Few people have given as much to the University of Georgia as Despy Karlas and Lars Ljungdahl. She’s a legend in Athens, having come to town in 1946 as a professor of piano and much-sought-after performer. He is a pathbreaking biochemist who just retired from UGA after a nearly 40-year career here.

But that’s not what warms the den of their gracious house. Sure, the room is gorgeously decorated, with Ms. Karlas’s Steinway Grand, with work from local artists such as Bruce Knecht, Lamar Dodd, Ouida Williams, and Mary Porter. There is sculpture, and ranks of books, many of them about music, snug in their shelves. What gives the room its charm, however, is the obvious and open affection Despy and Lars share for each other.

Ljungdahl is a tall, rather quiet but genial Swede, native to Stockholm, while his wife grew up in New Brunswick, N. J., the daughter of Greek immigrants. She is lively, has a quick wit and a contagious laugh, pokes fun at herself, and just happens to be one of the most talented musicians ever to grace the faculty of UGA.

The glow in their living room may come from the grace of second chances. Lars’s first wife passed away in 1995, and this is Despy’s second marriage, too, and a visitor senses that their companionship is built on respect and a deep trust. They have hardly settled in for a quiet retirement, though.

Their love of UGA has been evident through the decades, but in the past several years, their support has been an increasing source of pride in the Franklin College. In June 2003, Richard Zimdars, a talented pianist and teacher in what is now the Hugh Hodgson School of Music, was named the first Despy Karlas Professor. The professorship was established by friends and admirers of Karlas. Likewise, the just-established Georgia Research Alliance Lars Ljungdahl Distinguished Investigator Award will help keep rising stars in the biological sciences at UGA. Both honors received significant contributions from Despy and Lars, in gratitude for the fulfilling careers they had at the university and for the relationship they continue to enjoy with the institution.

“There is just a great need for support in the college,” says Despy. “I just felt good all the time I’ve been here.” Lars, smiling, adds quickly: “I have thoroughly enjoyed my time at UGA.”

The story of how Despy Karlas wound up at UGA may well be one of the most retold legends in the modern history of the school. She grew up near New York City, and in the thirties and forties managed to hear many truly legendary figures perform—including Sergei Rachmaninoff himself. Her mother died when Despy was very small, but her father remarried. Despite the fact that the family wasn’t especially musical, Despy knew from girlhood that her great love was the piano.

She earned degrees from Douglass College and the University of Illinois at Urbana, along with a certificate in piano performance from the Julliard School in New York. It was at Julliard that Hugh Hodgson, the father of music at UGA, heard her practicing and was stopped cold. With a dazzling technique and a rare command of the inner quality of the music, she was obviously a catch—and Hodgson didn’t wait until someone else came along. He offered her a job on the spot, and she arrived in Athens in 1946 to what was still the shell of a music department.

“My stepmother played the piano and sang some, but my family really wasn’t musical,” she remembers. “She was a writer—wrote in Greek—and my father was a tailor.”

In truth, Despy had already accomplished a great deal, having joined for some time the Russian pianist Sergei Barksukoff in forming a duo-piano team based in Miami. Coming to Athens alarmed some of her friends, she admits, since the South was still considered by many to be backward, and a notorious lynching took place near Athens that year.

Still, she found the town and the university congenial, and as serious students came because of her presence, UGA became one of the centers of piano performance studies in the South. Her frequent performances have always drawn large crowds as well, and she found time to become deeply involved with the precollege generation of pianists through the Georgia Music Teachers Association.

Lars Ljungdahl was a world away, though, literally and figuratively. Growing up as an only child in Stockholm, he was always fascinated with science.

“I had a chemistry lab in my basement when I was twelve,” he says laughing. The world around Sweden was not a laughing matter, however, since World War II raged during his high school years. But, Sweden managed to stay out of the war, and he could carry out his schooling without breaks. After earning a diploma from Stockholm City Technical School he began work full time at the legendary Karolinska Institute as a technician and at the same time pursue studies each evening between six and ten toward a chemical engineering degree, which he obtained from Stockholm Technical Institute in 1945.

He worked as a research chemist at the Stockholm Brewery company from 1947 to 1958 (“I know a lot about beer,” he says, laughing) and then came to the United States, to Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, where he finished his doctoral degree in 1964. At Case, he worked with the legendary Harland Wood, one of America’s most honored biochemists and co-discoverer with Lars of the so-called Wood-Ljungdahl Pathway, which involves carbon dioxide fixation and acetate synthesis.

Lars came to UGA in 1967 and immediately began building a reputation as an outstanding research scientist and teacher. As Georgia Power Distinguished Professor of Biotechnology, he received numerous honors, including fellowships in the American Academy of Microbiology and the American Association for the Advancement of Science and foreign membership in the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences. He worked with Georgia Research Alliance for ten years and at the same time served as member of the State of Georgia Governor’s Advisory Council on Science and Technology from 1992 to 1996. His accomplishments are, in a word, breathtaking.

They met at the wedding for the daughter of their friend Gordhan Patel, vice president for research. Among a large crowd gathered at the State Botanical Garden, Lars, alone since the death of his wife, came up to Despy and started a conversation. As they began to talk, they found common ground.

“I had two tickets to the Atlanta Symphony, so I asked if she wanted to go,” says Lars. That was, so to speak, music to Despy’s ears, but the symphony concert was cancelled, and they wound up going to dinner at the Last Resort, an elegant restaurant in Athens that’s a favorite of the UGA crowd. To this day, they go to the same table for dinner—“our special table”—and they were married in 1998.

That’s why there’s a pleasant symmetry in knowing their names will be perpetually affixed to important professorships in the Franklin College. In one important sense, their contributions to UGA are just beginning, and this new beginning will still be rich and enduring generations from now.

Despy and Lars have shared their great gifts with students, faculty, and friends for many years. Among those gifts, however, is one that everyone wants but few receive: a happy ending. That, too, is a legacy that endures.