On Science, Art and Boundless Curiosity
![Janda Kirk Griffith Panitz's endowment will fuel innovative academic programs at Dickinson and also support scholarships for promising students.](/images/janda_kirk_griffith_700w.jpg")
Janda Kirk Griffith Panitz's endowment will fuel innovative academic programs at Dickinson. It also provides funding for Dickinson scholarships.
Legacy honors a life of science and creativity
by MaryAlice Bitts-Jackson
It’s likely that never stepped foot in a Dickinson classroom, but her legacy at the college runs deep. Through her estate, she’s sparked an impactful initiative that supports innovation in academic programs at the college and provides for Dickinson scholarships.
Why give back to a college she never attended? The answers can be found in a life devoted to both scientific inquiry and to creating detailed and wonder-infused art.
Complementary passions
Janda was born in Harrisburg, Pa., the daughter of John W. Griffith '42 and Margaret Strong Griffith '42. Her uncle and aunt, Ernie Griffith ’52 and Mary Jeanne Reynolds DeGroot ’48, P’76, were also Dickinson grads.
Since childhood, she harbored dual passions—drawing objects and phenomena and investigating how they worked. Dotting the margins of her physics, math and chemistry books with small sketches, she learned to focus her natural curiosity and attention to detail to both scientific and artistic pursuits.
Seeing the world through very different lenses provided a unique viewpoint that permeated every area of her life, says John Panitz, who met her when both were graduate students in the Pennsylvania State University’s physics program. “Janda stood out—the way she looked, the way she carried herself with such poise, the things she said,” John says. “It was clear she was one in a million.”
While their backgrounds were different, they shared interests and a finely honed sense of possibility. They married in State College, Pa., in 1967.
Roads to success
Janda earned her B.S. (physics), her M.S. (infrared optics) and her Ph.D. (solid-state physics) at Penn State. After her postdoc year, the couple settled in a mountainous region outside Albuquerque and established research careers at the city's Sandia National Laboratory.
Janda conducted experiments on thin film and surface metallurgy. She held four patents, taught statistical analysis, earned several professional awards and served in leadership positions, including as president of the New Mexico Academy of Science. She retired in 2000.
After working as a researcher in Sandia’s surface-science division, John entered academia. He taught physics, high-technology materials, cell biology and physiology at the University of New Mexico and created innovative lab courseware. Other career highlights include the co-development, with Irwin Muller, of the original atom-probe microscope, a precursor to the atom-probe tomography equipment widely used today.
Realistic, yet dreamlike
John and Janda Kirk Griffith Panitz with acclaimed Santa Fe artist Richard Maitland (right).
Outside the lab, Janda fed wild birds and stray cats and grew orchids. She also enjoyed spelunking and bicycling, and she and John shared an enthusiasm for travel. Drawing inspiration from those travels—and from her day-to-day life—Janda took up acrylic painting in earnest. Though precise, her works evoke emotion and a dreamlike quality, depicting both the seen and unseen qualities of an object or scene.
That approach found unique expression when John and Janda purchased a wilderness painting by renowned Santa Fe artist Richard Maitland. Captivated by Maitland’s depiction of a clearing in the wild, Janda asked if the artist might add a unicorn to the scene. “Sure enough, he did,” remembers John, admiring his late wife’s ability to envision a fresh and personalized version of the work.
Janda shared some of her own artworks during a spring, 1980, exhibition at the Sandia Lab research library. In a corresponding newsletter article, she described her avocation both as a “vacation from the structure of the lab” and also as a complement to it.
“She saw connections between art and science, and she spoke about the beauty in the symmetry you’d find in nature and the beauty and symmetry in art,” John explains.
A generous heart
Janda passed away in 2023, two days before the Panitzes’ 56th wedding anniversary. She’d stipulated that a large share of her family’s trust, which she’d administered, would be donated to Dickinson. Partnering with Dickinson staff, John called on his experiences as an educator as he considered how to best honor her vision and memory.
The result is the Griffith Fund for Humanistic Teaching and Inquiry, an endowed initiative that focuses on innovation in academic programming and on helping promising students to access those educational benefits. It funds strategic initiatives at the college and the establishment of the Janda Kirk Griffith Endowed Scholarship.
“It’s important to me—and I know it would be important to Janda—to know that, rather than supporting administrative salaries, the funds will support teaching and learning and scholarships,” John says.
John still resides in the couple’s art-filled home, and the property includes a small museum highlighting the atom probe he co-created. Janda’s accomplishments remain visible too, in her awards and in her paintings, while her worldview and values manifest in her bequest—and in the new academic pathways it makes possible.
“I know she would approve of this initiative because education was very important to Janda, and she devoted herself to exploring different and new avenues,” says John. “She was also a very loving and caring person who would appreciate of the idea of giving something back through scholarships at the college that meant so much to her family.”
TAKE THE NEXT STEPS
Published December 4, 2024