UCI Celebrates ‘Best Day Since Its Founding’

As the news swept across the broad lawns and into the modern buildings at UC Irvine on Wednesday morning, jubilation blended seamlessly with relief: This time, at long last, the headlines would shout not scandal, but academic distinction.

UCI could claim its first-ever Nobel Prize winner--and its second.

“This is the best day at UCI since its founding 30 years ago,” said a delighted Chancellor Laurel L. Wilkening, flanked by jubilant faculty members at a morning press conference.

Decades of research, tireless hours in the lab and long days away from home paid off for two UC Irvine scientists: F. Sherwood Rowland, a professor of chemistry, won a Nobel for his pioneering work in warning of the dangers of neglecting the Earth’s ozone layer; Frederick Reines, a physicist and professor emeritus, was awarded the prize for discovering the neutrino, one of the smallest particles in the universe.

At the sprawling, suburban campus, students, faculty and administrators celebrated the announcement of the double award Wednesday with champagne and undisguised glee.

Many said they hope the glow from the prestigious prizes will eclipse the damage done to the university’s reputation this summer by a widely publicized scandal at its internationally known fertility clinic. Three doctors at the clinic are accused by the university of misappropriating human eggs and embryos, engaging in financial and research misconduct and insurance fraud. The three have denied any deliberate wrongdoing.

“Obviously,” said Wilkening, the fertility scandal “didn’t have much of an impact on the Nobel prize committee. In the scientific world, people understand that was misbehavior on the part of a small number of people that just doesn’t spread out to other parts of the campus,” the chancellor said.

For UCI’s executive vice chancellor, Sydney Golub, the university’s chief spokesman during the torrent of media scrutiny this summer, the day was especially gratifying. Golub heard the welcome news while paying bills and half-listening to television news at 2:30 a.m. Wednesday.

“I jumped up and tried to decide whether to wake my family,” Golub said. “We are thrilled, but it’s not a surprise. The surprise was getting them both in the same year.”

Golub said he thinks the awards are “a lot more typical of what the university is about” than the scandal involving the university’s Center for Reproductive Health.

While equally praiseworthy, other state officials and educators said the university’s academic acclaim should not obscure the institution’s mismanagement of its fertility clinic.

“I salute the operations and activities which resulted in the awards,” said state Sen. Quentin Kopp (I-San Francisco), a vocal critic of the university this summer. “But they are irrelevant to the scandalous conduct in that fertility clinic. What does one have to do with the other? The facts about the clinic haven’t changed.”

A spokesman for Lt. Gov. Gray Davis, who as a UC regent was outspoken about the university’s failure to face its fertility scandal openly, applauded the awards.

“Obviously, there is enormous pride for the University of California system in these honors,” said Stevan Allen, a spokesman for Davis. “Davis has always made a sharp distinction between the way things are run administratively and the quality of the academic programs.”

Perhaps, others said, the honors will help the young university step clear of the long shadows cast by its older, better-known sister schools, UCLA and UC Berkeley, which still have higher admission standards and several Nobel Prizes themselves.

UCI’s academic reputation was burnished less than a month ago when a national study ranked two of its postgraduate programs among the best in the nation. The university’s English and comparative literature program was ranked eighth and its French language and literature program 10th in a study by the prestigious National Research Council.

Wilkening, who launched an ambitious program last year to propel UCI into the ranks of the nation’s top 50 research institutions by 2000, said Wednesday’s awards will speed the university’s leap to the forefront of the scientific community.

“I’m going to stop talking about the top 50,” Wilkening told smiling chemistry and physics faculty and students Wednesday. “We are definitely in the top 50. I’m now going to talk about being in the top 20.”

In addition to more prestige, UCI physics researcher Herve Carruzzo speculated the prizes will have practical benefit as well.

“These prizes are great publicity and that is particularly good for the department in these times of possible budget cuts,” said the 30-year-old, who recently obtained his doctorate degree in theoretical physics.

The men at the center of all the attention, meanwhile, were lauded by their colleagues, many of whom said the recognition in both cases was long overdue.

Colleagues said Reines’ discovery of the neutrino, a nearly massless particle, set into motion a new way of looking at the universe and earned the professor a place in physics textbooks.

Similarly, Rowland’s groundbreaking research sounded an international alarm about chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs, and prompted global efforts to eliminate the material, which can be found in ordinary household products such as aerosol sprays, refrigerators and cleaning solvents.

The pop of champagne corks and murmurs of congratulations filled a conference room at UCI’s physical science building Wednesday morning as administrators, faculty and graduate students gathered to celebrate the news.

Students were pleased that the international awards would further enhance the university’s standing and also further obscure the fertility scandal.

“This is great for the department and the school,” said Kourosh Nafisi, a graduate student in physical chemistry. “UCI is like the young Turk, it’s up and coming.”

“I think Reines should have gotten it 10 years ago,” said Genze Hu, a physics researcher who arrived at UCI this year from Princeton. “But this is still great news for the physics department. I think it will compensate for some of the damage done by the fertility mess.”