Guests: Dr. Mary Beth Hall, USDA; Dr. Mike Van Amburgh, Cornell University; Dr. David Mertens, Mertens Innovation & Research Today’s episode is a fan-favorite, the Legacy Series. In this series we celebrate the pioneers of the industry, take a look back at their research, their impact and their lives. Specifically today we are honoring and memorializing Dr. Peter J. Van Soest. Dr. Soest passed away in March of 2021, but his legacy will forever be felt in the animal nutrition world.
Guests: Dr. Mary Beth Hall, USDA; Dr. Mike Van Amburgh, Cornell University; Dr. David Mertens, Mertens Innovation & Research
Today’s episode is a fan-favorite, the Legacy Series. In this series we celebrate the pioneers of the industry, take a look back at their research, their impact and their lives. Specifically today we are honoring and memorializing Dr. Peter J. Van Soest. Dr. Soest passed away in March of 2021, but his legacy will forever be felt in the animal nutrition world.
In this episode, we hear from three students of Dr. Van Soest who have gone on to illustrious careers of their own. Dr. Mary Beth Hall with USDA, Dr. Mike Van Amburgh from Cornell and Dr. David Mertens with Mertens Innovation & Research.
Dr. Mertens said that Dr. Van Soest started his career at USDARS, and was given the mission to create an alternative to crude fiber. The breakthrough came from his knowledge of biochemistry and his work at Walter Reed hospital. Dr. Soest used detergents to remove protein from feed so you could measure fiber. (13:35)
Dr. Hall emphasized that one of Dr. Van Soest’s legacies lives through the students he trained and the students they trained. Dr. Van Soest passed on the idea that you don’t stop with what you have and say it’s good enough. If new information presents itself, you consider them and test them and move on from there. (21:37)
Dr. Amburgh spoke about the lectures from Dr. Van Soest that are being digitized and will be available to listen to, which includes his popular periodic table lecture. (41:15)
Dr. Mertens recommended reading Dr. Van Soest papers on the development of ADF or NDF and AOAC. They give you an insight into how he did what he did - which was built on nothing that was done before. (56:12)
Dr. Amburgh believes that Dr. Van Soest’s legacy is teaching people how to think. He had a tremendous thought process and it wasn’t whether you were right or wrong, it was about what you learned in the process of thinking through all that. (1:10:53)
If you’d like to find Dr. Van Soest’s book, you can find it here on Amazon: https://amzn.to/3sYFpiX.
If you want one of our new Real Science Exchange t-shirts, make sure to screenshot your rating, review, or subscription, and email a picture to anh.marketing@balchem.com. Include your size and mailing address, and we’ll get a shirt in the mail to you.
Please subscribe and share with your industry friends to bring more people to join us around the Real Science Exchange virtual pub table.
This podcast is sponsored by Balchem Animal Nutrition and Health.
Scott Sorrell (00:00:07):
Good evening everyone. And welcome to the real science exchange. The podcast is where leading scientists and industry professionals meet over a few drinks to discuss the latest ideas and trends in animal nutrition. Hi, I'm Scott Sorrell one of your hosts' here tonight at the real science exchange. And welcome back to one of my favorite segments of our podcast program. The legacy series here we celebrate the pioneers of our industry, taking a look back at their research, their lives, and their impact on our industry. Tonight, we have the honor of memorializing, Dr. Peter van SU Dr. Vans passed away in March of 2021, but his influence and his legacy are felt every day in the animal nutrition field, through his body of work, and through the students, he mentored at the pub table. Tonight are three of those students who have gone on to illustrious careers of their own. Dr. Mary Beth hall with U S D a Dr. Mike van Amberg from Cornell University and David Mertens with Merton's innovation and research. Wanna welcome all of you to the real science exchange tonight. And what I'd like to do is go around the table and get an idea of how each of you met Dr. Van SUT. Dave, let's start with you first, tell us what's in your glass tonight, and then tell us how you first came to know Dr. Van SUT and understand the start of with a phone call.
Dr. David Mertens (00:01:23):
It did start with a phone call and I'm drinking Ru, which Peter would probably be upset by because he was a scotch drinker. Later on, maybe I can tell a story about how he educated me about sta scotch but I was fortunate enough to get a phone call from Peter in 1970 when I was trying to select a place to go for aPh.D.D and I had visited five different universities. And when I visited Cornell, Peter wasn't there, which wasn't too surprising because, over his time at Cornell, he did quite a bit of traveling both domestically and internationally. So I didn't get to meet him. And I had decided to go to the University of Illinois and work with Dale Baldman, who was there at the time. And I was gonna let them go on Monday and believe it or not Friday a, I got a call from Peter.
Dr. David Mertens (00:02:26):
He said, well I have an assistantship. I would like to offer you to come here and work with me. And what as I think back on it, I think is truly amazing about Peter was how much of an impact he made, how, because this was 1970, he had published his methods for ADF and India from 63 to 67. And already I knew as a graduate student that he was a special kind of person. I had never met him, but he had a tremendous reputation by that point, we all knew what he had done. And quite frankly, I was a little frightened of maybe letting him down because I knew he was so brilliant. And I have to tell this story because it's, it's kind of typical of Peter in my experience with him. So he says well, he says, I'd like to, to ask you two questions.
Dr. David Mertens (00:03:30):
And I thought, oh my God, he's gonna ask me something about chemistry and I'm gonna flunk it. And this is gonna be a real short phone call. And so his first question was, do like coursework. And I said, without hesitation, if I never take another course in my life, I'll be the happiest student you can imagine. And he said, good. He said you do know here at Cornell, the committee decides your entire curriculum. He said I will make sure you get out of Cornell with the least amount of courses as it was possible. That was a plus, and his second question was, do you like lab work? And I said, well, lab work is what got me into thinking about going on to an advanced degree, cuz I started doing lab work as an undergraduate working for graduate students doing chemical analysis. And I said, you know, I followed recipes, but I always liked to understand what the heck I was doing.
Dr. David Mertens (00:04:22):
He said, great. He said, my requirement's gonna be that you're gonna have to spend as much time as possible in the lab with me every day. And because I was one of his first three or four graduate students I was very fortunate to, and I spent some weeks, I probably spent 50 hours a week with Peter in the lab. And I could tell you a lot of funny stories about our experiences between he had a, he had a working batch right behind mine and but we carried on conversations throughout that whole time. We were in a lab together and it was probably, well, it wasn't probably, it was the most enjoyable research experience of my life. I just learned and learn and learn. So that's how I met Peter van sus.
Scott Sorrell (00:05:15):
That's a great story and I, I don't want you to forget to tell that scotch story later on either. So yeah. Dr. Hall, this is your third time back at the exchange. Welcome. Glad to have you back again. One of our favorites you're our designated driver tonight. So yeah,
Dr. Mary Beth Hall (00:05:33):
I, okay. I am a federal employee. I've gotten permission from the federal government to, from U S D a to participate in this podcast. And so, yeah, I'm the designated driver, and Dave, Mike, I promise I'll drop you off at the correct homes. Okay.
Dr. David Mertens (00:05:52):
I'm, I'm already there
Speaker 4 (00:05:55):
Already home.
