Prof. Marion Barry, Department of Chemistry

Sonny already plugged Matt Labash’s great article about America’s most notorious mayor. I second that. The strangest thing I learned about Barry was that he came within one year of finishing a PhD in chemistry.

He was an Eagle Scout. He recited poems in church. He went to college, and stopped one year short of getting his doctorate in chemistry, quitting to join the civil rights movement. “In chemistry, there’s order,” he says wistfully. “In politics, there’s disorder. The rules change just about every other day.”

If only he had become a chemist instead.

Cross-posted at Conventional Folly