| Centennial History |
|
| The Start: |
|
(In the February issue we presented abbreviated accounts
of the history of the ACS and the Northeastern Section.
From time to time we will publish excerpts from the
original articles in the 1973 NUCLEUS, during the Sectional's
Diamond Jubilee year. The following is excerpted from
the January issue and was written by the late Robert
D. Eddy, Professor of Chemistry at Tufts University.
Under the heading Seventy-Five Years with the Northeastern
Section Eddy makes some introductory remarks about the
plans for publication of the story in the 1973 issues
of The NUCLEUS and he indicates the help he has received
and the sources he has consulted. The following is the
verbatim text from the January 1973 issue:)
Our story is not just a dry summary of events and their
dates. It is a story of the lives, and the dreams, and
the accomplishments of people. They are the giants upon
whose shoulders we all stand. How many of our members
have been much-loved teachers to generations of students?
How many of these students have picked up the torch,
and have become the leaders of their own, new, generation?
How many of our officers have served the Section organization
with distinction, and have then stepped upward to make
a permanent mark on the national scene? How many of our
speakers, and medallists , have won acclaim, both nationally
and internationally, for the brilliance of their scientific
efforts? The answers to these questions are not trivial:
they demonstrate better than anything else could that
we have a glorious past. May we cherish it, and take
heart from it, and build upon it to fashion a similar,
glorious future.
Though many of our records are couched in the terse,
undemonstrative prose of the busy scientist, they are
not dull. A love of fun, a love of life and a heart-warming
humanness keep shining through. Can you imagine a Section
meeting, where the audience welcomed its speaker by breaking
forth in song? Did you ever hear of the great Mass Marathon
Run? It was staged at a joint outing (with the Rhode
Island Section) "under the incentive of a sudden
and very moist shower" as the soggy participants
covered the few hundred feet from the baseball stands
to the Club House. Do you know about the "First
Quadrennial Leap Year Party" of February 1924? It
was perpetrated at the American House (wherever that
was) with singing and dancing. About one hundred and
fifty members and guests were entertained with a pantomime,
presented by a bevy of Simmons girls. And some unscrupulous
soul accumulated a tidy profit by distributing, in exchange
for ten cents, copies of an underground newspaper called
The Nude Lâil Cuss. And when it was all, over, the exhausted
revelers had to rush to catch the late train home.
Because there is so much of interest to report, not
only about the early years of our Section, but of the
national events that preceded its formation, we shall
spend much of the first installment in setting the stage.
Later on, we can build upon this base to focus more carefully
on the individuals involved, their accomplishments, and
the effect that their work has had on later generations.
The Organization of the Northeastern Section
Note: We have since received via email some information
that differs from that presented below. If you are interested
in reading it, go to the ACS History Rebuttal page.
The first page in the Secretary's book bears the date:
February 4, 1898, but this was not the beginning. The
American Chemical Society was founded more than twenty
year before that, on April 12, 1876. Nor was that a starting
date, either, Most observers agree that the real beginning
of everything was a suggestion made by Dr. H. Carrington
Bolton of the Columbia College School of Mines in April
1874. He wasn't thinking about forming a society at all:
serendipity was in charge of things then, even as it
is now. What Dr. Bolton wanted to do was to somehow commemorate
the discovery of oxygen by Joseph Priestly, one hundred
years earlier. It was on August 1, 1774 that the good
Doctor Priestley had heated his "mercurius calcinatus
per se" with a twelve inch burning lens and for
the first time had released some "dephlogisticated
air". Because this discovery, followed by Lavoisier's
quantitative treatment of it, had led to the oxygen theory
of combustion and the subsequent development of all modern
chemistry, Dr. Bolton thought that the centennial deserved
some sort of observance. After all, because of his rashly
liberal views, Dr. Priestley had been driven by an unruly
mob from his home and his laboratory in Birmingham, England.
He fled with his family to the United States, and so
became an American chemist, by adoption, if not by birth.
Enter a woman chemist. Professor Rachel L. Bodley of
the Women's Medical College of Pennsylvania proposed
that the centennial celebration should be held at Northumberland,
Pennsylvania, where Dr. Priestley had lived and where
he was buried. This suggestion was immediately adopted,
and plans went forward for a three-day meeting beginning
on July 31, 1874. This was the sequence of events that
brought seventy-seven of the most influential American
chemists, some with wives and children, together in a
peaceful little village in the valley of the Susquehanna.