Scott Sorrell (00:05:57):
Mary Beth, how did you first get to know Dr. Van SU
Dr. Mary Beth Hall (00:06:01):
My first meeting with Peter in which I talked with him, was actual conversation is when I started back for grad school for my Ph.D. at Cornell, I had gotten, my master's had worked for six, seven years as a county extension agent. And I started to come up with questions about carbohydrates in dairy cattle, nutrition, and so talked with Larry Chase about it. He worked extension and research and I became a grad student with Larry Chase. And as we're talking about that part of the issue is that we didn't even have ways to measure some of the carbohydrate fractions that might matter. Larry said, well, let's go talk with Peter. And so we go up to Pete's office and I still remember he's there into his kind of worn jeans. I don't know if he was wearing his Jean jacket at the time, maybe a t-shirt surrounded. I think there was flatbread and, and, and maybe some hot peppers and maybe some yoga containers in the office and books. And let's just say it wasn't neat, but the discussion we got into, we, we, we walked in, we said, and describe the, it was interested in the possibility of looking further at carbohydrates and how we might measure them. And he thought we could do that.
Dr. Mary Beth Hall (00:07:26):
And we went on from there. You know, and obviously, things develop later. I, I ended up doing most of my, most of my research work in the peace lab, looking at ways to measure soluble fiber. And what did Heins look like in different plants? And, and it was just from a very, very simple beginning, just that kind of, yeah, we can do that, that it blossomed into being taught so much more.
Scott Sorrell (00:07:52):
Hmm. Yeah. Thank you for that, Mike, how right. You know, what's in your glass. So why don't you tell us about that and then, you know, tell us a little bit about your life with Dr. Van Amburgh
Dr. Mike Van Amburgh (00:08:04):
Yeah. So I've got some scotch and matter of fact, I've got the scotch brand that I drank with Pete the first time we had scotch I'll I can tell a story about that later. Cuz he belittled it a little bit, but, and Dave would understand that. So how did I meet Pete? I, I graduated from Ohio state with Scotty year behind oh eight-year or two behind him. Oh eight. Yeah. I worked in the industry for a while. Met Dave Galon, met Charlie sniff and met Larry Chase, been a bunch of the extension faculty, and struck up a relationship. And after about five years of working in the field, I decided I needed something else to do. So I came back to grad school, ended up here at Cornell of all places didn't know anything about Cornell as a Buckeye, except for the fact that vans were here.
Dr. Mike Van Amburgh (00:08:59):
Right. I remember Jack Klein at Ohio state. I took his nutrition courses and he would talk about this crazy professor up at that Ivy League institution that looked like a homeless person but was a mad scientist. Right. And anyhow, I enjoyed Jack's teaching and things like that. So I was a little interested in nutrition, came here Galton and sniff accepted me, and then Charlie left. So I, I was, I was with Dave, which was okay, but we went down this road with some nutrition, started, you know, supposed to be a management question, ended up doing a lot of nutrition and working with the CN C P yes, the very nascent CN PS. And I'm asking really hard questions and Charlie wasn't here. And one day Gaton out of frustration said, I don't, I, this is not what I do. He says, but I know somebody that does this stuff.
Dr. Mike Van Amburgh (00:09:52):
I say, what are we doing? He goes, well, we're gonna go up to the third floor is gonna introduce you to Pete van SU. Okay. I'd heard about this guy before, right from Jackeline. So up the stairs we go, we like Mary Beth. We walk into the office. The office is what Pete's office always was kind of like mine in the background here. I can't throw too many stones and he's goan on his window. He's got one of Han's Young's papers hanging there and he's got tracer paper in front of it. And he's, he's got his back to us cuz we walk in and, and Dave goes, Pete, I want you to meet a new student, Mike, and Amber. I think you two, would have a lot in common and Pete, they're going okay, just a minute. I'm trying, you know, gimme a few minutes here.
Dr. Mike Van Amburgh (00:10:40):
I'm trying to get this. And he kinda looks around and says, hi, goes back. And he spends another five to 10 minutes re deriving this stuff. On the tracer paper, Dave says, all right, I'm I gotta get back to doing whatever I do. So I just stood there quietly waiting for him to turn around. He sets the paper down, proceeds to explain to me what he was doing and why he was doing it. Right. I had no idea what the hell he was talking about at the moment. And he says, what, what do you wanna talk about? I'm completely off guard at that point. And I said, well, I'm trying to solve, this is one of my problems. And he goes, oh, oh well, that's, that's an interesting question. You got time for a beer. I said, not right now, but we Go later. So anyhow, we talked for a few more minutes and made, an arrangement to go drink a beer and talk about science and that's how it all got started.
Scott Sorrell (00:11:33):
Oh, excellent story. We also have Dr. Clay Zimerman back in the cohost seat. Once again, tonight clay does angry, orchard makes a scotch flavored cider.
Dr. Clay Zimmerman (00:11:46):
They, they, they do not. So if somebody did send me some scotch, so I do, I do have some that I,
Scott Sorrell (00:11:55):
Well, well, what is it?
Dr. Clay Zimmerman (00:11:57):
It's a Johnny Walker,
Scott Sorrell (00:11:59):
Johnny Walker. We, okay. So wouldn't have been my first choice, but okay.
Dr. Clay Zimmerman (00:12:03):
I know,
Scott Sorrell (00:12:04):
I know.
Dr. Clay Zimmerman (00:12:05):
I, I, Scott,
Scott Sorrell (00:12:06):
I wanna
Dr. Clay Zimmerman (00:12:07):
Say, I do wanna say I'm looking forward to, this episode tonight. You know, I, I heard some stories at the Cornell nutrition conference back in October and we're off to a great start here and I'm forward, to this episode.
Scott Sorrell (00:12:25):
Yeah, no. I, I agree clay. And in the interest of being in a virtual pub tonight, I'd like for us to raise our glasses to a very unique and influential man Dr. Peter vans. Cheers everyone. Hey,
Dr. David Mertens (00:12:38):
You're here. Cheer, cheer
Dr. Clay Zimmerman (00:12:39):
Here. Cheers. You're here.
Scott Sorrell (00:12:42):
Ah, so, you know, we're very honored to have the three of you with us here tonight. As clay mentioned, you've got some very rich stories. You, you just know you know, him very man sus the scientist man, sus the man. And so I'm, I'm personally just looking forward to setting back kind of melting into the woodwork, enjoying my scotch, and just listening to the stories. And so if you're in the audience tonight, I think this is the time when you want to press the pause button. Not very long, just for a moment, go get yourself a drink, pull up a comfy chair are by the fireplace, and, just sit back and enjoy, the stories to come and enjoy the evening with us. Dave, to get us started you know, you gave a wonderful presentation last year at the Cornell nutrition conference as a Memorial to Dr. Van Seus. Can you first give us an overview of the scientific impact that he's had on our industry?
Dr. David Mertens (00:13:35):
Yes, he's truly extraordinary in that. He, he revolutionized our way, of analyzing feeds from fiber and, and ultimately from an energy standpoint he, he started his career at U S D an R S. At that time crude fiber was the method, the only method there had been quite a bit of work done in the 1950s trying to come up with alternatives, none of which worked very well. And the person had hired a person by the name of lane Moore hired Peter specifically and gave him when Peter talked to me, gave him the mission of creating an alternative to crude fiber. And I can't imagine any other person taking such a mission statement and starting a career cuz it was daunting. I mean crude fiber had been around a hundred years and nobody had come up with a better thing.
