Daryl Eggers Retires With a Bang

As Daryl Eggers, professor emeritus of chemistry, well knows, it’s always nice to go out on a high. He accompanied his spring 2023 retirement from San José State with a flurry of publications, publishing three papers in significant scientific journals in quick succession.

All three papers are related, dealing with his long-standing research interest in water. It all started during his PhD at UCLA, when he first started examining scientific hypotheses that explain how water affects chemical reactions and solutions. His curiosity led him down an interesting path.

Daryl Eggers, professor emeritus of chemistry. Photo by Robert C. Bain.

“Part of the problem is that our current chemical framework and the equations we use to explain these systems in water may not be 100% correct,” he explains. “So I had to do a little theory work. Even though I’ve never seen myself as a theoretical person, I had to step back, think about it and read all the old literature. [During my time at SJSU] I derived my own equation that doesn’t exist in any textbook.”

He first wrote the equation in 2011, and published it in 2013. Since then, much of his lab work at SJSU has been geared toward establishing its effectiveness.

His three recent papers, for example, have furnished examples of how the equation works. The first extends his research to ten examples of binding reactions that follow the equation. The second and third papers show how Eggers’ equation can be applied to other situations as well, including when other molecules in a solution (beyond the specific ones being studied) influence the equilibrium of a reaction and how the formula can also be applied to experiments with proteins and DNA.

Eggers hopes that his work will help adjust the “classical dogma” of the original equation, even though his new equation has brought controversy and resistance. He acknowledges that at first challenging a dogma was “a little scary,” but he found that even early experiments supported his equation.

“I was confident about that part,” he says. “I won’t say it’s bravery as much as persistence. There have been multiple times in my career that someone said, ‘No, Daryl, you can’t do that,’ and that just made me even more determined to show them they’re wrong. Somehow it does push me, because their answer to the question didn’t make sense to me. Why should I accept it? I think I’ve come up with a better way.”

Encouraging curiosity

Over his time at SJSU, he’s passed this persistence on to his students, and in particular the undergraduates researching in his lab. 

“I tell them when they join my lab: Don’t expect a publication as soon as or before you graduate,” he explains. “But the good thing about my research is that no one’s tackling water the way I’m tackling it. Not many people are doing it experimentally, and they’re certainly not developing their own equations and collecting experimental data to support the equation. So I think the students were excited. At this point probably 40 students have been coauthors on my papers and I think they’re all pleased by the outcome.”

As a campus fixture since 2002, he’s also been researching long enough to have a truly full circle moment: A former student researcher in his lab, Alexander Payumo, ‘08 Biochemistry, is now an assistant professor of biology at SJSU. He counts Eggers as “one of my most influential scientific mentors.”

“[Eggers’] infectious passion for science, positivity, and undying love for SpongeBob SquarePants truly solidified my decision to pursue a PhD and become a scientist,” Payumo says. “Now serving as SJSU faculty myself, I aspire to also be a mentor for our students and help them discover their own potential, just as Dr. Eggers did for me.”

Time to reflect

Three published scientific papers in 18 months is quite a feat. Eggers credits retirement with some of the work, saying it gave him the time to reflect on and summarize a long career. He went back to old data and repeated experiments. 

“Because I had time to reflect and think deeper, these papers finally happened,” he states. “I feel like I’m ending my career on a high note. The rest of the world doesn’t know it yet, but I truly feel like I did something important.”

And now? He plans to enjoy his retirement with his husband and dog, moving out of the Bay Area to somewhere more rural. Naturally, he still wants to keep tabs on science and will keep active in the Biophysical Society, a professional scientific group, but he doesn’t plan to publish any more papers.

All in all, Eggers seems happy to retire. But he acknowledges that there are some things he’ll miss. He loved the lightbulb moment in teaching, when a student suddenly understands something he or she never knew before. And he’ll miss interactions with the students themselves: everything from teaching to his lab’s annual group decoration of their Christmas tree for San José’s Christmas in the Park — decorations that were, in case you were wondering, always water-related: icicles, Styrofoam water molecules, and snowflakes.

In the meantime, though, he’s content to take a step back.

“I’m happy. I feel like I said everything I wanted to say in these last three papers,” he concludes. To put it in terms Eggers himself might enjoy, now he can just sit back and go with the flow.

Learn more about the SJSU chemistry department.