There was no hotel there: the participants were quartered
overnight by the villagers, some of whom were direct
descendants of Joseph Priestley, himself. Historical
papers and technical papers were presented in the tiny
public schoolhouse. Cablegrams were exchanged with Birmingham,
England, and the commemorative exercises were held beside
Priestley's grave. It was a remarkable affair. The friendliness
and fellowship and excitement were so great, that there
was a strong sentiment to carry on with such meetings.
On the second day, the Centennial Day, to be exact, a
group met to consider the feasibility of forming a national
American Chemical Society with this purpose in mind.
There were pessimists present, but nearly everyone went
home with great hopes, expecting that a society would
soon be formed.
Unaccountably, there was a two year delay, but the plan
would not die. Professor Charles F. Chandler, also of
the Columbia School of Mines, who had presided at the
Centennial Program, finally set thing moving again. He
uncovered more than one hundred chemists in New York
and nearby cities, whose work and training rendered them
eligible for membership in a chemical society. With seven
confederates, he finally sent out a notice for an organizational
meeting to be held April 6, 1876. That meeting was called
to order with thirty-five chemists present, and the Society
began operations.
Naturally, a society created in this way was a New York
based organization. It had non-resident members, but
the monthly meetings were held in New York, and there
were not many benefits for the out of towners. A Journal
was published, but few cared to submit papers, and the
Society was most successful as a local organization.
Small wonder that other quite similar local organizations
sprang up in other parts of the Country. There was a
constant agitation to get a truly national organization
going: for a while it seemed likely that some of these
upstart outsiders might be strong enough to take over.
But the New York group had the name and they had the
charter and it was apparent that the best solution was
to put some new direction in this ineffective organization.
The turnabout came in 1889, when the officers sent out
a letter asking for suggestions as to the best way that
the Society could become more useful to their non-resident
members.
Upon receiving this letter, Professor Charles E. Munroe,
of Newport, Rhode Island, a charter member, sat down
and wrote a detailed and lengthy response. He viewed,
quite critically, the situation as it existed for outsiders,
and made a number of valuable suggestions. These included
the ideas that local Sections should be formed, and that
General Meetings should be held outside of New York.
Others had independently proposed the same ides, or at
least concurred in them, so on June 6, 1890, the Constitution
was changed to legalize such practices. One would have
thought then that immediate action would have been taken,
but that was not the case. According to Professor Munroe's
article in the Fifty-Year History, the Directors waited
until July 22 of that same year to decide that (1) there
would be e General Meeting outside of New York, that
(2) it would be two weeks hence, August 6 and 7, 1890,
that (3) it would be in Newport, R.I., and that (4) Charles
E. Munroe would be in charge of arrangements! Then they
let him know. Instead of collapsing under such summary
treatment, he scrambled around, firmed a local committee
of fourteen and began to make plans. His colleagues included
a couple of Harvard Professors with summer residences
in the area, some army and navy officers stationed nearby,
the local high school principal, the secretary of the
Newport Natural History Society, and a few younger chemists
working in the area.
This group put together a remarkable program without
any idea who, or how many, would attend. As a matter
of fact, until the final day, when the Fall River Line
boat from New York came plowing into its Newport berth,
the only registrants known to be coming were the three
guests whom Professor Munroe had invited to stay at his
home. However, there proved to be a large and congenial
group aboard, headed by Professor Chandler himself, and
the meeting got off to a great start. Rhode Islanders
from Providence and Kingston appeared, and there were
distant visitors from Medford, Cambridge, New Haven,
Ithaca, and points even further afield. Seventeen papers,
covering almost every possible branch of chemistry were
presented. The U.S. Naval Torpedo Station permitted an
inspection of its laboratories and workshops, and its
personnel presented an extensive series of demonstrations
of high explosives. Not to be outdone, the personnel
of the U.S. Naval Training Station put on a parade honoring
their distinguished guests. On the second day of the
meeting the registrants had their choice of relaxation:
they could take a leisurely tour of Newport Harbor in
the inspection launch, or they could select a thirty
mile run around Conanicut Island in the high speed torpedo
boat, "Stiletto".
With this successful venture completed, the chemists
of Rhode Island wasted no time in getting behind Professor
Munroe, and his colleague, Professor John Howard Appleton
of Providence to form the Rhode Island Section. Their
charter was granted on January 21, 1891, a full nine
months before the New York group could get around to
applying for its own local section charter on September
30, 1891.
By present day standards, the Northeastern Section is
an old Section, but it is actually the eleventh in line.