Dr. David Mertens (00:14:48):
And not only that Peter told me and several others that earlier in his career, he but he was alsovised, you know, don't do anything in fiber cuz it's a dead end. Nobody knows what to do with fiber. But Peter and his interesting way took some of the knowledge that he knew from biochemistry and his work at Walter Reed hospital and applied it to fiber, and, the breakthrough was acting detergents to remove protein from the feed so that you could measure fiber. Cause protein is always a contaminant for fiber, in most analytical systems. And what's interesting is initially he set out to define the fiber that was unadjustable. And at that point in history, everybody called that Lidon. So the reason he came up with Lidon and DF first was in fact that he could find a fiber that wasn't digestible.
Dr. David Mertens (00:15:59):
And I think if you go back and read his early papers, you can see that that was his intent. So ADF was to prep step to measure Lima, but ADF was so much better than crude fiber that within I'm guessing less than five years, the predominance of papers and journal of animal dairy science were reporting ADF rather than crude fiber. I mean, it didn't take very long. Everybody knew crude had problems, so that, and then he realized that ADF didn't measure all of the fiber that was important for ruminate. So then he developed the neutrally detergent fiber method, which was much less caustic in its approach. So fiber is probably the thing, but I would say that his legacy goes a little beyond that in that he went on to try to understand why fiber varied in digestibility and made it for the first time cleared to everyone that the reason dry matter digestibility varied was that the fiber in the dry I met her ferry and that the so-called solubles part was pretty digestible. And that was probably the other main thing that, that he came up with. So, from a scientific standpoint, those are things that we know about Peter's cons and
Dr. David Mertens (00:17:37):
To be honest at the way, at the way we're going now, it, his, his fiber methods may last for another a hundred years, unless we, unless we kind of change our outlook a little bit, but that was the big thing, but there are many, many other things we can talk about. Hopefully, we will, but in my estimation, those, those are the things that set us on a new direction, a new path in looking at herbivore nutrition throughout the world Barry, Beth, Mike, I don't know if you want to add anything else that you would say were his, you know, his primary contributions,
Dr. Mary Beth Hall (00:18:18):
That's a heck of a stark Dave.
Dr. David Mertens (00:18:22):
Yeah,
Dr. Mary Beth Hall (00:18:22):
I mean, I mean, just, just the con I mean, he, he went and applied the Lucas test. There was this, I asked him about it, define the Lucas test and then I'll tend the, tell the rest of the story.
Dr. David Mertens (00:18:36):
Well, curly Lucas was a scientist in North Carolina. A Cornell graduate. I found out later who was a statistician. And he, he wanted to look at feed Alice from a statistical viewpoint. And so his thought process was that are there constituents and feeds that have relatively high and constant adjustability? And the first Lu test was populated by a guy by the name of Mitchell back in the forties for protein. But if you plot protein content versus digestible protein content, you get a straight line with a slope of about 0.9 0.95, which says the crude protein and most feeds regardless of the source is about 95% digestible across all feeds. And that's the Lucas test. And what Peter did was to apply it to neutral detergent, solubles, and point out that most of the soluble material that's detergent soluble, I should say is almost completely starch being one exception, but we can get into details later. Go ahead, Ray Beth.
Dr. Mary Beth Hall (00:19:57):
Okay. He, he, it also applies to Liman because Liman is injustice
Dr. David Mertens (00:20:02):
Opposite the right opposite, right.
Dr. Mary Beth Hall (00:20:04):
And, and, and, you know, I asked, I had asked Pete at one point, what made you decide to work with the Lucas test? And it turned out that two statisticians from Lucas's shop down in North Carolina visited Pete over at U S D a and recommended to him that he used this test for looking at, the fiber system, at the system he was developing. And the, that brought us to the point where we had where we have Liman and we have Nils now, one of them, I mean, but, but even beyond that, and, and I'm not sure if it's something that people always read into some of the things Pete wrote or not is, you know, even to the point of hi of his death, Pete was thinking about what was working and what was not, what was a firm conclusion and what was not.
Dr. Mary Beth Hall (00:21:02):
And, and we got discussing this graph in this 19, I think in 1967 pay paper that showed ND solubles in the Lucas test and, and how they agreed, how, how they were 90, whatever percent digestible. And I said, Pete, there, there is variability around that line. He says, yes. A and so some of he, I mean, even at that point, he was saying that yeah, tested correctly, but that didn't mean they were all equal. Okay. That, that some other things needed to be considered. So actually maybe through the students he trained and the students they've trained is one of Pete's legacies that I think rocks, it is the notion that you don't just stop with what you have and say, it's good enough if more new information comes up or there are different observations, you consider them and you test them and you move on from there. I mean, he, he didn't rest on his laurels, which, which I found cool.
Scott Sorrell (00:22:09):
And mayor Beth, you talked a little bit about the legacy that maybe, you know, his students will leave and, and what kind of a teacher was he,
Dr. Mary Beth Hall (00:22:19):
I'm trying to go through the mental bro of adjectives. And I mean, the first one that came to minus phenomenal, but I, I will, Pete was always very kind with graduate students and he would work with us and his colleagues to help us understand different concepts. But also watching him speak to people who weren't necessarily firmly in the science community. He'd also work to bring things to a level that they could understand. I mean, so he, he could drill down into what made the periodic table work, which got us back to what we were seeing or how the chemistry was working and what could make it fail or work. Let, let me say he was an inspired teacher and he, I don't think he could stop himself if he tried. I, I watched him sit down with his daughter, Anne, and start teaching her about different landmasses based on an Atlas that he pulled off of his shelf at home. I think it was something that he loved and that was close to his heart. Might. What, what were your experiences with him there?
Dr. Mike Van Amburgh (00:23:41):
Well, yeah, so he, he was as Dave Mertens would say he was the consummate teacher, but I think what made him that way, he was just an extraordinary teacher. I think he was an extraordinary teacher because he had a mind. So what I learned about him, here's a story. All right. I'll so this is an Easter, Mary Beth. I don't remember who was there. There were about 15, 18 graduate students and others in the room, at our house. We rented in Dryden and he was there for dinner. We cooked dinner, everybody ate we had a fireplace, we went back, sat down he pours me a glass of wine. I said, Peter, I just got a new book on Mozart. By Maynard Solomon that maybe you might be interested in. So I went upstairs, I grabbed the book, I had read maybe 20 pages out of it at that point.
Dr. Mike Van Amburgh (00:24:34):
And I thought it was interesting. I just, you know, was in the middle of my thesis work. So I wasn't really reading extraneous stuff, but I handed it to him and I watched him and he, he, he just basically turned the page, scan. Both pages turned the page, scan, both pages. The book was about 568 pages. He went through it in an hour and a half, the entire book, maybe a little bit longer than that went through another glass of wine, but I kept watching him. Right. And grad student, everybody's kind of doing their own thing, but he's just, he's enamored by this book. He finishes, asks for another glass of wine and turns it around, and says, Mike, this is a really interesting book. I said, why is that piece? He says, well, it fills in a lot of gaps to the first authoritative book written about Moar written by Al Alfred Einstein, which is Albert's cousin.
Dr. Mike Van Amburgh (00:25:28):
And he proceeded to spend the next hour or more integrating those two books line by line, life section by life section, you know, whatever he wrote. He just had it. It was right there. And that's, that's when I went, oh, I understand you now. Right. I can never understand having a brain that, you know, was not only photographic but knew how to integrate everything at the moment. Yeah. Completely. And, and he's, I've got another story about that, that he shared with me years ago. Well, that was my observation of him there. But what that, back to your question, Mary Beth is being a teacher that's that, that, that brain of his, that mind of his was really, that's the only way he could interact with people. You know, as John Venue said to me, one day, he says, I don't even know if my dad ever said, I love you more than three or four times to me in my life.
