When Dr. Donna J. Nelson, PhD, received her diploma from Eufaula High School she had no idea what adventures awaited her.
When Dr. Donna J. Nelson, PhD, received her diploma from Eufaula High School she had no idea what adventures awaited her.
A Professor of Chemistry at the University of Oklahoma since 1983, she has received many honors and accolades, including a Ford Fellowship (2003); Guggenheim Fellowship (2003); NOW Woman of Courage Award (2004) and Fulbright Scholar (2207).
In 2016 Nelson was president of the American Chemical Society (ACS), which has more than 168,000 members, making it one of the world’s largest scientific organizations and one of the world’s leading sources of authoritative scientific organizations.
In July she will receive an Honorary Doctor of Science Degree in Chemistry from the University of Edinburgh in Edinburgh, Scotland.
Nelson will be among an elite group of luminaries who have received honorary degrees from one of the world’s oldest universities, which was founded in 1582.
The group she will share the honor with includes the late astronaut Neil Armstrong (2016); Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau (2017); President Bill Clinton ( 2013) and Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu (2016).
Perhaps not as prestigious, but no less exciting, was Nelson’s position as technical advisor for the ground-breaking television series on AMC TV, “Breaking Bad,”a show about an Albuquerque, New Mexico high school chemistry teacher who turned to making methamphetamine to pay his medical bills.
The series ran from 2008 to 2013.
She got the gig as technical advisor after reading a story in The American Chemistry Society’s magazine in which the show’s producer appealed for someone to help him make sure scripts were scientifically accurate.
Nelson, who always champions the cause of scientific accuracy, responded to the appeal.
As it turned out, she was the only one who responded.
Producer Vince Gillian told her he didn’t have enough money to pay a science advisor, but he would appreciate advice.
“He was trying to get the science right,” Nelson said. “Most shows get the science really wrong.”
She came aboard at the end of season one, in 2008.
“Sometimes, when they wanted help, they would send me pages out of a script or give me a call,” Nelson said. “I understood that I needed to answer pretty quickly, as they were on a timetable.”
When they asked her to correct a script, she would do it, explaining to them what was appropriate language.
“I always used the minimalistic approach, changing as few words as possible. They really appreciated that. They knew how to write an award winning show, I didn’t.”
She was even given a cameo in one episode.
“But it was cut,” she said, although it may still be seen on the series’ box set
á¹ he had no problem juggling her work in the classroom and working on the TV series, which starred Bryan Cranston and Aaron Paul.
“It wasn’t a huge amount of time, but enough for me to learn about the process. And I made some set visits and got to meet all the cast and crew. It was fabulous.”
But she had a totally separate life from the TV series, including working on grants as well as teaching.
The premise of the TV series is the moral dilemma of a chemistry teacher turning to a life of crime after learning he has stage three cancer.
Initially, Nelson was a little concerned.
“At the beginning I worried about it. I didn’t know if I wanted to be associated with a show that deals with making meth. I just about decided against it, wondering if it was going to taint my reputation. I have always been totally legal and honest.
“But then I decided this would be a wonderful opportunity to do something good for science.”
She said she watched the first season and realized that every time the characters did something wrong they got punished. There were lots of morals in the show, she said.
In describing in a script how to make meth, the writers always left out steps so that the show would not become a how-to instruction manual about making methamphetamine.
“Breaking Bad” led to doing some technical advising on another popular TV series, “The Big Bang Theory.”
But the producers and writers didn’t have a lot of questions for her, since they had a full-time advisor. Mostly, they asked her how to pronounce certain chemicals.
“I did get to visit the set,” Nelson said.
She said she has done a lot of other things, such as being an expert witness in courtrooms.
“But TV was interesting and being President of the American Chemistry Society was fabulous – I travelled all over the world representing the ACS,” Nelson said.
World travel and television were not in Nelson’s sights when she was attending high school in Eufaula, whose alumnae included her mother and her grandparents.
While an Ironhead, she was a cheerleader and majorette (a fire twirler) and took classes in chemistry and math.
Her step-father was the late Dr. J.H. Baker Jr., once Eufaula’s only physician.
“Originally I thought I would be a doctor, but my father discouraged me. He said if you’re a doctor you will never have a life of your own,” she said. “He said you can’t take vacations. We would be in our car going out to eat and if we saw a car wreck on 69, he would go back and help and stayed there until an ambulance arrived. That’s the way he was.
“For a long time he was the only doctor in town. His father also had been a doctor.”
Nelson attended OU and received a BS in chemistry.
“I changed my mind about becoming a doctor when I was getting my bachelor’s degree,” she said.
She received her Phd at the University of Texas in Austin and did postgraduate work at Purdue University in Lafayette, Indiana and then started interviewing for teaching positions.
The interviews took her back to the University of Oklahoma, where she received an offer and has been there since ever then.
“Interviewing at OU was a strange feeling, interviewing in the same building where I had classes,” she said.
One of the professors who interviewed her quipped that she learned where the bathrooms were much faster than the other candidates.
Throughout the 2000s, she championed the Nelson Diversity surveys which keeps track of the representation of women and minorities in science and engineering-related professorships at research universities.
“I still am active in issues related to women and minorities,” she said. “I still teach Organic Chemistry and I am still doing research, such as on how what we teach impacts students, how they think of things. That is in its infancy.”
Along the way, Nelson got married, had one son, John, and divorced.
As busy as she is, Nelson manages to make it back to Eufaula from time to time to visit a few relatives and friends who still live here.
“Many have moved away or passed away. I don’t know as many people as I once did,” she said.
Among relatives who still live here are a distant cousin, Marty Sellers, and an aunt, Joanne Edwards.
She gets to visit former classmates at class reunions.
“Eufaula was a good school. It prepared me very well. I didn’t realize how well it prepared me in English, punctuation and spelling,” she said. “Not all students in college have learned those things in high school.
“I hope other kids growing up in Oklahoma, especially in the Eufaula area, will be able to look at what I’ve done and understand they can do what they want. They just have to work at it.”
