Clockwise from the top: Malcolm Beasley, Alexander Fetter and Arthur Bienenstock. A portrait of Theodore Geballe hangs along with the others in the McCullough Building.

Art and science melded seamlessly at the end of the day Friday, March 9, as ARTHUR BIENENSTOCK, THEODORE GEBALLE, MALCOLM BEASLEY and ALEXANDER FETTER, all former directors of the Geballe Laboratory for Advanced Materials, were honored by their own.

Amid strains of Beethoven’s String Quartet Opus 59 Number 1 F Major offered by the St. Lawrence String Quartet, faculty, staff and students celebrated the unveiling of GLAM (as in the lab’s acronym) Portraits, painted by PAMELA DAVIS KIVELSON.

Geballe, emeritus professor of applied physics and of materials science and engineering, founded the Geballe Laboratory, an independent laboratory that supports and fosters interdisciplinary education and research on advanced materials in science and engineering, in 1999. At Stanford since 1968, Geballe has focused much of his attention on materials with extreme properties. He held the Theodore and Sydney Rosenberg Professorship in Applied Physics, served as chair of the Department of applied physics and directed the Center for Materials Research.

Beasley, the Theodore & Sydney Rosenberg Professor of Applied Physics, emeritus, also was one of the Geballe Lab’s founders. The former dean of the School of Humanities and Sciences is best known for his research in superconductivity and superconducting materials.

Bienenstock, professor emeritus of photon science, is special assistant to President John Hennessy for federal research policy, and director of the Wallenberg Research Link at Stanford. Bienenstock’s other roles at Stanford have included serving as vice provost and dean of research and graduate policy, director of the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory and vice provost for faculty affairs.

Fetter is professor emeritus of physics and applied physics. His research interests include theoretical condensed matter and superconductivity. Fetter joined the Stanford faculty in 1968. In addition to serving as director of the Geballe Laboratory, he also directed the Hansen Experimental Physics Laboratory.

You can view the Kivelson’s portraits on the third floor of the McCullough Building.

- ELAINE RAY

Seth Meyers visited Roble Hall at the invitation of college friend Ellen Oh.

Earlier this week a message went out via Facebook and Twitter that was something akin to “get thee to the theater.” Roble, that is. Stanford’s Institute for Diversity in the Arts (IDA) announced through social media channels that it was giving away a very limited number of tickets to see Saturday Night Live head writer SETH MEYERS at Roble Hall Theater. At the appointed hour, enough students were lined up around Harmony House to claim all the tickets in 10 minutes.

The SNL star’s appearance was thanks in large part to ELLEN OH, Meyers’ former college friend from Northwestern University and now program administrator for IDA. Her connection with Meyers, coupled with a strong partnership between IDA and the Stanford Residential Arts Program, made the Meyers program a huge success, and a vast improvement on the comedian’s last visit to Stanford. During the hour-long conversation, Meyers reminisced about his first performance at the university that took place in a science lecture hall with a chemistry table in front of him and the periodic table of the elements behind him. “So Stanford,” he said to appreciative laughter.

Oh and IDA executive director JEFF CHANG were thrilled to be able to present the very first program in the newly renovated Roble Hall Theater. Most of IDA’s programs are held in the Harmony House living room with a cozy capacity of about 40. One hundred students were able to participate in the conversation with Meyers at Roble, which is the university’s largest four-class residence hall.

“Interaction and access are two of our goals, and while the larger theater meant more students, it still felt intimate,” said Oh.

Why is Seth Meyers a guest speaker for an organization dedicated to diversity? “Diversity by definition is all of us together. With Seth we were also examining diversity in comedy and career,” said Chang. “When Seth talked about how difficult it was to write a sketch about Jeremy Lin, it was profound to hear that he had been thinking hardest about what would make Lin laugh. It’s an example of how artists are trying to represent a new America.”