Dr. Mike Van Amburgh (00:26:20):
Right. He says I took a long time for me to come to grips with how some of that, and you know, my relationship with my dad, but the one thing I do know, you know, and I've got other, you know, other things to share, but I, I see this in him and Peter is that he didn't know how to connect you on that level, but his way of connecting to you was to share what he knew and bring you along in his world. Yes. Right. That was his way of showing you love, right. As much as Peter could do, right. He might hug you, but he wasn't going to be, you know, the loving kind of human being that, you know, like, you know, that some of us would, you know, wanna see sometimes, especially for a parent figure, but he did that with everybody who wanted to learn. So if you engaged him, he wanted to use that to help you. Right. That was his way of giving of himself and his way of, of sharing his love with you, whatever that, whatever term you might want to use.
Dr. David Mertens (00:27:17):
I couldn't agree more, Mike and I, I wanna comment. Tier two, Mike deserves a lot of credit in helping Peter in his later life by keeping him actively involved in education with grad students and having grad students come out to Peter when he can no longer go to Cornell. And quite frankly, Mike, I, I, I, I wanna compliment you on, because I think, you know, but I certainly observed how important that was to Peter because Peter was lost. Quite frankly, if he couldn't teach you, I I, I mean, I shouldn't say it that way, cuz he could keep his mind busy doing other things. But I agree with you, what he tr truly loved is sharing things with you. And for me, I, I was lucky. I, I had him a lot, one on one more so than most grad students after me.
Dr. David Mertens (00:28:18):
And for me, he was like Socrates. He, he, he didn't, he didn't, he didn't lecture me. He, he kept asking me questions, you know? And then he wouldn't gimme the answers, you know? And, and I had to come up with answers and then, you know, and he never would say, well, that was the stupidest thing I ever heard. Never, never, never said that. He would say, well, I think, why don't you go read this paper, you know, and I'd go read the paper and come back, and then we'd have a very thorough discussion. But it, with me, we, we had those kinds of dialogues where it was a question-answer thing. And, and I treasure that. What I found fascinating with, him as a teacher and that there's a story you had to be careful. Cause he could go off script quick.
Dr. David Mertens (00:29:08):
Okay. So I took his remnant nutrition course. The second time he taught it. Well, the first time I could imagine that the graduate students were thoroughly mystified as to what the hell he was talking about. So he made written notes. So he had written notes by time. I took it the second time. Well, so we had the notes and all of a sudden Pete would start writing stuff on the Blackboard, but then he starts thinking, okay. And all of a sudden he'd be thinking something way outside of what this lecture was supposed to be about. Okay. But he'd just keep going. And it got to be kind of a funny situation cuz Peter and I had talked about all this stuff in the lab, one on one. So the grad students would come to my office and say, what was he talking about today? It had nothing to do with the notes he gave us.
Dr. David Mertens (00:30:01):
And I said, well it's because he, he got started thinking about this and that reminded him of, of this. And then we, he wanted to fill that in. So I became kind of an interpreter for the other graduate students because he would typically just go off-script. If he started thinking you had no, you had no idea where it was gonna end up. You just knew it was gonna be a great time. And you were going learn a heck of a lot about something that you had never thought of before. So that was kind of fascinating, but it kind of made it very difficult, you know, in a formal lecture structure.
Dr. Mary Beth Hall (00:30:39):
But, but they, Dave that, that what going out to beer with Pete was all about, or going up to the Hilltop floating in inner tubes and drinking beer. I mean there were these rolling discussions that could wander anywhere, and they were fabulous. And, and that's the thing, I mean, if, what you describe with Pete is one of the things that was delightful. I mean, in the lab, like as you describe it, you know, working in the lab, you'd say, Mary Beth, come over here. I have something to show you cuz he was working on his projects and I got to learn more about chemistry and so forth there when we're talking about history or science or what have you'd find out more about. But, but I, I tell you what there is, there's one other compartment beside the teaching for how Peter related, but, but it might have been teaching in its way.
Dr. Mary Beth Hall (00:31:36):
His daughter Anne was also is also gifted musically and, and P eats the heart. What was also in classical music. He played the recorder. He had dyspraxia, which means right hand left, hand coordination wasn't gonna happen too easily. So the piano was out. I can't remember where she said they were living. It was while he was on sabbatical, I think. And the way he would greet her as she was coming home from school was blasting this one piece of classical music out into the street to greet her as she came home. So, you know, there, there are, there are also other dimensions that I, I think family saw that that grad students didn't fascinating, but,
Dr. David Mertens (00:32:28):
But I think he, you know, he, that was what was fascinating about him. He, he let you in on those things. I'll never forget the first time I went to his house for a get-together. And at that time I think there were only about four of us graduate students. And the first thing that I will say is I his, his, his, his wife had to have a barren that was unimaginable because, by the time Peter got done in the kitchen, there wasn't a pot and pan that was still left in the same place. Cuz he took 'em all out to find the one he wanted. He almost set the house on fire with the grill which was another interesting experience. So he's gonna grill steaks for us. So he is got the grill sitting on the deck under the overhang.
Dr. David Mertens (00:33:25):
And of course, he's starting to write the charcoal. It's not going fast enough. So he grabs a can of lighter. And he just like that. Well, flame going up to the paint, starting to scorch and he grabs the thing by a leg and he holds it out. Like this walks down the stairs, sets him all Hesed off his eyebrows. Most of his whiskers are sinned and proceeds to put the steaks on and cook them. I mean, as if, well this happens every day, you know, that's no big deal. The other thing I remember about that, it just, it shows ye way his mind thought. So at the end we're having ice cream and of course Pete,r takes it directly out of the freezer and it's like a rock and he's got one of those metal scoops with the round scoop on the bottom and he's trying to dig ice cream out for us.
Dr. David Mertens (00:34:19):
Well, his very first scoop he's digging like this and it pops up and the ice cream flies up in the air, calms down, and lands right. In one of our bowls. And Peter just looked at that like, hell the hell did that happen? Do you know? I mean, you, he was in awe of how could that happen to ISBNyou know? I mean, it, that's just, that's just the kind of the way he, he was. And I think that was what made him so special to me is his, his curiosity was insatiable. I mean, any little thing like that, he'd sit there and you could see the little gears were like, how, how much force did I do? And how did the angle work? That, that would, you know, do that. I mean, I, that was kind of going through his head. You could just see the wheels turning, but he shared music with us, graduate students and I grew up with no classical music.
Dr. David Mertens (00:35:26):
I just found that fascinating, but geology, he loved, he loved, he loved all kinds of plants. The story I told at the Cornell nutrition conference that I have to relate relates to my wife, cuz we met while we were at Cornell and I took her to one of these famous Pete parties. And of course she, I think she might have been the only female there. So she and Pete were off talking and when I took her home that night, she said, please don't ever leave me alone with him again. And I said, why? She said he's so brilliant. He's scary. He said I don't wanna say anything stupid. And I said, you, you can't say anything really stupid. Peter just loves to teach stuff. Okay. Cuz she said something about oatmeal and she got a 45-minute lecture on fiber and oats.
