Little Henry Eyring, so the family story goes, was about 3 when he rode his father's horse to the river at the end of a work day to water the animal. When it shook him into the river, his father fished him out and the child's first comment was: "Put me back on the horse."
Getting back on the horse became one of Henry Eyring's lifelong traits as he built a reputation as a world-renowned scientist, patient researcher, respected educator and delightful human being. On Dec. 26, 1981, when he died at age 80 of cancer-related complications, he had to his credit almost 600 scientific papers, about a dozen scientific books and years of experience as editor or contributor to the most pre-eminent chemistry journals.Eyring's Deseret News file contains dozens of items whose headlines almost inevitably begin "Dr. Eyring honored with the (fill in the blank with literally every prestigious award in his field, with the exception only of the Nobel Prize.)" The reward he found most gratifying, he said, was the National Medal of Science, which he received from President Lyndon B. Johnson. He was recognized by some of the country's most outstanding educational institutions with honorary degrees - more than a dozen of them.
During the most prolific years of his life, he contributed to major research in a dozen scientific fields, including the work that led to the atomic bomb. Some of the projects focused on potential cures for cancer, which took not only his life, but that of his beloved first wife, Mildred Bennion Eyring. He later married Winifred Brennan, adding her four daughters to a family circle that already included three sons.
He filled scores of speaking engagements - up to 70 a year - all over the world and became not only mentor, but friend, to his students, many of whom followed him in distinguished careers in their fields.
In a self-description, Eyring said, "I perceive myself as rather uninhibited, with a certain mathematical facility and more interest in the broad aspect of a problem than the delicate nuances. I am more interested in discovering what is over the next rise than in assiduously cultivating the beautiful garden close at hand."
To young listeners, he once described his approach to a problem more succinctly: "I ask myself, `Now, how would I act if I were an atom and found myself in this environment?' " His scentific reputation grew from an ability to "think visually" and to put difficult abstract concepts into workable mathematical models.
A scientific peer, Peter Debye, once said that Eyring's "contributions to science are like the paintings of Frans Hals; he paints with a bold, broad brush."
Many Utahns remember him best for the footraces he held with his graduate students for 17 years. He began the contests winning more often than not. In the end, well into his 70s, he said annually that he was glad merely to finish and (on one occasion) "that guy falling down really helped."
A puckish sense of humor and a unique combination of genius and humility, an admirer commented, let Eyring take his work very seriously while not taking himself too seriously. Honored by notables around the world, he wasn't above showing the postman how he could do a standing jump from the floor to the top of his desk.
"He was amused as well as challenged by life," said Elder Neal A. Maxwell, a member of the Council of Twelve of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on the occasion of dedicating the new University of Utah chemistry building in Eyring's honor.
The professor himself put that event into perspective as he passed well beyond normal retirement age. Asked how long he would continue working, he responded, "As long as I can find my way to the chemistry building. Having my name on it helps."
Among Latter-day Saints, especially the youths of the church, Eyring was a hero for his unabashed championing of both science and religion. Often called on to speak to youth groups, he frequently repeated his basic philosophy on the subject: "I don't care what they (others, particularly detractors) think. I'm no shrinking violet about it . . . I'm not sensitive, so I couldn't be hurt over another person's view. I simply know what I believe and others may believe as they like." On one occasion, he quipped, "I would write a scientific paper with the devil, if it was on high temperatures. The fellow's probably an authority."
He filled a number of leadership roles in the church, acting as branch and district leader during the family's stay in Princeton, N.J. and later as a member of the Sunday School general board in Salt Lake City.
Eyring began life Feb. 20, 1901, in Mexico's Colonia Juarez, one of several LDS enclaves south of the border. He almost ended his life in the same location at age 4, when the family's water supply was tainted with typhoid bacteria. He barely survived a bout of the illness.
The family thrived, working a ranch of more than 10,000 acres about seven miles from Juarez and another 4,000 acres closer to home. His father bred fine shorthorn Durham cattle, selling the bull calves to local ranchers to upgrade their Spanish longhorn animals.
The outbreak of the Mexican rebellion in 1910 eventually forced the Eyrings and other LDS families out of Mexico. In 1912, they, along with almost 5,000 of their compatriots, went to El Paso to wait out the civil war. They were never able to return to Juarez and the property and goods they left behind were expropriated, leaving the family to struggle for a living. Henry worked at Calisher's department store beginning at $2 an hour, six days a week. Fortunately it was a day when he could buy a quart of milk and a loaf of bread for a nickel.
A gifted student, Henry skipped the first and seventh grades and missed one year of school because of the unrest in Mexico, but he still excelled in high school. His science teacher, Alma Sessions, advised him to go on to college to study either electrical or mining engineering. Buoyed with his father's advice to dedicate his efforts to truth wherever he found it, young Eyring chose mining engineering. He enrolled at the University of Arizona aided by a $500 scholarship from Graham County. But after a rock fell on his foot while he was getting some real-life training in one of Arizona's mines, he changed his mind.
"I learned that when you are in mines, rocks fall on your head," he later explained. He switched to metallurgy and continued his schooling at Berkeley, Calif., where he also advanced into more sophisticated research projects, including work in the emerging field of radiation.
After a stint teaching at the University of Wisconsin, he opted for full-time research. In 1929, he was granted a national research fellowship at the University of Berlin. While he was in Germany, his family informed him that a legal case regarding his brother's citizenship status had ruled the Eyrings were still Mexzican citizens. "And I had already voted for Hoover," the young researcher commented, tongue-in-cheek. University officials, aware that Eyring had acted in good faith, allowed him to continue the scholarship to its end. Returning to the United States, he began the process to gain American citizenship. The judge who conducted his citizenship hearing had recently acted in the same capacity for another scientist - Alfred Einstein. Eyring later re-count-ed that the judge was still so taken with his experience with Einstein that "he forgot to question me, so I passed."
For 15 years, Eyring was affiliated with Princeton University. In 1946, A. Ray Olpin, new president of the University of Utah, went to New Jersey to woo him away. The scientist came to Utah as head of the Graduate School, bringing most of his research projects with him. In the first year of his tenure, research money to his department increased from $9,800 annually to $400,000. By the time he retired, the total was $13 million. Scores of scientists from around the world found Utah on their travel agendas as he continued to trade information with peers.
Eyring died during the Christmas season of 1981 (Dec. 26), leaving enduring contributions to science, religion and academia.