The close friendship and legacies of two UC Davis giants — Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Gary Snyder and the late entrepreneur Charlie Soderquist — have been memorialized in a new endowed chair.

The Gary Snyder Endowed Chair in Science and Humanities, pending expected university approvals, will be supported by a $1 million gift from Soderquist’s estate. The UC Davis-educated conservationist died in 2004.

The estate also provided $1 million to endow a chair named for one of his UC Davis mentors, Donald G. Crosby, a professor emeritus in environmental toxicology, the field in which Soderquist earned a doctorate and later launched his successful business career.

The university celebrated those endowments and four others April 7 during the annual Endowed Chairs and Professorships Dinner. “Endowed chairs and professorships strengthen a university’s most important resource: its excellent faculty,” Chancellor Linda Katehi said at the banquet honoring all endowed chairs and professorships, which now number 120.

“They help the faculty excel in learning, discovery and engagement with the broader community for generations to come. We are grateful to the donors who have given so generously to establish these new endowed positions.”

One of the six had been announced previously: the Charles J. Soderquist Chair in Entrepreneurship, in the Graduate School of Management. The other new endowments: two in rangeland watershed science, with funding from rancher Russell L. Rustici; and one in opera, with funding from the Beta Popper estate.

Jessie Ann Owens, dean of the Division of Humanities, Arts and Cultural Studies, lauded Soderquist for having set an example of “involved scholarship” that created a “real connection with the people of Northern California.

“It is especially fitting that the new Gary Snyder Endowed Chair in Science and Humanities, which represents the distinctive brand of humanities at UC Davis, bears the name of one of our most distinguished faculty,” Owens said. “It celebrates our universitywide focus on collaboration, and our commitment to a kind of humanities that engages with the pressing issues of our time.”

The latest Soderquist gifts bring to $5.7 million the total amount that his estate has given to UC Davis. That includes $1.2 million for the UC Davis Tahoe Environmental Research Center, $1 million for the Charles J. Soderquist Chair in Entrepreneurship at the Graduate School of Management and $1 million to support the business school’s Center for Entrepreneurship.

Larry Vanderhoef, before stepping down as chancellor in 2009, allocated $2 million of Soderquist’s bequest to the Snyder chair in the College of Letters and Science and the Crosby chair in the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences.

‘Exceptional intellect’

“The common denominator for Crosby and Snyder was simple enough — Charlie loved the exceptional intellect,” Vanderhoef said.

Snyder, a professor emeritus in the Department of English, met Soderquist in the mid 1990s at an end-of-the-year gathering on campus. Soderquist was a UC regent at the time.

They became friends over the next decade, with shared interests in conservation and Tibetan Buddhism, among other subjects. Soderquist also was an author, having published Sturgeon Tales: Stories of the Delta. The book’s listing on Amazon.com includes a review from Snyder.

“These stories from the Sacramento River delta are the kind of creative and scientific myth-making that gives a whole place life,” Snyder wrote. “A set of river-system fish-as-people tales for grown-ups, it’s a rich mix. Geologic and oceanic lore becomes sturgeon oral histories; Sacramento Valley history blends with catalogs of river-rat bars and sexy fish-spawning scenes.”

The two enjoyed many wide-ranging conversations in which Soderquist displayed an interest and curiosity “in some of the less-ordinary lines of thought that I had been pursuing over the years,” Snyder recalled in an interview.

“He was a very far-thinking and astute guy,” Snyder said. “He understood and appreciated what humanism was all about, what a humanistic education was good for.”

With the Soderquist endowments in environmental toxicology and the Graduate School of Management, Snyder said, the chair in science and humanities completes a portrait of a complex man.

“In a way, it really reflects who Charlie was,” he said. “The businessman, the scientist and, by putting me in the mix, his broad curiosity, his awareness of history, literature and philosophy is also acknowledged. I think it’s very appropriate.”

Dean Owens said the Snyder chair will go to a scholar whose work is at the intersection of humanities and science. The first recipient will be selected from faculty in the Division of Humanities, Arts and Cultural Studies.

Crosby chair

At the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, the Crosby Endowed Chair in Environmental Chemistry will support research, teaching and outreach related to the source, environmental fate or consequence of chemicals that affect living organisms. It is also pending expected university approvals and a recipient has not yet been selected.

Crosby, who recalled urging a young Soderquist to pursue his post-graduate degrees, said he was “extremely honored and quite surprised” to have the chair endowed in his name.

“I would hope that Charlie would become sort of a legend among our graduate students, as someone who started off with very modest means and just through hard work — he was a tremendously hard worker — and smarts managed to become successful not only in science but in business,” Crosby said.

Rancher’s passion

Rustici provided a total of $1.2 million for two endowments. The Lake County rancher, who died in 2008, had worked with several UC professors, Cooperative Extension farm advisers and specialists who studied issues he cared about — cattle and preservation of the rangeland ecosystem.

Selections for both of the Rustici endowed positions already have been made:

• Russell L. Rustici Endowed Chair in Rangeland Watershed Science — Randy Dahlgren, professor of soil science and biogeochemistry, chair of the Department of Land, Air and Water Resources, and director of the UC Davis-based Kearney Foundation of Soil Science.

The chair supports research and outreach programs related to the California rangelands that Rustici appreciated and worked to preserve. In the near term, the endowment will provide funding for collaborative work with colleagues to prepare a new book, Biogeochemistry of Mediterranean Watersheds, which will be dedicated to Rustici.

• Russell L. Rustici Endowed Specialist in Cooperative Extension in Rangeland Watershed Science — Ken Tate is affiliated with the Department of Plant Sciences, serving as the department’s vice chair for outreach and extension. His research and outreach program focuses on the diverse managed ecosystems that make up California’s rangelands.

The Rustici endowed specialist also will support research and outreach programs related to the California rangelands, including collaborative work with science colleagues to prepare the book to be dedicated to Rustici.

Opera producers

The Jan and Beta Popper Endowed Professorship in Opera has been established with a $500,000 bequest from the estate of Beta Popper, who died in 2008. Beta and her husband, the late music professor and conductor Jan Popper, spent a lifetime together producing opera all over the world, notably in Asia.

Beta Popper, a mezzo-soprano who performed with the San Francisco Opera, was involved with the UC Davis Department of Music. Jan Popper was on the UCLA faculty, but assisted many UC campuses, including UC Davis, as a visiting professor. His books and papers were donated to the UC Davis music department.

The professorship will be held by a faculty member in the music department who will pursue a broad range of scholarly and creative activities that include opera. The recipient has not yet been selected.

“Beta and Jan Popper, both individually and as a couple, spent their lives championing art music in live performance,” said D. Kern Holoman, professor of music and interim chair of the Department of Art and Art Studio.

“Jan’s library has long supported our students in their study of the great operas. Beta’s moving gift in memory of her husband is certain to foster significant new ventures at the intersection of music performance and research — precisely where our program has achieved one of its signature strengths.”

Professor Kim Elsbach of the Graduate School of Management has been named the inaugural holder of the Stephen G. Newberry Endowed Chair in Leadership.