Dr. David Mertens (00:36:21):
Okay. So, so I said, you know, you just, you gotta go with the flow. He's not intimidating. He's not scary. Well, she said, so the next party, she said, you gotta stay by me because I do not wanna be left alone with Peter. Okay. Okay. Okay. So I'm staying real close and I can tell Peter's kind of keeping an eye on the two of us. And finally, I had to go to the bathroom. So I said, okay, I'm going to the bathroom. Sure enough. I come out, Pete and Carolyn are gone. Well, I start looking around, where are they? Well, they're outside. I thought, well, it seemed to be getting along. Okay. I'm just gonna stay out of this. Okay. And see how it goes. So that night we're, we're going back to her place. And I said, well, how did that go?
Dr. David Mertens (00:37:13):
She said, well, she said it was fascinating. She said I commented on a rock that was in his rock garden. And he started telling me all about what it was chemicals it was made out of. And the fact that it was drug down here by a glacier from Canada and one of the oldest rocks on the Earth's crust. And she said, then I said something about a flower. And he started telling me all of the colors the nd why flowers had different colors and what they were made of. And I said, and she told me, she said, now I know why you admire this man so much. And I said, yeah, cause I said, that's just the way he is about everything. And I, so I think Mike made a good comment. I think he had to teach. I think that wasn't the fact the way he related to people.
Dr. David Mertens (00:38:02):
Thank God. It was for all of us that were got to know him because I have never met anyone quite like him in that regard. And I wanted to let Mike know that I sure appreciated him bringing the grad students out because Peter looked forward to what he did. And I think that that's another one of his, his legacies. I think, his book is a part of that teaching legacy. He wanted to get it all written down so that others can share it. And I'd certainly recommend to anyone and everyone just pick up that book and go to a random chapter and you're gonna learn things that you never thought about. And it just shows you how great mine kind of thinks about stuff.
Scott Sorrell (00:38:54):
Dave, where can you get that book?
Dr. David Mertens (00:38:57):
I don't Mike, is it still can you get it through Cornell?
Dr. Mike Van Amburgh (00:39:01):
You can. Most of the time our students just get it off Amazon.
Dr. David Mertens (00:39:04):
Okay. Okay.
Dr. Mike Van Amburgh (00:39:06):
Or any places you can, there are some used versions out there, not too many. Then, that's the textbook, the lab book is a print on demand at Cornell. So his lab book that we got put into a book format is prints on-demand, but you can order that too. It has an ISBN number. So it's all it's well documented.
Scott Sorrell (00:39:31):
Mike, I understand there are some lectures that you guys have digitized and gonna make available to the public. Can you talk a little bit about that?
Dr. Mike Van Amburgh (00:39:39):
Yeah, Scott. So the last couple years that Pete taught here, and then he came back, right? He, his last year of teaching was 1995. In 94, 95, he did some lectures in 96 for the, for the 4 0 3 class. Then he did some other lecturing, but you know, mostly consistent with the two courses that he, the three courses that he taught here. So a couple of enterprising grad students videotaped those and cataloged them. They I got, 'em all collected in a box and that box has been sitting either in my office or in the vault right outside my office. Since that time. And you know, about every two years, I'd look at whoever was here is my administrative assistant and say, okay, how do we get these things digitized? Right. And you know, we'd go through the process at Cornell and, you know, the library and all that kind of stuff and the archives and it got to be, it was always too pricey.
Dr. Mike Van Amburgh (00:40:46):
And here, you know, right after Pete died, you know, I had been trying to do this, but we had about the same time we had identified this guy in Rochester. Who's me has a tremendous business, does a lot of business with Hollywood, actually taking a lot of the old stuff and transcribing it into modern technology cost-effective. Matter of fact, we were just exchanging emails today. He's got it all digitized and transferring it to some hard drives. So we've got 70 lectures, either his 6 0 5 class or his 4 0 3 courses and a few from the six 13 courses. And we've got the periodic table lecture, which was always, a big hit here on campus because the chemists would come down and listen to that. And well we would move the class to 1 46 because the room would fill up.
Dr. Mike Van Amburgh (00:41:40):
Right. And that's highly unusual for something like that. So anyhow, those are, those are all recorded. We've got him when we did a retirement party when we did the, we did a symposium for him at Cornell nutrition conference, that was all recorded. Those are all digitized now. So that will be part of the collection and a few other things that I found that I thought would be fun. So anyhow, that I'm not gonna talk about yet, but anyhow, that will all go online. I think at this point the easiest thing for me to do is to tack them onto the C NP website, give it its name, make sure that people can get to it. We're trying to, you know, the last bit of information is how do we get it I'll share is that we're just trying to figure out a way that everybody can get there, see what it is, know the name and then be able to click on it and, and watch it consistently. We set it up. So if somebody truly thinks they wanna, I'm trying, we were trying to avoid this, but if they truly think they wanna watch it on a device like this, we think we got the bit rate. Correct. So they can do that. But if they wanna see it on a big screen, like we're looking at now, then I, I it'll do that. So anyhow, we hope to have those up and running here. I, by March, so I think that'll be fun.
Scott Sorrell (00:42:56):
Mary Beth, we've done, we've talked a lot about Dr. Van SU as a scientist, as a teacher. And I'm not sure we can separate it, but how would you describe him as, as a man, his humanity would that be any different, you know, the scientist and the, and the teacher?
Dr. Mary Beth Hall (00:43:14):
Well, going back to the earlier comments, you know, I again, Pete was a consummate teacher and he was always in teaching mode. I think one of the stories that come to mind that something slightly different than anything in the lab and anything to do with teaching properly you know, Pete would go out with the graduate students as he was heading towards retirement. He'd probably be out with us more than any of the other faculty members. And a lot of times we'd head up to the Hilltop and there's a lot of beer drinking, floating and inner tubes, and so forth. And I was doing some fishing at the time and there were bluegills in the pond and struck up a deal with Pete that if I caught the fish, he would clean and cook him, which is a pretty sweet deal.
Dr. Mary Beth Hall (00:44:02):
And so there I'd hand in the bluegills, he'd cut. 'em, He'd, he'd cut 'em up, he'd set 'em up so that they could be cooked over open fire stuff, them with garlic and fennel seeds. I tell you what, nothing better on an evening with friends hanging with Pete and, and folks and having bluegills you know, and as a friend, you know, it's not, it's kind of like what, what was mentioned earlier, you know, there, they're typically wasn't anything overt where he'd say, how are you doing, but, but there'd be some subtle things around the edges where he would try to help. And maybe some of it was a distraction into some other topic to get you away from you, from what you were thinking about. I found him, but in the years before Pete died, I was visiting him over at his house.
Dr. Mary Beth Hall (00:44:59):
And a lot of the talk was about science. And we ended up working on the last paper he got published. He, Mike Barry, and I were, was working on it. And after we had set things aside for the day and, and, and Mike Barry headed home, you know, he would pull out a book and start talking to me about kind of the evolution of language and old English and, and so forth. And I think maybe Dave alluded to it earlier that maybe a version of Pete's friendship was introducing you to part of his world. I mean, the teaching did that on a subject matter basis, but, but things like language and things like music and so forth I think that's where his comfort level was to, to try to bring people something that he also cherished. And, and I mean, that's the way I looked at it.
