Powdered beryllium discovery in MIT laboratory

Cleanout of Nick Grant's lab, building 8 third floor. Young assistant professor (unnamed in this telling but identified as Schuh's eventual advisor) panics on finding a labeled bottle. EHS disposal.

When I was department head, we had a young assistant professor — actually he became Chris Hughes [Schuh's] thesis advisor at Northwestern. He was cleaning out Nick Grant's old lab on the third floor of building eight. He found a little plastic bottle that said "Be" on it. He came rushing into my office: I found powdered beryllium. I said, okay, and I picked it up. Oh, you touched it, you touched the bottle. I said, I'm just like David — I'm not drinking it, I'm not breathing it, it's just in the bottle, I'm picking up the bottle. He just saw "Be" on the bottle and thought he'd come across a nuclear weapon. We had to call Environmental Health Services to dispose of it. I'm sure Nick Grant probably had that since 1945 and it had been sitting in the cabinet, and when he finally retired we were clearing out the cabinet — there were a lot of other things in there too. I had to calm down the assistant professor.