Jorg Meyer was UC Irvine’s well-known and well-respected scientific glassblower for nearly 56 years. He was a glass craftsman / artist / magician. His humor and smile were priceless, never more so than the day he effortlessly encased a magnet inside a pyrex tube for one of my experiments. He simply pulled the glowing mass out of the flame and watched as it supernaturally flowed and hardened into absolute perfection: perfect hemispheres with perfectly uniform wall-thicknesses and perfect placements. He did this without using any tools other than fire, gravity, skilled hands, and generations of knowledge. I was utterly and rightly astonished, and he knew it. He kindly handed it over to me and said, “Now you do it. And don’t forget your physics.”
He encouraged me to practice. He showed me some tricks. He reminded me that you can’t take shortcuts when you’re learning, but you can when you’ve learned. He believed in me. He was a friend and a mentor, and he will be missed. And if there is a heaven, I assure you, he’ll be one of only three people there with a parking spot. Just look for the silver GT.
Thank you, Jorg, for all this and more.