When it was formed, it immediately won a position as
one of the larger and more influential Sections, but
there is nothing in the record to tell us why it was
seven years behind the leaders. This is particularly
hard to explain, because the tenth General Meeting was
held in Boston and Cambridge on December 27-28, 1894.
This should have been a stimulus, but if one remembers
how Professor Munroe, with only two weeks notice, had
put together the first General Meeting, one can concede
that perhaps this was not as demanding as it would seem
to us now. However, the seventeenth General Meeting was
also held in Boston. Its date, August 22-23, 1898 is
close enough to the February 4, 1898 birthdate of the
Section to suggest that there may have been a connection.
Perhaps the organizers learned something from their 1894
experience.
Here follows a speculation why the Boston and Cambridge
chemists were slow to organize under the banner of the
American Chemical Society, material which has been covered
extensively in the articles by David Adams and Myron
Simon in the February, 1998 "Centennial Issue" of
the NUCLEUS.
Our records·begin:
Friday Evening, February fourth (1898) about one hundred
and fifty chemists met at the Parker House to establish
a local section of the American Chemical Society.
The date 1898 was added later, with a caret by a different
hand and in a differently colored ink. However, there
can be no doubt concerning it, for the Treasurer's records
are carefully dated. A remark attributed by the Secretary
to the newly elected Treasurer that he "already
had about ninety dollars" is corroborated by the
Treasurer in the very first entry. On the very first
page of his book we find:
Feb. 26, 1898. Drew $90.61 from account of $91.61 with
the North End Savings Bank, Book#13384, which had been
made from the unexpended balance of the subscription
raised to entertain the American Chemical Society at
the Tenth General Meeting held in Boston, Dec. 27-28,
1894. Paid therefrom for this book, $ 1.75. Deposited
with Metropolitan National Bank, $88.86
The Secretary's minutes then go on to tell us that Henry
P. Talbot of M.I.T. (in Boston then) was elected Temporary
Chairman. He appointed H.J. Williams of Boston · to be
Temporary Secretary. Under their direction the group
first voted that they should be governed by a President,
Vice President, Treasurer and Secretary, and by an Executive
Committee. Then began an election to fill these offices.
Arthur A. Noyes of M.I.T. was chosen to be the first
president. Once he had been elected, he took the chair
and presided over the selection of L.P. Kinnicutt of
Worcester (Polytechnic Institute) as Vice President,
Willis R. Whitney of M.I.T. as Secretary, and B.F. Davenport
of Boston· as Treasurer.
Then follow some details of the nomination and election
of the Executive Committee. ·The winners were John Alden
of the Pacific Mills in Lawrence, H. Carmichael of Boston·Arthur
D. Little of Boston·John Shaw of Boston· and H.P. Talbot.
(The remainder of the paper has been covered in detail
in the article by Myron Simon in the February 1998 issue.)
|
|
|
| Early Years: |
|
(Continuation of the account begun in the March 1998 issue.
Reprinted in part from the March 1973 NUCLEUS, written
by the late Robert D. Eddy. (Material which was covered
in the articles "Founding of the Section" by
Myron S. Simon and "The First Seventy-Five Years" by
Edward R. Atkinson has been omitted, as indicated by "•"and/or
by a summary in italics))
The Early Years of the Northeastern Section
(1898-1930) Once the organization meeting had adjourned,
it was up to the newly elected Executive Committee
to act. The Committee's records have been kept in a
separate book which, for the most part, summarizes
the efforts of the groups to arrange attractive programs.
