James Kincaid, former professor of chemistry and chair of the department of chemistry, passed away Sept. 26 after getting pneumonia while having pre-existing conditions at 77-years-old.
Kincaid spent 38 years at Marquette and became department chair in 2017.
Joseph Clark, assistant professor of chemistry and colleague of Kincaid, said the first thing that stood out to him about Kincaid was how passionate he was about his research and how much he cared about solving impactful problems in public health.
“Jim was a very social guy and somebody that I could stop by [t0]. He’d be there every day at least before the pandemic in his office and I could stop by every time, and he really took a great pride in solving problems as they came up in the department and event if you had something small or an issue or a question or whatever it was, he was always available,” Clark said.
Clark said Kincaid had received funding from the National Institute of Health around the time he had started at Marquette. Clark said he had an RO1 grant, which is one of the largest grants one can receive to solve high impact problems.
Working to receive his own grant from the NIH, Clark said Kincaid always gave him important feedback.
“I think [that] eventually helped me get my NIH grant because you really gotta think about this with a certain mentality- he [Kincaid], he had that ability,” Clark said.
Clark said that since these grants are extremely competitive to receive, one has to have good ideas for it to be continually funded throughout the years and also show a lot of productivity.
“Jim was able to do that I think better than any faculty that’s ever been at Marquette,” Clark said. “He is somebody that from day one I came here and I said ‘That’s who I aspire to be in terms of research.'”
Clark said Kincaid was the best of the best.
Michael Ryan, former professor of chemistry said that Kincaid began his career at Marquette as a workaholic and said he was constantly on campus. However, as time went on, Ryan said he began to find a better balance and spent lots of time with his children and grandchildren.
“He refused to be called ‘grandpa,’ and his grandchildren were his ‘buddies,'” Ryan said in an email. “His daughter forbade him to have them call him ‘professor’ so they settled on ‘buddy.’ When he really annoyed me and wouldn’t drop something, I would say to him: ‘If you don’t stop it, I am going to call grandpa.’ It always worked.”
Jier Huang, associate professor of chemistry, said she had also received help from Kincaid throughout her career at Marquette. Huang said with English being her second language, Kincaid often read her proposals to help with the wording.
The first time Huang met Kincaid was when she interviewed for her position at Marquette.
“When I came for [the] interview, I met him in his office and he was super, super nice and he made me really comfortable,” Huang said. “[Normally] a person who comes to an interview would be nervous, but if you were in his office, he would make you comfortable.”
Since interviewing at Marquette, Huang said she had developed a strong friendship with Kincaid.
“He’s my friend, so we actually went out for lunch quite often before the pandemic …. we often shared stories. He always had very interesting stories to share with me and I enjoyed that,” Huang said.
Huang said that Kincaid had many rules about food. She said that he liked french onion soup, but had a rule that he could only have it in the fall or on a cloudy day.
Huang said another story Kincaid often shared with her was when he was driving his red sports car along the lake and got pulled over.
“He decided to go to court … he argued and then negotiated with the person in the court. And then they finally they agreed to one rule that he plea guilty, but because he was driving too slow, not because [he] was speeding. Funny,” Huang said.
Even being diagnosed with cancer, Ryan said he was always in an upbeat mood.
“In spite of the poor odds, he was always positive. He continued to talk to me about the future and what he was going to do until the end. That was inspirational to me,” Ryan said in an email.
Marquette University is holding a mass in the Church of Gesu Oct. 12 at 5 p.m. in Kincaid’s honor where a celebration of life reception will follow in the Alumni Memorial Union’s Lunda Room.
Instead of flowers, people could recognize Kincaid’s legacy by donating to the memorial scholarship of his late niece, Katherine Kincaid Scholarship at Cincinnati Hills Christian Academy.
“He was a wonderful colleague,” Huang said.
This story was written by Julia Abuzzahab. She can be reached at julianna.abuzzahab@marquette.edu or on Twitter at juliaabuz
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