After my junior year of high school, I spent the summer in Jamaica. I had been there before on family trips which were working vacations for my father. He was part of two Jamaican research projects on bioluminescence — of fireflies and marine dinoflagellates. Dad worked at Johns Hopkins with Bill McElroy who published his first paper on bioluminescence in 1942 (McElroy and Ballentine 1942) and in the 1950s described the luciferin-luciferase reaction (White et al. 1961) after studies of the 1.5 million fireflies collected by kids around Baltimore. Howard Seliger arrived at Hopkins in 1958 and quickly determined the spectral and quantum yield of firefly bioluminescence (Seliger and McElroy 1960) and eventually characterized the light emission from more than 100 species of firefly in Maryland and Jamaica.

McElroy left Hopkins in 1969 to be Director of the National Science Foundation and in 1972 became the Chancellor at the University of California San Diego. Seliger continued to teach at Hopkins until 1999 and both men continued research on the biology and biochemistry of bioluminescence, each publishing many dozens of papers on the subject.

Dad collaborated on a few of those papers by designing instruments to quantify the spectrum or intensity of the light emitted by fireflies and dinoflagellates (seven references below, 1961 to 1969). I pulled some strings and was offered a summer job in the field station that McElroy and Seliger had established at Glistening Waters, a Jamaican resort exploiting a spectacularly bioluminescent bay.

For the first week of the summer job, McElroy, Seliger, and Dad were there doing something or other scientific between restaurant visits and poker games. Then Mike, Steve, and I collected data all summer.

I received recognition for my excellent work that summer. Dr. Seliger acknowledged Mike, me, and Steve (W. Stephenson) in Seliger et al. (1969): “We would like to thank the following persons: W. H. Biggley, M. Loftus, C. Fastie, and W. Stephenson, who assisted with the bioluminescence measurements…” This was my first appearance in a peer reviewed scientific paper.

I have all the letters I wrote home that summer, so I know that I made $70 per week and my living expenses were $15 per week. This was the first time I had any disposable income and souvenirs were calling to me. I visited all the duty-free stores in Montego Bay and paid $5.00 for a Swiss Army knife (with a Phillips head screwdriver!). While walking around town I would usually be approached by somebody asking what I was looking for. One time, after I told the young guy I didn’t need his help, he pulled two switchblade knives out of his pocket. He gave me a wide-eyed look and said they were $5.00 apiece. I calmed myself, suggested $5.00 for both, and the deal was made. When I walked onto the plane in Montego Bay to fly home, and then onto the connecting flight in Miami, each pocket of my seersucker sport coat had a switchblade in it and the Victorinox was in my pants pocket. I figured that would be safer than putting them in my luggage.

In the luggage I took home was an oil painting which I bought at an open-air gallery along a street near Montego Bay. I had been looking for an authentically Jamaican painting and admired many folk art scenes of Jamaican life, but the best ones were too expensive. Then I saw the painting above by Eric Smith. This was not local folk art — it was Caribbean version of French Impressionism. I was told Eric Smith lived in the hills above Montego Bay and I assumed he was some old English guy trying to channel Van Gogh. I liked Van Gogh, and I really liked this painting, but I felt disrespectful of the Jamaican people for not supporting the local folk artists. When I learned the painting was only $25, I bought it anyway.

This week, for the first time, I Googled “Eric Smith Jamaican Painter.” Eric Smith was not an old English guy. He was born in 1932 in Kingston, Jamaica and studied art there. He was 36 when I bought his painting in 1968. Dozens of Smith’s paintings are on the internet. Many galleries and art auctions feature his paintings which are said to be “highly collectible.” Most of the works online were painted in the 1990s and a few in the 1980s. I found none from the 1960s or 1970s and none in the raw Impressionistic style or luminous color scheme of my beach scene. Maybe I have a rare early work by a painter who became prolific, famous, and collectible 20 years later.

I haven’t been able to find more than a few biographical sentences about Eric Smith. I don’t know much about his life or if he is still alive (he would be 92). I don’t know how important his paintings are in Jamaica or beyond. His painting of the beach scene has been important to me for 56 years and I am interested in learning more about it. So I named this post after the Google search that I hope will lead some knowledgeable person here. Please get in touch if you have any information about Eric Smith and especially about my favorite painting of his, the beach scene above.

References cited (chronological)

McElroy, W. D., and R. Ballentine. 1942. The mechanism of bioluminescence. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U. S. A. 30:377-382.

Seliger, H. H., and W. D. McElroy. 1960. Spectral emission and quantum yield of firefly bioluminescence. Arch. Biochem. Biophys. 88:136-141.

White, E. H, W. D. McElroy, G. F. Field, and F. McCapra. 1961. Structure and synthesis of firefly luciferin. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 83:2402-2403.

Seliger, H. H., W. G. Fastie, and W. D. McElroy. 1961. Bioluminescence in Chesapeake Bay. Science 133:699-700.

Seliger, H. H., W. G. Fastie, W. R. Taylor, and W. D. McElroy. 1962. Bioluminescence of Marine Dinoflagellates : I. An underwater photometer for day and night measurements. J Gen Physiol 45 (5): 1003–1017.

Seliger, H. H., Buck, J. B., Fastie, W. G., and W. D. McElroy. 1964. The spectral distribution of firefly light. The Journal of general physiology, 48(1), 95–104.

Seliger, H. H., Buck, J. B., Fastie, W. G., and McElroy, W. D. 1964. Flash Patterns in Jamaican Fireflies. Biological Bulletin, 127(1), 159–172.

Taylor, W. R., H. H. Seliger, W. G. Fastie, and W. D. McElroy. 1966. Biological and physical observations on a phosphorescent bay in Falmouth Harbor, Jamaica, W. I.. Journal of Marine Research 24, (1).

Seliger, H. H., and W. G. Fastie. 1968. Studies at Oyster Bay in Jamaica, West Indies. III. Measurements of underwater-sunlight spectra. Journal of Marine Research 26, (3).

Seliger, H. H., W. G. Fastie, and W. D. McElroy. 1969. Towable Photometer for Rapid Area Mapping of Concentrations of Bioluminescent Marine Dinoflagellates. Limnology and Oceanography 14. 806-813.

Seliger, H. H., J. H. Carpenter, M. Loftus, W. D. McElroy. 1970. Mechanisms for the Accumulation of High Concentrations of Dinoflagellates in a Bioluminescent Bay. Limnology and Oceanography 15. 234-245.