Hap McSween

The license tag on Hap McSween’s red sports car says Meteor. “I think of it as a professional statement,” says McSween, Distinguished Professor in UT’s Earth and Planetary Sciences, and a man known for his boundless energy. “But my wife ways it’s a warning to the highway patrol.”

With quiet intensity, Harry (“Hap”) McSween’s, a member of the inaugural group of UT Knoxville Chancellor’s Professors, contributes to the growing body of scientific knowledge about the planets and stars.

“Every generation needs something to discover,” McSween says. “I’m so pleased to be at the right place at the right time.”

McSween publishes prodigiously and is equally committed to UT three-part mission of education, research and service.

“My work is my hobby,” he said.

In describing his scientific approach, McSween shows characteristic humility.

“I have some friends who are a lot smarter than me,” McSween said. “My approach is sometimes ugly. It’s based not on a blinding flash but on a lot of hard work. It’s more about being plodding and sometimes being lucky.”

Luck, however, hardly explains his hundreds of cutting edge papers, his numerous books, his work with NASA, or the respect he’s earned among his colleagues here and abroad.

For 28 years, he’s been a campus leader – as Faculty Senate President, on countless committees and, recently, as chair of the Chancellor search committee.

Born in the small South Carolina town of Clinton, McSween could have stayed in the Air Force, then followed the money as a commercial pilot. Instead, he chose planetary sciences and a career based in large part on stimulating students’ curiosity and their love of science.

“We’ve learned so much about the planets through orbit space craft and, especially, with rovers, which are planetary sciences’ field geographers,” he said, “This has opened up whole new fields, and it’s been really good for geology in general.”

Studying the planets never gets boring, he said.

It can also lead students, naturally, to ask the big questions.

“Personally, I like to stick with solvable problems, but we’re not doing our job if we don’t stimulate students to ask the big questions.”

“We want them to ask how the solar system came to be—even scary questions, like what does this mean for my religion.”

He likes science fiction, but sees its drawbacks.

“Its beauty is that you don’t have to have all the scientific training,” he said. “But reality is as remarkable as the imagination. What we’re learning about the earth and the solar system and how they came to be is just magic.”

“Some of my former classmates ask me when I’m going to retire,” he says. “I ask them, ‘are you crazy?’ I’m having such a good time. I can’t imagine just TV and golf. I have an opportunity to get all these kids interested.”

Hap and his wife Sue, who recently retired as an interior decorator, have a daughter, Lindsay, 27, who is a sixth grade language arts teacher.