It also gives the names and addresses (not always business
connections) of the first members. This record is all
the more interesting, because it lists proposals for
possible speakers with their topics, as well as those
which were actually scheduled. These reflect the wide
scientific concerns of the group and, in themselves,
provide a valuable record of the new chemical theories
and industrial processes which were then uppermost
in everyone's mind. For example, we learn that at this
first Executive Committee Meeting, held on February
25, 1898, L.P. Kinnicutt asked for permission to withdraw
his paper "Some New Methods of Sewage Treatment
Now Being Tried in New England" because it would
be published before the next meeting. Also, Arthur
D. Little asked for permission to postpone his paper
on "Viscose" because he was having difficulty
in getting samples for demonstration. These two papers
must have been the ones announced for the first meeting
and were postponed, because the Committee minutes go
on to say that Arthur A. Noyes and John Alden were
asked to substitute. There follows an account of the
papers at the next several meetings, summarized in
the 1998 Centennial Issue)
In returning to the first Executive Committee meting,
we note that it voted to suggest to the Committee on
By-Laws, that regular meetings should be held on Fridays,
from October to May, inclusive. Apparently the body could
not make an unequivocal decision about the name, for,
after rejecting a proposal that the name be either "the
Boston Section", the Committee voted to propose
to the membership that the name be either the "Massachusetts
Section" or the "North Eastern Section"·
In the minutes of the second regular meeting, the same
Secretary twice writes "Northeastern" as one
word·the name finally chosen by the members·
One might have supposed the name would have been defined
by the Charter. Perhaps it was,·but we do not possess
this Charter; it is known to have been lost some time
before our Fifty-Year Celebration, for at that time an
extensive effort was made to find it. There is nothing
in the minutes to indicate its date, other than the fact
that it was granted sometime between the first and second
regular meetings. However, published dates from many
different later sources all refer to the chartering of
the Section on March 7, 1898. Either this date was faithfully
copied while the Charter was still at hand, or some records
in the National Office have kept the date available for
us. It was Monday, more than two weeks before the Friday,
March 25, 1898 date of the second regular meeting.
There are other lapses in the records, undoubtedly because
they were written by busy people, who did not expect
them to be so carefully scrutinized seventy-five years
later. Another instance, is the fact that neither the
secretary nor the treasurer considered it necessary to
sign their reports. We would not have been so sure of
who they were if the secretary had not listed the results
of the first election in his report, and the treasurer
had not verified this list with the note that Check #7
was paid to "Willis R. Whitney for Sundries as Secretary" and
that Check #20 was paid to " F. Davenport, Treas."
The treasurer's book is full of names, names of people
who contributed money in support of the approaching General
Meeting, and the names of people who were being reimbursed
for their out-of-pocket expenses. But if you are looking
for a genuine signature, you have to turn all the way
back to page 7. Prophetically enough, the first one is
the signature of James Flack Norris. On November 23,
1898, we find his name, followed by that of William H.
Walker, subscribed to the statement: "The above
accounts examined by the auditing committee, and found
to be correctly cast and properly vouched". Norris
was only 27 years old at the time, an Instructor of Organic
Chemistry at M.I.T., with his Ph.D. but three years old.
Yet, here at the very beginning, we find him taking a
responsible part in the affairs of the Section. Not only
that, he revealed more than a casual interest in our
financial well-being.
To complete our discussion of the events of that first
spring, we find a lot that is worthy of our attention.
Quoting some of the entries at random may be as effective
a way as any to establish their significance. Reflect
on the following:
From the Executive Committee's Minutes:
Feb. 25: "The meetings are to begin at 8 o'clock,
sharp·"
March 25: "The President reported a letter from
the Membership Committee of the Society stating that
the custom to admit undergraduate students to associate
membership only·. He (the President) was directed to
continue his efforts to attempt to have 4th year students
as members."
April 27: "Prof. Kinnicut invited the Section to
hold its May meeting in Worcester, and it was decided
to accept the invitation, subject to the approval of
the Section."
May 21: "The Executive Committee requested the
following members of the Section to serve as a Committee
on Arrangements for the August meeting of the American
Chemical Society, the same to have power to increase
its membership." There follows a list of twenty-four
names.
From the minutes of the Regular Meetings:
April 29: "Mr. H.P. Clark, Chemist of the Mass.
State Board of Health, Dept. of Water Supply and Sewage,
presented a paper on "Sewage and Sewage Purification"·
Dr. S.P. Mulliken
Then presented a paper on the "Qualitative Detection
of the Elements in Organic Compounds."·The invitation
to hold the May meeting at Worcester, was received by
the Section and was accepted."
Then follows a detailed account of the May 17 meeting,
which has been described in Simon's February 1998 article.
The only solid information we have concerning the General
Meeting of August 22,23, 1898 is obtained from the treasurer's
reports. The minutes of the executive Committee list
the 24 members of the committee as we have already noted,
but they say nothing further. Page 15 of the minutes
of the Regular Meetings is bravely titled "Report
of Secy. of Committee of Arrangements for the Summer
Meeting of the American
Chemical Society" but the remainder of the page
is left completely blank. The minutes of the regular
meeting of October 21, 1898 tell us that such a report
was read and accepted, so it was undoubtedly kept on
a separate sheet of paper which was subsequently lost.
The same minutes also refer to separate votes extending
thanks to the secretaries of subcommittees for their
summer's work, to those Corporations which permitted
plant visits, to those who donated funds and to Dr. Thorp
for his work during the Summer. These remarks are far
too general to be of any help.
