Volume 9 September 1994 No. 1
Publisher: Department of Chemistry Udo H. Brinker, Professor and Chair Editor: Clifford E. Myers, Professor Co-Editor and Production: Annie Cron, Department Secretary Mailing Address: Department of Chemistry Binghamton University (SUNY) P.O. Box 6000 Binghamton, NY 13902-6000 Telephone: (607) 777-2517 Department Office (607) 777-2229 Editor
Thanks for your many responses to the December issue of The NEWSLETTER. Your various activities constitute a significant part of this issue. Even though our last issue appeared only a few months ago, much has occurred in the department - degrees awarded, an open faculty position, new grants, a promotion, a change in responsibility. More about these, plus an interview with Max Hull, you will find in this issue.
CEM
Young Scholars Research Program
Olivier Martin has been promoted to Professor, effective September 1. Congratulations!
In January Stan Whittingham began serving a five-year term as Vice Provost for Research and Outreach. The position is 60% of full time, so Stan will be able to keep his research and other activities moving.
Wayne and Michelle Jones' third daughter was born on August 17.
Maintaining a vital research program requires funding from external sources. Several faculty members have been sucessful in recent months in securing support for their research.
Udo Brinker recently was awarded $50,000 by ACS/PRF for his project, "Carbenes in Constrained Systems".
David Doetschman has $172,000 in support from US-DOE for a study entitled "Photochemical Coal Dissolution".
John Eisch's research on "Novel Ziegler-Natta Polymerization Catalyst Systems" is receiving $125,000 per year in support from Solvay & Cie. He also has a project entitled "Research on Organometallic Compounds" funded by Witco, CMBH, at a level of $75,000 per year.
Rick Hartwick has support of $10,600 from Merck Research Laboratories for a study on "Improved Chiral Separations Using Protein Affinity Phases in Capillary Electrophoresis".
Susan Hastie was recently awarded an NSF grant of $324,000 (three year total) for her project, "Tubulin Structure and the Colchicine Binding Site".
Wayne Jones has received an ACS/PRF grant of $20,000 in support of "Electrochemical Investigations of Transition-Metal Radicals by Phase Modulated Voltammetry".
Olivier Martin has a collaboration agreement with Laboratoires OM of Switzerland entitled, "Synthesis of OM-174", at $52,000 per year. Also, ACS/PRF is providing $18,000 in support of his project, "Stereoselective Synthesis of C-Glycosyl Compounds by Way of Intramolecular Reactions of 2-Organosilyl Glycosides". Recently he was awarded a grant of $424,000 (four year total) from NIDDK for "Synthetic and Biological Evaluation of C-Disaccharides".
Cliff Myers and Eric Cotts (Physics) are entering the third year ($97,900) of their NSF-funded project on "Silicides for Microelectronics". Cliff and Bob Kematick have just received support from NSF ($90,000 per year) for a study of "Energetics of Phase Formation of Group VIII Transition Metal Silicides".
Gene Stevens has support of $101,000 per year from NICMS for "Determining Carbohydrate Conformation from CD". His project, "Electronic Structure of Carbohydrates", receives $55,000 per year from NSF. In addition, he has an NIH Small Instrumentation grant from NIMH.
Stan Whittingham has $68,600 per year from US-DOE (through Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory) for research on "New Cathode Materials". His project, "High Brightness Electroluminescent Phosphor for Liquid Crystal Display", is supported at $85,100 by the US Army through Osram Sylvania.
It is a real pleasure to again be asked for a write-up to be included in the departmental newsletter so soon after the last one. Cliff Myers is to be congratulated for reviving this important communication with our alumni. Of course, now that I've read what Cliff has already written, what's left for me to say? Well, let's see.....
The Chemistry Department is about to lose "ITS" parking lot between Science I and II. The look of our campus will soon be changed dramatically with the construction of "ACADEMIC I", a 20-million dollars, 2-building complex. The new buildings will veer away from traditional campus architecture by incorporating the usual brick with more modern soaring curved glass walls. The nearly 131,000 gross square foot buildings will be located between Science I and the Lecture Hall building complex. Currently Academic I is targeted to house a number of Professional Schools, the Office of Enrollment Services and Management, computer pods, a few classrooms, two multi-media lecture halls, and a few faculty and staff offices. Formal ground breaking will take place some time this month (September 1994) and, according to the schedule, construction should be completed in about three years.
