Retired Scientists Cooperative Offers New Opportunities For Older Chemists

VICTORIA GILMAN

In a letter to friend and psychiatrist Otto Juliusburger, Albert Einstein wrote: "People like you and I, though mortal, of course, like everyone else, do not grow old no matter how long we live. ... [We] never cease to stand like curious children before the great mystery into which we were born."

Like Einstein, most of today's scientists do not lose their insatiable curiosity with the passage of time. Add to that the fact that medical advances continue to help aging members of society enjoy longer, healthier lives. With mind and body intact well past the age of 65, what's a scientist to do when faced with the end of a lifelong career?

Vida Vambutas, a retired Ph.D. biochemist and founder of the Retired Scientists Cooperative (RSC), sees a resource waiting to be tapped.

"Most of us are still vitally interested in science as long as we live," Vambutas says.

Although she initially put her own scientific aspirations on hold to raise a family, Vambutas looked for ways to jump back into science not long after her children were grown. It had been years since she received her Ph.D., but she soon found work as a part-time teacher at Hunter College in New York City. Even while teaching, Vambutas says she "yearned for research" and used several small grants to do limited lab experiments.

Just before retiring, Vambutas held a fellowship at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center, where she met two colleagues who would later sit on the RSC board of directors. Conversations with her circle of retired or retiring friends showed her that many wished for ways to continue their scientific contributions. The talks inspired her to found RSC, a nonprofit group that matches willing workers with scientific challenges.

Vambutas' vision for RSC is a clearinghouse of accomplished scientists across disciplines who can be assigned short-term projects. These scientists are unburdened of the need for tenure, advancement, or benefits packages, and they can be available almost any time for varying durations.

As she sees it, an organization would contact RSC with its requirements, and the cooperative would assign a qualified scientist from its database, preferably someone living close to the project location. That scientist would not only receive an honorarium from the requester, but, more important, he or she would be given a chance to usefully employ his or her time-tested expertise.

For example, Vambutas says, if a researcher needs to use a specific technique but no one at their institution knows how, RSC could send a retired expert to aid the researcher. This solution would be both less expensive and less time-consuming than sending the researcher to a training course. Retired scientists could also be called on as industry consultants, guest lecturers, or contributors to community education projects.

To date, RSC has incorporated, has established a board of directors, and has put an Internet-based registration process in place. However, it is not a fully functional service just yet. With only 150 registered members, mostly from the life sciences, the cooperative is still a ways off from being the broad-spectrum resource Vambutas is striving for. She continues to look for volunteers, both to join the members database and to help with database management, public advocacy, and fund-raising.

For more information about RSC, including how to join, visit http://www.retiredscientists.org, send a fax to (718) 631-8357, or send e-mail to RSC1718 @ earthlink.net .

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