Blaring sounds of a red guitar vibrated throughout the halls of
Ackerman Union when a lively guitarist and a band of three began to
play their music Friday evening.
What most of the audience from the show did not know is that the
same man who was rocking out on stage had spent the earlier portion
of the day lecturing to a class of about 350 students on the topic
of general chemistry.
Unlike some strictly research-oriented science professors, Eric
Scerri, chemistry professor and author of newly published book
“The Periodic Table: Its Story and Its Significance”
dances to his own tune ““ both literally and figuratively.
And while music has always been one of Scerri’s hobbies,
so has another interest, which becomes obvious inside
Scerri’s office.
Figures of the periodic table of elements dominate posters
plastered all along the walls.
Piles of books lie atop cabinets, the dry erase board has
markings of chemical equations, and three dimensional models of the
periodic table sit on his desk.
“Its getting really bad. … My office is covered in
periodic table posters, I couldn’t put a number to it. I have
periodic table ties and t-shirts ““ I’m well on the way
to becoming a complete periodic table fanatic,” Scerri
said.
For many years, Scerri has researched and studied the history of
the table. Though he has published several articles on the topic,
Scerri only recently published a book that follows the evolution
and significance of the periodic table.
And after the book’s publication, the blues guitarist does
not have much to be blue about. Scerri’s book received
national spotlight recently as it was reviewed by the New York
Times.
The book has also won him recognition in the chemistry
department.
“Its clearly not just a topic, but a subject that he has
dedicated himself to for many years,” said Laurence Lavelle,
a professor in the UCLA Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry
and colleague of Scerri’s.
It has been almost 140 years since the periodic table of the
chemical elements was devised by Dmitri Mendeleev, the scientist
credited with creating the table in its most complete form.
But aside from discussing Mendeleev’s work in his book,
Scerri emphasized contributions from other scientists whose work
paralleled Mendeleev’s.
In addition to the historical element of the table, the book
also explains the extent to which modern quantum mechanics explains
the periodic system.
“He is clearly doing justice to the periodic table by
showing that these are elements with real properties. … He brings
that to life during his lecture demos by showing that they have
color and smell and they react,” Lavelle said.
In attendance at Scerri’s performance was Felix Chao, a
current student of Scerri’s Chemistry 20A class.
“He played one of his songs in during a demo in class
because he wanted to demonstrate wave properties. … He was really
good, that’s why I wanted to come tonight,” said Chao,
a first-year biomedical engineering student.
Playing alongside Scerri during Friday night’s Cooperage
performance, was Joe Taglier, a computer programmer and a
journalist, Diego Rosso, postdoctoral scholar of environmental
engineering at UCLA, and James McPhee, another postdoctoral scholar
of civil and environmental engineering at UCLA.
McPhee, who has played with Scerri on and off for six years,
said he usually notes surprise in audience members when they learn
that the lively musician also works in the academic sphere.
“I remember Eric and I used to jam at a bar in Wilshire
called the Gas Lite and people would open their eyes wide when told
about my main line of business,” McPhee said.
Rosso, another guitarist who performed Friday, said he has known
Scerri for a year and appreciates that the both of them find the
deep philosophical implications behind science extremely
important.
“I have perused his book, which I find fascinating. I hold
a graduate degree in chemical engineering and wasn’t even
aware there existed so many periodic tables in history,”
Rosso said.
Like McPhee, Rosso is met with similar retorts from those who do
not know his passion extends beyond music and into the
sciences.
“”˜Engineers are supposed to be boring,’ is
their typical reaction, but as soon as they hear I am from Italy,
they promptly forget what I do for a living and start thinking of
me as an Italian,” Rosso said.
“For some mysterious reason, being from Italy here means
to be an artist-performer-poet-lover and so on. (It) seems like
scientists and engineers should not come from Italy, while in fact
Galileo, Volta, Fermi, … Leonardo and innumerable others were
from Italy,” Rosso added.
Scerri said he is usually met by the same reaction when he plays
a song in front of his class at the end of the quarter.
“Before (playing the guitar for the class), my British
accent would lead them to believe I was too stiff and
formal,” Scerri said.
“But then students are in disbelief. Once they actually
hear me play they suddenly decide that I’m cool after
that,” he added.