The door to Room 437D in Loomis Laboratory is closed. Only a few months ago, the rhythms of the academic year vibrated throughout the room, as physics students asked complicated questions and marveled at the complexities of the world along with George Gollin, physics professor at the University. Forty-three years ago, as a freshman at Harvard University, Gollin discovered a love for the subject and never let go. But, as much as he enjoys analyzing the strangeness and beauty of the world with his students, Room 437D may be quiet for a little longer. On Tuesday, Gollin will learn if the time he spent away from campus running for Congress landed him a spot as Illinois’ 13th congressional district’s Democratic nominee. 

Before embarking on his campaign, Gollin made a promise to himself: 

“I think I was very clear on this when I first began running — I had to go about this in a way that I could look at myself in the mirror every morning and say, ‘I did good,’ or, at least, I did not do anything that I would be uncomfortable with, that I would be ashamed of, say, that I felt was wrong,” Gollin said. “I’d want to be able to explain the things I did to my daughter, or to my mother, or to my wife and feel that I was doing the right thing.”

And for Gollin, the “right thing” is fulfilling his civic obligation and fixing elements in government he believes are currently broken.

“I believe that sometimes circumstances align, and you can give a shove,” he said. “It’s the butterfly effect. If you give a push at just the right time, everything becomes really different. This is what we do in science.”

Many years ago, if someone had asked Gollin’s grown daughter Cordelia if her father would ever run for political office, she would say, “No, he’s a physicist; that’s what he does.”

But, when she was in high school, her father became involved in higher education policy, and the current reality of his campaign started to make more sense to her.

In 2002, Gollin, along with other professors at the University, began receiving spam from “diploma mills,” or unaccredited universities and institutions that offer fake degrees and diplomas for a sum of money. After a few months, Gollin called a number listed and received a sales pitch about acquiring a degree for only a few thousand dollars. However, once he discovered there were real people, including some practicing doctors with these degrees, he went after the diploma mills and began a wild fight against them that continued over the course of several years. 

“Knowledge conveys responsibility,” he said. “I’m now highly knowledgeable about this problem. And it means I have an obligation to decide how to engage with it. It’s important to do because these folks are out there killing people, and I know enough about it to be helpful in solving the problem.”

Gollin said he knows so much, in fact, that the people behind the diploma mills began to go after him and his family. When Cordelia was in high school, she received a string of obscene messages over the Internet.

“She’s a lioness, and it made her afraid to be alone in the house when she was 16 and 17,” Gollin said. “How dare someone do that to my kid!”

But Cordelia didn’t let the bullying faze her, and though a simple Google search will reveal offensive allegations about Gollin on Internet forums (presumably posted by individuals who run diploma mills), he doesn’t let the Internet poison bother him either. 

“The reason he’s getting into politics is because he wants to do good,” said Mats Selen, Gollin’s colleague and physics professor at the University. “He’s not doing this whole run because he’s tired of being a teacher, and he’s not doing it because he wants to go live in Washington (D.C.) or something. He’s doing it because he thinks in whatever years he has left on Earth, the most important thing he can do is make it a better place. He really thinks that, and that’s another thing I admire about him.”

In Gollin’s ideal world, he said people would all know in their bones what’s fair, and act based on clear, ethical and moral principles. It would be kinder and gentler, and the accidents of birth, ethnicity and skin color would play minimal roles in opportunities. 

“Something that I think comes across really well whenever George interacts with people is he has this really wonderful curiosity,” Cordelia said. “He wants to get to know people. He wants to understand what’s important to them and what makes them function. That’s been something I was really fortunate to grow up with my whole life.”

Cordelia is a first-year student in a master’s program at the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Social Policy and Practice, but over the summer she had the chance to accompany her father on trips across the district to meet constituents. 

“I like talking to people,” Gollin said. “I like showing up some place and having people tell me what’s on their mind.”

One of the best trips for Gollin was in Hillsboro, Ill., at a laborist union meeting. In a room of about 25 people, Gollin said everyone was twice as strong as him. And yet, he said he had the best time with them. 

However, Gollin said he misses contact with his students and colleagues. He misses discussing and sharing concepts that are too multifaceted for humans to fully wrap their minds around. His deep appreciation for science provides him with a different perspective on politics. 

“I think working with very complex stuff makes me see that what we should be striving for is not perfection, but improvement in things,” he said. “It’s made me see very clearly that public policy addresses issues that are so complex, that we cannot assume that we’re doing what will make improvements. We have to put in ways to measure our outcomes, and then determine whether what we’ve tried makes things better.”

In the weeks leading up to the election, Gollin admits that he doesn’t sleep as much as he’d like to. But he keeps the campaign out of the house, and at home, he has a safe harbor. Sometimes, on “nerdy evenings,” Gollin and his wife, Melanie, executive vice chancellor for research at the University, both work in their separate studies. They don’t send each other emails, so Gollin will get up and give her a hug from time to time. They both work pretty hard, he said.

An election viewing party will be held Tuesday at 7 p.m. at the Esquire Lounge in downtown Champaign. 

Tuesday’s results could determine how much longer Room 437D will remain empty, but Selen said that every time he walks past the office, he thinks to himself, “I hope he is doing good.”

“I hope he’s getting people interested in what his message is,” Selen said. 

Alice can be reached at [email protected].