In the comfort of his Walnut Creek home, Eddie Moler reads fiction and science fiction books ("Snow Crash by Neil Stephenson is highly recommended") and studies astronomy. He recently joined a fitness gym and took up karate, a sport he was involved with in high school. Eddie also goes to his share of parties because Berkeley chemistry has a large social network.His wife, Jane, is a plant ecologist who works for a consulting firm writing environmental impact reports for proposed changes along the coast and identifying alternate uses for the closing army bases. She introduced Eddie to "birding" (birdwatching), a hobby that is opening a new world to him on his hikes in State and Regional parks.
Eddie likes being paid for work that he enjoys, though there is so much work and so little time. He likes being married and keeping the relationship happy. When asked what makes him wake up each morning, he says his cat, Basil, dances on his head to be fed at 5:30 a.m. Sabrina, his other cat, is a bit more reserved.
Eddie has built a soft x-ray spectrometer that will enable him to determine the elemental makeup of a sample and the chemical states of the elements in it.
Eddie Moler is a native Texan from Granbury, which is located near Fort Worth. As a young person, he excelled in math and science. He received encouragement from his teachers which, along with his interest in everything from rocks to stars to the weather, led him to pursue chemistry in college.He majored in chemistry at Texas A&M University before relocating to California for his seven-year graduate education at the University of California at Berkeley (UCB).
Eddie worked at the Advanced Light Source at Berkeley Lab, the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lab at Stanford, and the National Synchrotron Light Source at Brookhaven, Long Island, while doing his Ph.D. work, which involved operating experimental equipment that he helped build. After earning his Ph.D., he was hired part time for a postdoctoral fellow position because he had a "unique expertise" with the equipment, there was a project he was working on that was not completed, and he wanted to continue in the research field.
Eddie advises getting involved in extracurricular activities while in school. This helps when applying for scholarships because people want well rounded students. It is also important to get exposure to the scientific field and fulfill college admission requirements by taking math and science classes in high school.According to Eddie, for your undergraduate education, the name of the college is not as important as the individual attention you can receive. Eddie recommends a smaller college (though Texas A&M is huge!). "When studying science and math, in the beginning, it can be laborious and trivial because you are learning the fundamentals. By the time you are a senior in college there is a breakthrough. It all comes together at the top."
