Fred Gould: Lessons in Science and Humanity
Looking back on Fred Gould’s illustrious 47-year career in entomology at NC State University, it’s easy to assume that he took the direct route to scientific success. Not so.
Sure, he’s a William Neal Reynolds Professor of Agriculture, co-founder of the Genetics and Genomics Academy, former executive director of NC State’s Genetic Engineering and Society Center, a winner of the UNC system’s O. Max Gardner Award for research making the greatest contribution to human welfare, and a member of the prestigious National Academy of Sciences.
But as Gould will tell you, his academic path began with turning down admission to medical school, taking odd jobs, traveling in Europe, making a snap decision to go to graduate school and living in a bread truck on Long Island. (Yes, really.)
Perhaps those early wanderings provided insight for the many students Gould has guided since. To show their appreciation, his former students traveled across the state, across the country and from as far away as the Netherlands for a recent symposium and retirement celebration honoring Gould.
“The two most common words I heard about Fred during the symposium were ‘mentor’ and ‘empathy,’” said NC State alumna Jennifer Maxwell, a former doctoral student of Gould’s and current faculty member at Elgin Community College in Illinois.
More behind-the-scenes stories about Gould emerged during the evening’s celebration. His peers, colleagues and students agreed that Gould is a deep thinker. But did you know that he’s also “a bit of a motorhead”? That he knows comfort food? And that he has an artistic side?
1. We may have Berkeley to thank for his coming to NC State.
Gould was pursuing interdisciplinary research the day he first set foot on the NC State campus.
He had completed a Ph.D. in ecology and evolutionary biology from the University of New York at Stony Brook, where he had applied because he liked the idea of being paid to go to graduate school (through an assistantship) and because a friend had an extra copy of the paper application form.
After graduation, Gould secured a National Science Foundation postdoctoral fellowship to study how insects adapt to plants’ natural defenses and to insecticides.
“When I was at Stony Brook, I had been living in a bread van,” says Gould, who sported a beard and ponytail at the time. “I had NSF funding for a one-year project I wanted to do. I needed two faculty sponsors to do the research: a toxicologist and biocontrol researcher. I wanted to go to Berkeley where I thought I’d fit in with the culture.”
Fred Gould was born in New York City and grew up in New York and Rhode Island. 
The bread truck that Fred Gould once called home 
Before coming to NC State as a postdoc in the late 1970s, Fred Gould planned to go to Berkeley, where he thought he’d fit in. 
Fred Gould sits on the porch of Bob Rabb’s cabin, which he heard about on his first visit to NC State. 
Fred Gould in the field on a hot summer day. 
Fred Gould’s 1990 Mustang 
Clyde Sorenson, left, and Fred Gould at Hanging Rock State Park in Danbury, North Carolina 
Fred Gould on campus
Unfortunately, it turned out that the researchers at Berkeley in these two disciplines didn’t get along well. Only two other universities had the combination of those two disciplines. One was NC State.
Prominent NC State biocontrol specialist Bob Rabb met with Gould and then drove him across campus in his Dodge Dart “at about 5 miles per hour” to meet with his toxicology counterpart, Ernie Hodgson. Saying that before talking about Gould’s project, he had a piece of business to take care of with his colleague, Rabb handed the key to his mountain cabin to Hodgson so he could take his family on vacation.
The cross-disciplinary collegiality made Gould feel welcome. He did the NSF project at NC State in 1977 and joined the university faculty in 1979.
“It’s been a pleasure being part of a real community,” he says.
2. He finds nothing as practical as a good research model.
Entomologist Clyde Sorenson, once a student of Gould’s, says his colleague is a deep thinker who lives by the maxim, “A model is a lie that helps you see the truth.”
Gould drew on that expertise with Ryan Kurtz, who came to NC State to earn a Ph.D. in entomology. Kurtz was familiar with agricultural research. He had worked on field trials since age 15 in the Delta of Mississippi and earned a degree from Mississippi State in agricultural pest management.
“What I didn’t understand was how to turn biology into math,” Kurtz says. “Fred sat down with me and walked me through the math of population genetics. It was like scales fell from my eyes.”
As vice president for agricultural and environmental research for Cotton Incorporated, Kurtz now oversees the industry group’s cotton production research program, leading a team of six scientists who explore ways to make cotton farming more profitable and sustainable.
“I want to thank Fred for doing work with real-world implications on the farm,” Kurtz says. “He tells you the information you needed to hear, puts it into context — not what you wanted to hear.”
3. He knows comfort food.
Many of those at the retirement celebration told stories of Gould’s kindness and support. Martha Burford Reiskind, Gould’s longtime collaborator on the Genetics and Genomics Academy and the Genetics and Genomics Scholars program, puts it this way: “He’s there when things go south.”
Sometimes his support came in the form of traditional Jewish comfort food: kugel.
“That is community, to get one of Fred’s trays of kugel,” says J. Royden Saah’, a research associate who worked with Gould on gene drive research for seven years.
“I am eternally grateful to have learned much more about science and about humanity from Fred.”
Gould’s support also took the form of a campus garden planted in memory of a longtime staff member.
Sara Villani, an entomology colleague of Gould’s at NC State, will always remember when he met her in Geneva, New York, for the funeral of her father, Mike, a former student of Gould’s and professor emeritus at Cornell.
“The things I learned from my father I also learned from you,” she said. “The art of the gentle question. Giving credit. Making others into leaders.”
4. He’s ‘a bit of a motorhead.’
Gould’s white 1990 Mustang is his vehicle of choice. And he drives faster than the 5 miles per hour that mentor Bob Rabb did that first day on campus, colleagues noted. A mountain photo shared at the celebration has special significance: He’s on the porch of Rabb’s cabin in Edgemont.
Every summer for more than 15 years, Clyde Sorenson and Gould made the trip to Crossnore in the mountains of Avery County to teach an Insect Natural History and Field Ecology course.
In between webworm assignments, Sorenson once let Gould drive a borrowed Mazda Miata. Their resulting high-speed trip — on the winding Blue Ridge Parkway — left Sorenson “terrified.”
Off road, Gould has been known to make a splash by swinging from a rope into a 63 degree mountain stream. He likes an “easy hike,” Sorenson teased, calling Gould “the grandfather at the top of Grandfather Mountain.” In retirement, Gould will enjoy more time with his partner, Shelley, his daughter and son-in-law, and two grandsons.
5. He has an artistic side.
Molly Renda, a former D.H. Hill librarian and exhibit designer, enjoyed working with Gould on “From Teosinte to Tomorrow,” which traced agriculture’s history from the ancestor of corn to the era of modern biotechnology. A joint effort of NC State University Libraries, the Genetic Engineering and Society Center, and NC State’s Gregg Museum, the exhibit included a quarter-acre corn maze at the NC Museum of Art. “Fred loved driving the tractor,” Renda says. He also worked on the accompanying seminar and publication.
“It was the capstone of my career,” says Renda, who told Gould, “Welcome to the world of retirement.”
Though Gould has cleaned out his office, don’t be surprised if he’s spotted on campus. He’ll be at the Crafts Center, working on his skills in pottery making, a retirement hobby.
This post was originally published in College of Agriculture and Life Sciences News.