Dr. David Mertens (00:45:55):
I think Mary Beth commented earlier. Yes, Pete Pete was not kind of a loving family member kind of person
Dr. Mary Beth Hall (00:46:07):
Touchy, feely. No, yeah. Was,
Dr. David Mertens (00:46:09):
Yeah. But what was amazing about him is that he could relate to almost anyone. I mean, you, you know, I, some of the most interesting things for me was in a meeting in, in Sicily where they kind of wanted to have a, a case study situation. So took a whole group of farmers out on a farm with Peter there. And just to watch him talk to those farmers about forage quality and dairy nutrition and just the attention he got. I mean, he was interesting. He, he was always interesting and, he loved to relate to people. But I think it was, it was always at the level of ideas,
Dr. Mary Beth Hall (00:47:09):
Intellectual.
Dr. David Mertens (00:47:11):
Yeah. Yeah. Well, yeah. You know, and wouldn't you say, so, Mike, I mean, even with grad students, I mean, it, it wasn't like close personal, at least I didn't have a close personal relationship with him, but I loved him like a father. I mean
Dr. Mike Van Amburgh (00:47:26):
Yeah. Did you say, yeah I got some other experiences since we lived together for a few years?
Dr. David Mertens (00:47:33):
I'll bet.
Dr. Mike Van Amburgh (00:47:37):
Yeah. But yeah, no, no, that's just, that's just how he approached everybody. Right. That's who he just who he was. That's how, how he, that was, that was him.
Dr. David Mertens (00:47:47):
Well,
Dr. Mike Van Amburgh (00:47:47):
It was all, it was mostly intellectual. I mean, he could be cantankerous. I can tell you, he was, oh yeah. He could be a difficult guy. And I, I lived with some of that. I don't, I won't go into all of it, but yeah, boy, there were moments where it's like, all right, van Sue, you gotta go find your own space. I gotta find my space cuz neither one of us is gonna survive this one right now. And but at the same time, most of that, you know, most of that was from a caring perspective. It was never mean-spirited. Except maybe once or twice that I saw that had, you know, things that I won't share. But, for the most part, it was always from a perspective. Yeah. Yeah. I don't think he had a, I don't think he had a mean bone in his body. Right.
Dr. David Mertens (00:48:36):
Yeah. And I don't think he carried grudges either
Dr. Mike Van Amburgh (00:48:39):
Only towards H's young
Dr. Mary Beth Hall (00:48:40):
And no. And, and, And, and at least one other U S D a employee, not myself.
Dr. Mike Van Amburgh (00:48:48):
Yeah. Maybe. Well, yeah, I can think about, yeah.
Dr. David Mertens (00:48:52):
I have to comment on that because he always referred to those idiots on that paper that got his eye up. Unfortunately, my name was on that paper. And so I went up to him. I said, Peter, you do know that my name's on that paper too. He said, well, I know what you didn't. I don't mean you, you know, but, but he did have, he did have some strong opinions. I would say with, with, with most people, he was very,
Dr. Mary Beth Hall (00:49:23):
But, but wait, Dave, let me, let me interject back to idiots. A and his comments, I had the pleasure of being over at, on one of the weekends where the grad students came in for a lecture and it happened to be on Liman and Pete started referring in his lecture to those idiots. And I said, excuse me, Dr. Banus may I have a moment? And he says, yes. And I turn to the graduate students. And I say, you do know there's a, there's a difference between being an idiot and being ignorant, ignorant means you just don't know any better, but you can learn in this case, idiot is being used in the sense that a person is perceived to be willfully ignorant or refusing to look at other data. Yeah.
Dr. David Mertens (00:50:20):
Well
Dr. Mary Beth Hall (00:50:20):
S please continue.
Dr. David Mertens (00:50:23):
, the real problem there was Peter, and we talk about his legacy, the interesting thing about Peter's chemical knowledge, and how he applied it. It was Peter who applied chemistry to animal nutrition. And some of the people that he had strong feelings about applied chemistry to plant anatomy, plant characteristics. And I think because of that, there was kind of just, a misunderstanding of intent. Okay. Yeah. That shouldn't have been there, but, you know, by and large, Peter could be, you know, he was, he was always relatively mild initially when there was a disagreement in explaining his position. And usually, he felt that if he explained his position well enough, he got you converted. And that was the end of that.
Dr. Mary Beth Hall (00:51:21):
Unless you gave him information that gave him something else to consider which you would, right.
Dr. David Mertens (00:51:25):
But then, the, he, he, he had another head Docker with Minson from Australia about silica. I don't know if either of, you know, about this, but they had, they had this huge controversy. Peter said silica was somewhat like Lidon and that it tied up some types of fiber. And Benson said silica is just an inert mineral. And all it does is just dilute out the adjustability. And one of my favorite remembrances of Peter giving a lecture was at the international grassland Congress in Kentucky. And this is a big deal. I mean, it filled up that on I'm 15 minutes before either of these guys are gonna speak, cuz everybody knew there was going to be a very interesting set of talks. People were standing in a hall, standing onto aisles and Minson gave his presentation first. And Peter was second. Well now of a, all the things that Peter could do handling mechanical things were not one of them.
Dr. David Mertens (00:52:35):
Okay. So in this particular presentation, he had a slide projector advancing thing. In one hand, he had a microphone in the other, and then he had a pointer kind of held old with a microphone and all of them had cords, nothing wireless. So Peter's just getting animated and getting going. And he got himself all wrapped up in these cables. I mean, he was like a puppy dog tied to a post and got wrapped around. And so right in the middle of his presentation, he just stops and he stands up and he goes like unwinds himself. Well, now the whole audience just broke out in a roar. Okay. Peter turned around and looked like, what's so funny. I had to get myself on the table and right where he stopped off, he just started again and he finished his talk, but that was Peter. He, when he was thinking about something, there was no distractions, you know? And, and I think that was the other thing that for me, was he his intense powers of concentration? I don't know. Mike, did you see that when, when he was like reading or thinking about something?
Dr. Mike Van Amburgh (00:53:53):
Yeah, no, no. I experienced that several times in the year and a half that we lived together. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And in the lab, yeah. He could be very focused.
Dr. David Mertens (00:54:01):
Your comment about him reading that book fascinated me because frustrated me because I could never come up with something that he hadn't read already. And I never saw him. I never saw him go to the library. Okay I'm sure he did
Dr. Mike Van Amburgh (00:54:17):
Just a look at it,
Dr. David Mertens (00:54:18):
But yeah, he, he, he was, he was a native speed reader. He could read a page of time, I think. And remember everything he read, but that your comment about the book struck me because I often thought, you know, how the heck, you know, it got to be a game with me trying to find something in the library that he hadn't read already. And I did find one thing in a Japanese journal that he, that, and that made my whole stay at Cornell that kind of completed it. So I say that I, I, I did that, but, but the other interesting thing I gotta tell about him that I I'm sorry, they got lost. Cuz I would love to have looked through him when you work for the US D and at the time you were given little green hardbound lab books that you were supposed to record everything every day in and Peter being trained as a chemist, biochemist did that. And one of the things he did to me that were frustrating early on is I'd come up with an idea that I thought was brilliant. And Peter could go over to that bookshelf, pull one of these books out, open it up to the right page. Yeah. Hey you have 'em
Dr. Mike Van Amburgh (00:55:33):
I do.
Dr. David Mertens (00:55:34):
Oh, save them. Cause I,
Dr. Mike Van Amburgh (00:55:37):
I have
Dr. David Mertens (00:55:38):
Dearly loved to read those books.
Dr. Mike Van Amburgh (00:55:40):
They, they were, they were going in the trash.
