Frank von Hippel on the writing and editing life of a scientist

by Kathleen McCoy  |   

Frank von Hippel

Dr. Frank von Hippel is a professor in the Department of Biological Sciences at UAA. (Photo by Erik Hill/Anchorage Daily News. Used with permission.)

Frank von Hippel researches environmental contaminants-natural and manmade-and tries to figure out how they affect humans.

Some of his research may explain declining birth rates in industrialized countries like the United States. His team has shown that tiny stickleback fish (with similar endocrine systems to humans) become hermaphrodites when exposed to perchlorate (a common chemical that humans also are exposed heavily to). That means the sticklebacks have male and female gonads. If this pertains to humans, don't you want to know?

von Hippel comes from six generations of scientists. He grew up around a dinner table where scientific problems and potential solutions were dished up with dinner. Because he had so much explained to him as a kid, he's very good at translating scientific concepts to the broad public.

Britannica_Stickleback

Image of a three spine stickleback from the Encyclopædia Britannica. Image is in public domain.

To that end, he's taught many community classes to lifelong-learning adults. He's walked freshman through Rachel Carson's Silent Spring as a part of a great books series. He's trained community researchers how to participate in contaminant studies on St. Lawrence Island, in Guatemala and Australia. Just now, he's finishing the last two chapters of a science book aimed at general readers-a history of how war, famine and plague resulted in the development of pesticides.

The surprising thing? Despite his fine-tuned sense of audience and deep scientific knowledge, he confesses to a particularly rocky start to his literary life.

"I was interested in writing long before I was ever interested in science," he said. As a kid growing up in Anchorage, he wrote every chance he could.

The only problem: "I was a terrible writer." He laughs at the memory of a creative writing class he took as a Dartmouth freshman. At the end of the semester, the professor asked if he could keep von Hippel's first and last papers to show future students.

"I thought, 'Well, that's great! He really liked what I did!'"

Then his professor explained, "Your first submission was s-o-o-o-o bad, and your last draft was actually OK. The difference between 'so bad' and 'OK' is huge."

So how did he improve? It's an answer you've heard before: practice.

"In grad school, the first scientific paper I wrote took me two years. Now I can write a paper in a week," he said. "A lot of that is just getting the skills of writing down."

I wondered if writing for other scientists somehow interferes with his ability to write for nonscientists. He sees it exactly the opposite.

"I think technical writing improves people's writing," he said, "It has to be concise. You work five years on a project, but fit it into two pages when you write it up. Every word counts."

He describes getting asked to completely rewrite chapter one in his upcoming pesticides book. "I worked a couple of months on it, and I had to throw it away."

Yes, that was a blow. But he's also spent 20 years having his science reviewed by peers and having grants sent back for revision. "You get all this brutal feedback, and you just have to fix it," he said.

On the fateful book chapter, "I had maybe two minutes of 'Argh!' But then I took a deep breath. Not all was lost. I'd done all the reading, I just had to sit down and rewrite it."

Elsevier's Environmental Pollution journal,

Frank von Hippel is a new associate editor at Elsevier's Environmental Pollution journal.

About a month ago, von Hippel accepted an invitation to join a prestigious international academic publication, Elsevier's Environmental Pollution journal, as an associate editor. He's now personally responsible for deciding whether up to 200 scientific papers a year will get published in that journal.

On top of a steep research load, lots of his own ongoing writing, teaching and community service, I marveled that he had the time. The truth is, he doesn't, but he's made it work because he felt there was so much to learn; he wants to better understand editing.

Time, and how von Hippel squeezes so much out of it, is a study in itself.

"I am very disciplined about my time," he says. "If I lead a meeting, I make it super short. If I think a meeting is not going to be productive, I don't go...."

He prioritizes family (he walks his 8-year-old to school every day) and exercise (he skis, runs, cycles or lifts weights six days a week.) Everything else, frankly, is work. Seven days a week. "I can't remember the last time I went to see a movie," he said.

If that sounds grim, he's not. The way he sees it, as a professor, he's "paid to think."

And also, to explain.

Walking his son to school the other day, the topic of irrational numbers came up. von Hippel mentioned Pi, the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter. His son didn't understand, so Von Hippel explained you could use Pi to calculate how much pizza you're getting for your money.

"If you put things in the right way," he said, "you make sense to any audience."

A version of this story by Kathleen McCoy appeared in the Alaska Dispatch News on Sunday, Nov. 22, 2015.

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