Part of page 2 and all of page 4 of the treasurer's
records give us the names, with amounts subscribed, of
those who contributed to the Entertainment Fund for the
General Meeting. Most of these were members who furnished
amounts varying from $ 5.00 to $15.00. A few interested
businesses donated amounts up to $25.00. A summary states
that $509.20 had been given (by about 30 donors and $115.00
had been received as the proceeds from the sale of 46
dinner tickets) so we can see that the expenses for the
meeting were paid for almost entirely by the generosity
of the most active Section members. · All of the meeting
expenses added up to $614.87, ·netting a profit to the
Section of $9.33·Our treasurer notes that ·he paid Check
314 $7.70 to Henry P. Talbot for "Sundries as Sect.
Of Local Comm." If it hadn't been for the generosity
of the Secretary of the Committee who returned the check,
that General Meeting would have been carried out with
an excess of income over outgo of exactly $1.63.
Now that the Section has been established and has attracted
nationwide attention, we must hurry through the next
years of action, merely hinting at some of the more significant
items. Then follows a listing of speakers and topics,
some of which were recounted in Myron Simon's article.
At first it was thought that there might have been a
predecessor to the NUCLEUS, but we are set straight by
the Executive Committee Minutes for its meeting of December
17, 1901.
" It was decided that reports of the monthly meetings
be inserted in Science and in the Journal of the Society.
These printed minutes differ from the earlier hand-written
ones, in that they describe quite fully, the substance
of the papers presented. By an unexpected coincidence,
the first such printed report was on a paper by the man
who had been so instrumental in getting things started
more than twenty-five years earlier; Prof. Charles F.
Chandler of Columbia College. He talked on "The
Electro-Chemical Industries at Niagara Falls." [See
also, The NUCLEUS, 1998, 76 (7, April), 19]
Then follows a recounting of votes taken on financial
matters, recommendation to adopt the metric system, etc.,
which have been recounted in Edward R. Atkinson's article
in the Centennial Issue.
And so the records go. There is evidence of hard times
and of easy times, of busy times and relaxed times, of
serious thought and utter frivolity. Our present concerns
with the economic plight of the chemist, [remember, this
was written in 1973] with ethics, with licensing, with
the effects of our stresses on the environment, with
the application and mis-application of scientific knowledge÷these
have all been foreshadowed. One can wish for the time
to pore over these pages carefully, to extract from them,
and from the loose newspaper clippings and the accompanying
song sheets, the many messages they contain. The years
these pages cover, represent, among others, the years
of World War I, and we find our group worrying about
potash and the dyestuff industry and about war gases
and gas masks.
In conclusion, Eddy recounts the occasion of the speaker
of the evening being greeted with a rousing song of Charlie
Parson's Song, quoted in Atkinson's Centennial Issue
article, p. 10.
|
|
|
| 1974 to Now: |
|
In 1974 the Section had its first woman chemist as Section
Chairman, Phyllis Brauner, who is still very active
in the Section. Since then six additional women chemists
have served in that position.
In October 1968 our Section hosted the first Northeast
Regional Meeting (NERM). Much work went into the various
arrangements for the meeting. Aside from the technical
part of the program, one event stands out in my memory:
For the formal evening reception we had reserved the
music room in the Gardner Museum for the reception, the
rest of the museum to be open for viewing. When my wife
and I arrived at the appointed hour for the start of
the reception, the museum appeared to be ominously dark.
I thought at first that we had made a mistake and had
come on the wrong day, but then a guard came out with
a flashlight, informing us that the Boston Edison Company
was working in the next street and had turned of the
power "for a while". Without light, we were
not allowed into the upstairs exhibition rooms, but we
could gather under the arches surrounding the garden
court. Mrs. "Jack" Gardner's house was built
by her, copying a Venetian palace, except that the garden
court which would be open to the sky in Venice was closed
off with a glass roof for the harsher Boston climate.
We had also engaged a small chamber group of Boston Symphony
players to provide the musical background for the reception.
Alas, the pianist could not show his art, because the
grand piano could not be moved onto the small balcony
overlooking the garden court. There three musicians held
forth with candle-light, playing mostly impromptu because
the planned pieces with piano accompaniment could not
be performed for lack of the piano part.
As time went on, the caterer started serving champaign
while we chatted standing under the arches surrounding
the court. As we were ready to close the event, the lights
came back on, and we could view the galleries and continue
the reception in the proper setting. I am sure that this
event has remained in peoples' memories much better than
a reception that had gone off exactly as planned.