Dr. David Mertens (00:55:42):
Oh, oh no. Oh God, that thank you, Mike. Because I have, I asked Peter about him. He didn't know what happened to him. He told me he threw him away and I thought, oh my, oh my God, because
Dr. Mike Van Amburgh (00:55:55):
Might I? Yes. Sorry, Dave, I didn't mean to interrupt you.
Dr. David Mertens (00:55:58):
No, I'm glad you did because that made my day because I've, I would love the first thing I would, I would say to everyone air, if you've got a chance and you've got even a remotes interest, do read one or two if you can get 'em and this is getting to be a problem of Pete's initial papers on the development of ADF or PDF and AAC and the association official analytical chemist at the time. But because reading those papers gives you an insight into how he figured out to do what he did, which built on nothing that was done before. Okay. And, but the other thing I wanted to mention before I forget is what really, I think established Peter as a brilliant mine that was going to change things is he gave a series of symposium papers and journal of animal science in, I think it was 64, 65 and 67.
Dr. David Mertens (00:57:05):
And those papers, in my opinion, should be, must-reads by anyone interested in feed evaluation and re-nutrition because, in most of those symposium papers, he could develop the ideas that we all now use. And it's just interesting to read him, to see how he was thinking at the time and how he had already kind of put it all together. And I, I put, I put those papers in that list at the Cornell nutrition conference. But I, for grad students, particularly to me there must be reads because it shows the thinking and how he started putting it all together. And I think that was the other thing I would say about Peter. We, we grad students used to sit around and try to figure out what made him so unique, and, his brilliance and his knowledge were a part of it. We were all fascinated by how he could remember so much stuff.
Dr. David Mertens (00:58:05):
Okay. But what was interesting about him was that he put it all together in his head, his Mike referred to this, he, he, he kind of had a mental picture of how things should fit together. And when he read something new, he plugged it into that. So that metal picture just kept expanding. But what was fascinating about him is if you raised a question about a part of that metal picture over here, he could start right there and just give you a lecture. Okay. You know, teach you about it. But we all kind of decided that that's what made him so special is that he, he understood it. He to make it all fit together rather than just knowing bits and pieces. So I, sorry, I'm talking too much, but he, he was a fascinating person in that regard and very few people can do that.
Dr. Mary Beth Hall (00:58:59): The thing that I'd add to that is that he could take any of the pieces of information in, would be intrigued by puzzles and how we could apply them. Is does this show up reasonably well, in your rooming? Yeah. Okay. What this is, is a piece of Chrome tanned room and leather, and there are pieces still over Cornell down in one of the teaching labs. Mike,
Dr. Mike Van Amburgh (00:59:26):
I think so some of it, yeah, I there's pieces of things like that all over the place, but I don't know if there are any chromium pieces left.
Dr. Mary Beth Hall (00:59:34):
Oh, okay. What happened was when I was a grad student and I was a TA you know, how do you, you teach undergraduates what's going on in the room. And when it's a, when you can't get there from here, basically, I mean, how do you make it real for the students? And so I talked with Pete and he told me he would try to make leather. And so he ended up making leather at an of, excuse me, reticulum with the honeycomb. He made it out of part of the Ruen. So you have all the Patil I've got no me leaf over there. These are spare pieces left over after we put the rest into a case to go down in a teaching lab, but I mean, here you have them, getting this weird question at left field and devoting himself, going to the library and getting books on how you tan leather and taking his knowledge of how to work with chromium, which he'd worked with a chromium Morant of PDF to be used as a marker and applying it to do this you, his, his ability to, to take on new challenges and be delighted by them and apply his knowledge in all sorts of weird and funky ways to get at what you wanted was remarkable.
Dr. Mary Beth Hall (01:00:59):
And it was fun. We, we had these pieces tacked out on a board with neatsfoot oil on them, so we could get 'em in a decent shape. So that they'd preserve, you know, we were, when he was gonna give his talk on the nutritional ecology of dinosaurs, his lab was also the place where we made a dinosaur head to go with somebody who was gonna play the dinosaur at one of his lectures. And he had fun with it and he very much thought he needed a dinosaur to attend his lecture. So, yeah, he was special.
Scott Sorrell (01:01:37):
He special I'd say very, very special and unconventional, but
Dr. David Mertens (01:01:41):
I, I have to tell you all about a rat story. Peter had that pet rat in his office at the U S D a. And the story I heard was when he moved. Okay. he, the people that helped him move found government checks that he had never cashed that were the old punch card checks, you know, the own staple alive bend, and the rat had chewed on them and they had to reissue him a whole bunch of checks that he never cashed, which kind of let you understand how much his finances were, were important to him compared to his research. But I, it's just one more thing to kind of tell you a little bit about the person. And he was fortunate that he did have some people and in the case of Cornell, I think an institution that allowed him to be who he was. And I'm not sure, unfortunately, I'm not sure we could do that. He could do that today.
Scott Sorrell (01:02:45):
I, I'm curious, I know we're getting along, along a bit long here, but how much do we know about his early life, his childhood, and what was he like then? I can only imagine what it might have been like to have him as a C child.
Dr. Mike Van Amburgh (01:02:59):
Yeah. I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll speak quickly here. He shared a story with me once. This was where I, this is where I began to learn so early in his life. He had this mental capacity that we're all talking about. It was something that developed. It was there. And his parents knew it. His dad knew it. He and aunt and aunt, I think it was an aunt. Yeah. Had given him a series of encyclopedias,
Dr. Mary Beth Hall (01:03:27):
No uncle Justin
Dr. Mike Van Amburgh (01:03:29):
Uncle. Yeah. Uncle Justin gave him the yeah, I couldn't remember giving him the encyclopedia, which he did what we just talked about. He read them, but he not only read them, but he also integrated them and memorized them. And he would correct his eighth-grade teachers when they were wrong. And that would not sit well with the teachers and his parents heard about it. And his dad, his, his parents recognized, and this just continued. Right. And, and, and he, he told me this one day what's your beef over several pictures of beer with some tears you know, this was one of those very human moments of Pete, where he was telling me how hard it was to be him and to be that different and how early in his life that this cuz I had asked him some of the questions I asked him, Pete, how'd you do this.
Dr. Mike Van Amburgh (01:04:22):
And he, he went right back to this story and, and relayed this story to me over, I don't know how many pictures of beer we drank, but very coherent many hours of this discussion. And he, you know, and this is one of the most human moments that I remember of him that, and, and something that, that I could share later. But he was holding my hand as he told me this and he was crying and he said, I've always been different. Cuz I had this ability to do things and nobody ever understood me even at a young age. And he goes, and his parents recognized that. And that's when they said, you know, you're not gonna be a farmer. You're not gonna, you're not gonna hang here. You have to go get some more education, gotta go figure out who you are. Right. And, and they promoted that. And you know, and he always was good at the arts. He, he always, he knew how to paint. He learned how to do all sorts of things. So, but it started very early that this, this person that he became was innate from, from birth
Scott Sorrell (01:05:21):
Amazing person. Guys I've enjoyed tonight that we're, we're well over an hour now and it feels like 10 minutes. But I think it's time to call the last call. And, and, and with that, what I'd like each of you to do is to share are two things, you know how do you see Dr. Van Sue's legacy living on in the future generations one? And then what would he wanna say to young students who are just starting their careers in animal agriculture and why don't we start with Mary Beth Europe and I upper right corner or upper left corner.
