John Blair Russell died quietly in his sleep on Wednesday, February 5, 2020, at the age of 90. He is survived by his daughter Deborah Verseput, who resides in McKinleyville, his sister Mary’s children John, David, Jeanne and Bea Dunning, and Bea’s daughters Natalie and Abby.

John was born in Rochester, New York on December 13, 1929. The son of John and Ruth Russell, two Ph.D. chemists, he received an A.B. degree, Cum Laude with Honors in Chemistry, from Oberlin College in Ohio in 1951, and a Doctorate in Chemistry from Cornell University in Ithaca, New York in 1955.

While at Cornell John was an instructor and research associate, an E.I. du Pont de Nemours and Company Teaching Fellow, and a Proctor and Gamble Research Fellow. John’s doctoral thesis calculated the standard free energy change associated with the ionization of sodium metal, and demonstrated that it was experimentally possible to determine the standard free energy change associated with the ionization of a single metal atom. This tremendous accomplishment required John to teach himself the art of glass blowing in order to construct the extremely intricate distillation and electrode apparatus required to conduct his experiments.

After receiving his doctorate from Cornell, John married Barbara Woods. In 1956 John accepted a teaching position at Humboldt State University – then Humboldt State College. He was the third Chemistry professor hired at the school, and when he arrived the college did not yet offer a degree in Chemistry. John was instrumental in creating a fully realized and highly respected Department of Chemistry at HSU which was able to offer a bachelor’s degree in Chemistry. John’s career at Humboldt included teaching General Chemistry, Physical Chemistry, and Advanced Inorganic Chemistry. He loved teaching, and his energy and enthusiasm were highly motivating to his students, including Mervin Hanson, who went on to obtain a doctorate in Physical Chemistry from Cornell University and then return to Humboldt to join the Chemistry Department faculty. While at HSU John also wrote a wonderful General Chemistry textbook which was published by McGraw Hill and used by the entire California State University system at one time. Both editions of this textbook were also translated into Spanish and Portuguese and published internationally.

John managed to accomplish all of this while being both an outdoor enthusiast who loved hiking, camping, and canoeing, and also a loving and devoted husband and truly amazing father to his daughter Deborah – teaching her all about the natural world and the wildlife that inhabited their property high up on Fickle Hill, and also ever patiently teaching her basic construction and tool use while he and Barbara built their Fickle Hill house.

John retired from teaching in 1992. After retirement John worked with Richard Paselk, Mervin Hanson, and Rick Harper of HSU on a cutting-edge multimedia project titled “Visualization of the Abstract in Chemistry” under a National Science Foundation grant. This critically acclaimed work resulted in several computer teaching modules for visualization of abstract principles in chemistry, and was presented at numerous scientific conferences sponsored by the American Chemical Society, the University of California, and also leading-technology conferences sponsored by Apple Computer, Inc.

In 2004 John and Barbara moved to Ashland, Oregon, and remained together until Barbara’s death in June of 2006. After suffering a stroke in 2017, John returned to California to live in McKinleyville near his daughter.

John was a brilliant and wonderful person with a warm heart and a quirky “chemist’s” sense of humor, and his family will treasure his memory always.

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The obituary above was submitted on behalf of John Rusell’s loved ones. The Lost Coast Outpost runs obituaries of Humboldt County residents at no charge. See guidelines here.