Perhaps the greatest scientific story in the Section
lies in the work and recognition received by some of
its members. Nobel Prizes in Chemistry were received
by the following members of the Section:
1914 Theodore William Richards (Harvard).
1965 Robert B. Woodward (Harvard)
1976 William N. Lipscomb (Harvard)
1980 Walter Gilbert (Harvard)
1981 Roald Hoffmann (Harvard and Cornell)
1986 Dudley Herschbach (Harvard)
1990 Elias Corey, Jr. (Harvard)
1993 Richard J. Robert (N.E.BioLabs) (Physiol. Or Medicine)
1993 Philip Sharp (M.I.T.)(Physiol. Or Medicine)
1994 George AA. Olah (Dow/Framingham)
1995 Mario Molina (M.I.T.)
This scurrilous pun is almost, but not quite as low
as it sounds. The NUCLEUS was only one month old at the
time, and must have seemed to many to be a naked little
baby, entirely at the mercy of the elements. No copy
of this sheet has been preserved, but from the published
howls released by the Editor of the NUCLEUS, it must
have resembled the Police Gazette more than it did the
Atlantic Monthly. If the incident proves anything at
all, it shows that the Editor of the NUCLEUS has always
had to bear more than his share of vilification.
[added by the editor] Rachel Bodley six years later
resigned in protest after hearing about the infamous "Misogynist
Dinner" from which ladies had been excluded, at
the 1980 Boston meeting. But that is another story, to
be told at another time.
Whatever happened to that $1.00/ that was left behind?
Has it been out at compound interest all these years,
waiting until now to become a secret answer to the annual
anguish of today's Budget Committee? Perhaps, but there
is no "North End Savings Bank" listed in the
latest Boston Telephone Book [that was in 1973].
There is no Metropolitan National Bank in the Telephone
Book, either.
Here, in the first two paragraphs, we have ample evidence
that extraordinary teachers have always been concerned
with the Section's affairs. Dr. Talbot's text: "Quantitative
Chemical Analysis" was first published in 1897.
This text, first revised by him, and later revised by
our own Leicester F. Hamilton and Stephen G. Simpson,
has gone through twelve editions [by 1973]. Dr. Noyes'
text: "Qualitative Chemical Analysis" was also
first published in 1897. This has been through ten editions,
the most recent being a revision by Ernest H. Swift of
the California Institute of Technology. The Macmillan
Company, publisher of both texts, has continuously listed
them prominently in its catalogue right up to the present
day.
It is important to note that this election was just
the beginning of service to the ACS for many of those
elected. Noyes was President of the National Society
in 1904, Kinnicutt was Chairman of the Section in 1901,
Whitney was President of the Society in 1909, Little
was Chairman of the Section in 1899 and President of
the Society in 1912 and 1913, Alden was Chairman of the
Section in 1900 and Talbot was Chairman of the Section
in 1916. One of the losers in the election, J. Russel
Marble of Worcester, was Section Chairman in 1913.
If the By-Law Committee accepted this plan, it did not
last beyond the first year. During the next five years,
the meetings seem to have been held on every day of the
week but Sunday, with no explanation given for the random
pattern. Furthermore, there was a June meeting (a plant
trip to the New England Gas and Coke Company) in 1899,
on the tenth, a Saturday. From 1903 to 1939, there seems
to have been a definite predilection for Friday. The
present plan, of reserving the second Thursday of the
month for Section meetings, was begun on October 12,
1939. It has been continued, with less than a half-dozen
exceptions, uninterruptedly from that date.
Samuel Parsons Mulliken, 1887 graduate in Chemistry
from M.I.T., Ph.D. Leipzig, 1890. Author of "Identification
of Pure Organic Compounds", first published in 1904,
revised by our own Ernest H. Huntress in 1940). Dr. Mulliken's
first son, Robert Sanderson Mulliken, was awarded the
Richards Medal by the Section in 1960. [See also the
article "Samuel P. Mulliken", in The NUCLEUS,
1997, 75 (5, April) 11-16., ed]
Although there is an F.H. Thorpe) (M.I.T.) and an E.E.
Thorpe (711 Boylston St., Boston) among the list of members,
the treasurer identifies the right man for us . He paid
check #15 to F.H. Thorp for "Sundries as Assist.
Sect. Local Comm." So we know who did the bulk of
the work for that meeting. It was the low man on the
totem pole.
by
Arno Heyn
|
|
|
|
|