Dr. Mary Beth Hall (01:05:57):
I think his legacy that, I mean for, for grad students for, for going forward, kind of goes back to, to not resting on laurels. I mean the last paper that we worked on his one on KSAN Liman versus as detergent Liman there was a glimmer there that maybe PDF digestibility is an apparent analysis and it was an intriguing discussion with him. And, and so part of his legacy would be here. This is the best we've got. It may be the best we'll ever have, but keep looking for options that might help us get better and have them well grounded in good science, good chemistry, good analysis, and such your second, your second question to me,
Dr. David Mertens (01:06:44):
What to say, grad student, what to say grad new grad student,
Dr. Mary Beth Hall (01:06:49):
What to say to a new grad student.
Scott Sorrell (01:06:51):
Yeah. What would he wanna say just with their just starting their career? What advice would he give him?
Dr. Mary Beth Hall (01:06:57):
I think it would, might go back to something that Dave was talking about earlier. It it's, it's diving in and finding questions that haven't been well addressed, or even if, maybe we think they have been a and see where you go, but, but again, think about it, make sure it makes sense. See what you pursue.
Scott Sorrell (01:07:20):
Thank you for that, Dave.
Dr. David Mertens (01:07:22):
Well, I, I think his, his legacy is certainly going to be all of the concepts that he has gotten us to think about in addition to the chemistry that he's taught us, that's been useful. And I think sometimes I dwell a little bit on the chemistry cuz to me it's so fascinating because it was so different, but he, he was a person that thought in terms of concepts of ideas. And that's the reason why I would encourage the people to read his book, to read his papers because it's the ideas that are probably gonna push us forward and, and going to be his real legacy. And he would, he would want us to do that. He would want us to, to build the other thing I think is that we need to think a little bit more in terms of translational research, how to take ideas from a different branch and apply it to our branch.
Dr. David Mertens (01:08:26):
I mean, what made Pete so special was the fact that he knew chemistry and biochemistry, and physical chemistry. He also understood nutrition and he made those two things come together. And I don't think we do enough of that. We're I, I, I tell the story that I we're getting so specialized, we know more and more about less and less until we're gonna know everything about nothing. And Pete would've been the exact opposite of that. Okay. That's, that's not the way his brain worked in terms of what he would tell a new grad student Pete was not one to give advice, but what he taught me by doing, I think was a couple of things he wanted you to think deeply. He wanted you to read widely. Okay. and I think those were the things that he taught me without telling me that probably are things that he would want to stress to a new grad student.
Dr. David Mertens (01:09:37):
Peter Peter was interesting in that he loved to take an idea and trace it backward, as well as take it forward. He, he, he would take it and fight out where this idea started and he taught me to do that. And I've always found that fascinating because what was amazing to me is I could find somebody in 1892 that came up with an idea that we're working on today. And 90% of what they thought at the time was still right today is like, and so I think Peter would say, you know, delve into a topic deeply, do a lot of reading and, and do a lot of you know, think independently, look at the data, draw your conclusions. That would probably be the way Peter would say
Scott Sorrell (01:10:26):
It. Yeah. Thank you, clay. Any final words from you?
Dr. Clay Zimmerman (01:10:30):
Yes, I've I, I found this very fascinating and I really, I wanna thank Dave and Mary Beth for the imor that that came out in the journal of dairy science. That was very well done. So thank you.
Dr. David Mertens (01:10:46):
Thank you for the opportunity of doing this.
Scott Sorrell (01:10:48):
Yeah. You're very welcome. This has been fun, Mike, any final words?
Dr. Mike Van Amburgh (01:10:53):
Yeah. I'll just summarize it by saying, I, I think his legacy is, is teach us his legacy is, is the thought process, how to think. Right. And everybody said that already, but really and I think that's one of the hardest parts about his legacy Scott, since you asked that question, nobody reads the same way today. At least the current-gen back to the students, right. I'm gonna try to integrate my answers here in the time. Boy, our, our current, you know, I make my students read. I make my students take P chem, right. David and, and the, my concern is for his legacy. And it's what Dave is, what everybody laid out here. Peter had a tremendous thought process and it wasn't whether you were right or wrong. It said, what did you learn in the process of thinking through all of that?
Dr. Mike Van Amburgh (01:11:41):
And what could you find for evidence, right? And if you found the evidence, it wouldn't matter if that person said no way that's ever gonna happen. Cuz if you could think your way through it and say, no, here's how I, I find the evidence and that can show you this. And by golly, that's, we're now we're learning and now we're, we're making change. And I think when it comes to the students, he would encourage them to do the same thing. The problem is, is that it's really hard to teach that in the Google generation. Right. We, we want an answer. We want it quick. But at how we got there, you know, Pete's Dave referenced 1882 of 18 92, 18 92. Well, the EH papers from 1806 and it's written from in high German and Peter red it and EH was probably the first guy to develop NDF.
Dr. Mike Van Amburgh (01:12:30):
And he did it mechanically on potatoes. Right. I and Pete read the darn paper from 1806 and said, this is probably what I need to replicate, but I need to do it chemically. Right. I can't, we can't do this mechanically. Right. And so, yeah, it's learning how to think and for the students, the other thing I'll say, and, and from a student perspective, and I think this is one of the things that Dave and I have lamented, this one, doing chemistry, there's very few labs doing feed chemistry anymore, real feed chemistry. So that's kind of becoming a law start, we're leaving it up to the commercial labs and the students have no idea what the hell assay was run and why it was run. Yeah. The age of statistics. We're one hell of a lot of statistical nutrition a lot.
Dr. Mike Van Amburgh (01:13:20):
And that he would rail against that, right? Because it doesn't follow his tenant of what can you recover? What can you show? What, what did you have left? Right? The back to curly Lucas, the uniform fractions, the concept of nutritional uniformity. This is 98% adjustable. This is 0% adjustable. And our score of zero is, is informative. Right? I'll always remember him telling us that. So, so that kind of stuff Scott is, is I think that's a hard part of his legacy. And I'm very concerned that we're gonna lose that because we've moved to big, big data. We don't question biology. We just, you know, if we can put enough data together, we can run enough equations through some, a code with a mixed model. And by golly, we're gonna learn something new. And that, that is the antithetical aspect of Pete van Sue's approach. Right? So that's, so that's what we've gotta stay away from.
Scott Sorrell (01:14:24):
Great answer to end on Mike Mary Beth, Dave, Mike, I've enjoyed this immensely. So this has been a lot of fun. I wanna thank you for sharing your memories and your stories. Dr. Van's contributions to this industry will be remembered and referenced for many years to come. So I thank you guys for, coming and, and doing this and sharing, your stories again. I also want to thank our little listeners. We hope you enjoyed this as much as we did, and we'll see your time here at the real science exchange where it's always happy hour, and you're always among friends.
Speaker 7 (01:14:55):
We'd love to hear your comments or ideas for topics and guests. So please reach out via email to anhmarketing@balchem.com with any suggestions. And we'll work hard to add them to the schedule. Don't forget to leave a five-star rating on your way out. You can request your real science exchange. T-Shirt in just a few easy steps, just like, or subscribe to the real science exchange and send us a screenshot along with your address and t-shirt size to anhmarketing@balchem.com. Balchems real science lecture. The Series of webinars continues with ruminant-focused topics on the first Tuesday of every month. Monogastric-focused topics on the second Tuesday of each month and quarterly topics for the companion animal segment, visit balchem.com/real science to see the latest schedule and to register for upcoming webinars.