty Club, The Ohio State University.

Farewell to a Friend and a Mentor

S. Karthikeyan
Post-doctoral researcher with Prof. David Rigney (March 2003-September 2005)
Presently, Asst. Professor at the Dept of Materials Eng, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India

When Prof. David Rigney informed me earlier this year that he would be hanging up his boots soon, it came as quite a surprise. I could not contemplate the day when he'd stop being an academic. The day has arrived silently and suddenly. It is my pleasure to write this short note to celebrate Prof. Rigney's retirement. His research contributions in the areas of electromigration, NMR, plastic deformation and tribology are immense and I cannot even attempt to summarize them. I will only mention how my two and half year association with him, influenced who I am and what I do today.

I had the good fortune of working with him closely as his last post-doc. Before my post-doc position, even during my student days, Prof. Rigney was an enigma. He was a cougar when it came to scaling the Watts Hall stairwell; he would always skip steps, making us PhD students positively insecure about our youth. It was very difficult to place his age, despite the affable Father Christmas look. When the post-doc position came by, I was in the and-now-for-something-completely-different frame of mind. Tribology sounded quite different from high temperature deformation and I figured I had a chance to learn some new tricks. Moreover, I'd seen the MD simulation work from Prof. Rigney's lab and I wanted to be part of it.

It was only after a few months in his lab that I realized that I was being trained on many more things than I had ever imagined. The work I did with him kindled my interest in three areas of research which I am pursuing presently; plastic deformation during sliding, atomistic simulations and dynamic deformation of materials. This broadening of my base, I owe to Prof. Rigney. He once asked me to substitute-teach a few lectures on crystal structure and suchlike. I took this assignment on and I enjoyed it so much that I decided to make a career of it. For this too, I have to thank him.

One of the nicest aspects of working with him was the freedom and time he gave me. He was a constant source of encouragement and advice during even my wild goose chases. I fondly remember how the most innocuous of my results would spark off hours of discussion. His utter unease at spending time doing administrative work, instead of research, made a big impression on me. One of the most memorable of these topical discussions took place in the winter of 2004. We had been working on getting exact solutions for strain rate profiles that develop during sliding. We were very close to wrapping it up, when I found some fundamental mistakes in our approach. It was very disappointing, to say the least. I sent an SOS informing him of the problem. Prof. Rigney came in the next morning and spent several hours with me that morning rekindling my sagging morale. It was the day after Christmas and he was still on his winter break. Moreover a passing snowstorm had dumped 10 inches overnight and so he must have had a tough time getting to work. One could not ask for a more dependable and eager partner in crime! His presence in such a situation meant a lot to me. Thanks to his infectious energy, enthusiasm and words of encouragement, I did not give up on the challenge and we went on to publish a far more rigorous paper on the topic.

The most important lesson that I learnt from him was on how to be an advisor to a student. His office walls and cabinets were plastered with printouts of famous quotations held in place with magnets. One such quotation was Goethe's "Treat a man as he is, and he will remain as he is. Treat a man as he could be, and he will become what he should be". It is now clear to me that Prof. Rigney lived by this quotation. He always treated me as someone greater than what I am. His confidence in me gave me confidence in myself. As they say, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. I have the same Goethe quotation pinned on my walls as a constant reminder of how I should be with my students. I am indebted to him for inculcating in me this mantra.

Some of my other pleasant memories of Prof. Rigney include singing carols at his place during Christmas, his hiking with us, his group members, in our attempt to scale Sandia peak (and he fared better than us), his knowledge and sensitivity of Eastern culture, his appreciation of music and arts, his liberal political views (oh, those 2004 election bumper stickers were great!), his love for nature and birding, his daily banana routine, his travels to the corners of the world and his encyclopedic memory of who published what and when. It is a bitter-sweet moment as he retires today. He will be missed at as a teacher, a researcher, a patient mentor and a friend. But given the breadth of his interests, from birding to geology, from traveling to music, I doubt if he will miss doing what he has been at Ohio State for 40 years. In fact, I remember him saying something about going back to school after his retirement to brush up on his biology.

During the penning of this note, it dawned on me that Prof. Rigney will never stop being an academic. Given his varied interests and his energy, I am positive he will continue to out-run and out-climb many of us. Moreover, his work and work ethic will continue to influence future generations via the students and post-docs he has taught and guided. I take this opportunity to express my sincere gratitude to Prof. Rigney for his support, kindness and patience. I wish him the very best as he opens a new chapter in his life, where he will continue to mould lives around him.