Dozens of books about fire line his shelves, and posters detailing hazardous wildfires cover his office walls.
"I consider myself a fire historian, but I'm more than that," said Stephen Pyne.
Which is true - Pyne is a former firefighter, an author and an U.N. consultant. And at ASU, he's a professor of fire.
Pyne teaches BIO 427, which is called simply "Fire." The class packs the basics of fire, the physics of fire, the anthropology of fire, why fire behaves the way it does and more into one semester, Pyne said.
"It's a unique course," Pyne said. "I don't know any more like it in the country."
Will Roberts, a full-time adviser in the department of history, said courses like Pyne's fire class are rare.
"It crosses the bridge between life sciences and humanities," Roberts said.
Though many students may take the class solely because it fulfills both science and history requirements, biology senior Laura Beard said she had another motive.
"I'm a fire brat," she said.
Beard said she grew up in the U.S. Forestry Service, as both her parents were fire catchers -- people who track the nature of fire across the country.
"Some of the fires he showed us in class today I helped with," she said.
Though she does not plan on pursuing fire as a career, she said it's an interesting class.
Pyne said he also had no intention of working with fire as a career.
His experience with fire began in the mid-1960s as a firefighter at the Grand Canyon, a job he continued for 15 summers after graduating from high school in Phoenix.
"I had no attraction to fire at the time," he said. "I was just looking for an interesting summer job."
Pyne said he spent the cooler months at school. He attended Stanford University, where he received his undergraduate degree in English with a geology minor.
"Fire was my summer life," he said. "They were two completely different worlds."
But in graduate school, fire sparked his interest. Pyne went to the University of Texas at Austin where he studied the history of science. That's when he first thought of studying the history of fire as a career.
Five years after graduating, he talked the U.S. Forest Service into providing support for his research.
Though the research didn't generate any money, he said the experience built the foundations for his first book, "Fire in America," a history of fire in the United States.
Since then, he has written books on the history of fire in Australia, Europe and Russia. He has traveled the globe for his research and has even been flown to Australia to talk about fire on television.
He is also a member of the U.N. International Strategy for Disaster Reduction team, meaning he is consulted when the United Nations needs advice on handling fires.
Pyne eventually accepted a teaching job at the University of Iowa.
"I finally had to hang up my shovel," he said.
And in 1985, Pyne returned to Phoenix for a job at ASU.
While he lectures to groups all over the world about once a month, Pyne dedicates most of his time to teaching and his newest book on fire in Canada.
"All the other ancient elements -- air, water, earth -- they all have their own scientific disciplines," Pyne said. "But fire calls a truck when you pull an alarm."
Reach the reporter at tara.brite@asu.edu.
