A bitter retirement

Image Credit: James Liebert

Those of you who regularly read my blog know that I often write about colleagues who are moving on to the next step in their careers, be it postdoctoral researchers who get jobs as professors, or graduate students who finish their PhDs (one of those is coming up later this week, we hope!).   Each of those are big steps, and worthy of celebration.  Retirements are another big step in astronomy careers, and should also be cause for singing and dancing in the streets.

One of my mentors and good friends is retiring from astronomy this week after a long and very successful career in astronomy.  I wish I could say that I am very happy, but I am not.  This is not the whistful sadness of wishing a friend a fond farewell (for most astronomers, retirement is rarely accompanied by a sudden change -- retired astronomers routinely keep doing research, showing up at the office, and even mentoring PhD students.)  This is the sadness of watching a friend self-destruct, and not being able to help him.

My friend and mentor is Professor James Liebert (pictured above in celebration after the Kansas Jayhawks won the NCAA basketball championship in 2008).  Dr. Liebert is one of the world's foremost experts on white dwarf stars, though he has also done research on brown dwarfs and, in decades past, even distant galaxies.  However, as one colleague described him, Liebert's brain has essentially two parts.  Half is dedicated to white dwarfs, and the other half to Kansas Jayhawk basketball.

During his career, Liebert has used white dwarfs to determine the age of parts of our Milky Way galaxy.  He's studied how massive white dwarfs are, and how fast our galaxy is producing white dwarfs.  He's worked on the composition of white dwarfs.  He's researched interacting white dwarf stars and magnetic white dwarf stars.  You can show Liebert a spectrum of a white dwarf, and he can, just by eyeballing it, tell you fairly accurately how hot and how massive that white dwarf is.  At meetings of white dwarf scientists, Liebert is probably the best-known person in the room.

Liebert also cares very much for his students and his collaborators.  He knows the family histories of many of his students, has been invited to weddings, and inquires about the well-being of family members he may never have met, perhaps years after he learns of an illness or struggle with which that relative is struggling.    He agonizes over the careers of those younger people he's worked with, even to the point of offering to resign or draw less salary if such a person is hired. 

Liebert began his studies in astronomy during the Vietnam War, and took a break from his studies to serve a stint in the Navy.  He can't say exactly what he did, but I surmise he was involved in intelligence gathering.  Liebert attended Berkeley toward the end of the student unrest of the 1960s and early 1970s.  He worked on his PhD with Hy Spinrad, who is well-known for work on distant galaxies.  But Liebert was intrigued by the white dwarf stars, and he used the 3-meter telescope at Lick Observatory to take spectra of many white dwarf stars, all while helping Spinrad study radio galaxies and other distant faint fuzzy objects.

I met Liebert when I moved to the University of Arizona Department of Astronomy in 2002.  My PhD work had been on white dwarf stars, but my primary work at Arizona involved studying distant galaxies.  Still, Liebert took pity on my and gave me a lot of tutoring in white dwarf science.  There are several subtleties involved in studying white dwarf stars that affect their usefulness as astrophysical probes.  I absorbed as much of this information from Liebert as I could, and that knowledge has helped me to grow and mature as a scientist.  Since leaving Arizona three years ago, I've kept in touch with Liebert, visiting Arizona on many occasions and working on joint research problems.

Over the past year, though, Liebert has succumbed to substance abuse.  Perhaps he's been battling this for a long time and has became more susceptible as he's aged, or perhaps it began with self-medication for other medical issues.  But the scientifically productive and caring man Liebert usually was has transformed into a combative, selfish person that we, his friends and colleagues, do not recognize.  Despite multiple trips to the hospital and treatment centers, Liebert is not yet on the road to recovery.  Early retirement was offered to Liebert to allow him the freedom to seek whatever recovery he deems best, without having to worry about teaching classes or ignoring students.  If and when he is clean and sober, he can then take up the life of the typical retired professor.  We all hope he is willing and able to take advantage of this opportunity.

I tell this story not to denigrate Liebert; substance abuse is a disease that affects people from all walks of life and is not limited to the poor or the unintelligent or the selfish.  I tell the story for a few reasons.  First,  I want to acknowledge the remarkable career of Professor Liebert and his contributions to both the science of astronomy and to my own personal career, and I want to with him well on what is a treacherous road to recovery. 

Second, I wish to share a few lessons that I have learned.  I, along with many people around Liebert, made the very common mistake of not recognizing or admitting his substance abuse problem in the early going.  I made excuses for him, I looked for other medical issues that may have been responsible for the same symptoms, and I did not confront Liebert on these problems soon enough.  I don't know that an earlier admission on my part would have changed anything, since the choice to admit the problem and begin recovery is Liebert's and his alone, a choice he still hasn't made.  I regret my slowness and trepidation.

Liebert's problems have also strained relations between many good people at the University of Arizona.  We all have had our own opinions as to Liebert's problems, the degree of his problems, and what the best course of action is.  As Liebert has sunken further into his disease, these differing opinions have sharpened to the point where some friends and colleagues are near the breaking point.  What makes this exceptionally sad is that we all want the same end -- we want our sharp scientist and caring friend back and healthy.  We disagree on how to get there.  And, since Liebert has no immediate family (he does have cousins and an aunt and uncle who are working hard on his behalf), we individually feel like we need to take Liebert's recovery on our own shoulders and do what we each feel is best.  This is complicated by the fact that, since many of Liebert's closest friends are in the workplace, University rules and regulations constrain what can be done.  It is horrifying but true that we can be limited in helping each other by the same privacy rules that were written to protect us.

So, I hope and pray that Liebert's retirement will encourage him on the long, hard, and endless journey of recovery.  I honor the man I once knew and his profound contributions to the science of astronomy.  And I still cling to the perhaps overly-optimistic hope that, one day in the not-to-distant future, I can again collaborate with Liebert on studying the secrets of the stars.


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