Chemistry faculty have done quite well this past fiscal year in obtaining outside grant funds totalling $1,174,000. Our success in this area ranks us "#1" in Harpur College, i.e., if the average amount per faculty member is obtained by dividing total monies secured by total number of faculty submitting grants within a given department. This is due to the persistent efforts of our faculty who are to be congratulated for their perseverance in writing successful research proposals in these times when it's getting more and more difficult to find outside sources to support academic research. On the following pages, you will find more information about these grants and individual research projects supported by them.
A search for a new faculty member in analytical or physical chemistry with research concentration in environmental chemistry or spectroscopy is well on its way and we hope to interview the first candidates for this position in just a few weeks. Ideally we would have a new colleague on board as early as January 1995. In addition, we have just received permission to hire another faculty member for the Fall of 1995. We are just starting to get our search on its way for that position, and hope to be able to advertise in C&E News within a month or so.
Some of you will remember Ellen Mooney, our secretary who left us last August in order to take a promotional position in the Personnel Office. While her position was filled temporarily by Pat Kellam until the end of June, we have been without a second secretary all summer. Now, happily, this position will be occupied by Martha Gahring. She is coming to us from the Foundation Office, where she has been a secretary for about 5 years. We feel very fortunate to have been able to entice Martha to join our department.
The National Science Foundation, through its Instrumentation and Laboratory Improvement (ILI) program, will be supporting two proposals to upgrade the Inorganic and Materials Chemistry Laboratory course. The proposals were prepared by Wayne Jones, Stan Whittingham, and Cliff Myers and are built on recent developments in the course. Many of you will remember Stan Madan's course in inorganic synthesis and its successor which included organic and organometallic synthesis. After a few years during which no advanced synthesis course was offered, the inorganic and materials chemistry lab was introduced as a part of the materials chemistry option. Early on, the students worked on their projects in the research labs of Whittingham, Lees and Myers, and more recently in a regular instructional laboratory.
Cliff Myers is project director for one of the grants. NSF is providing $26,000 through the Instrument Grant (ILI-IG) program, which will be matched by an equal amount from the University. The funds will be used to purchase equipment for experiments in four areas: electrochemistry, UV/vis Kinetics, Schlenk techniques, and specialty (especially solid state) synthesis. A number of new experiments are planned which will combine the use of the new techniques with some of the computer modeling capabilities described in the last issue.
Wayne Jones and Stan Whittingham are project directors for the other grant which involves the intellectual development of new experiments. This grant is in the Leadership in Laboratory Development program (ILI-LLD) and provides $90,000 from NSF over a two year period plus $25,000 in equipment matching funds from the university. The project will support a postdoctoral teaching fellow and installation of a state-of-the-art inorganic molecular modeling system from CAChe Scientific. The role of the post-doc will be to develop and test new laboratory experiments which will combine traditional aspects of inorganic chemistry with materials and computational chemistry. The goal of this effort is to create a set of excercises suitable for use in advanced inorganic labs and general chemistry labs at institutions across the country.
The physical sciences at Bingamton have done quite well in recent years in securing support from NSF for improving undergraduate laboratory instruction. Stan Whittingham received an ILI-IG grant in 1988 for acquisition of an instructional x-ray powder diffractometer, and Jim Dix obtained ILI-IG funding in 1993 for the modeling hardware and software reported in the last issue. Eric Cotts in Physics received ILI-IG support in the current cycle for differential scanning calorimetry equipment. Other proposals in this program are planned by chemistry faculty.
Stan Whittingham has continued support ($30,000) from NSF (through the University of Wisconsin) for "Development of a Materials-Oriented General Chemistry Course". In addition, he was project director this year for the NSF-funded ($95,000) "Summer Program in Solid State Chemistry for Undergraduate Students and College Faculty". Participants were at Binghamton for an intensive tutorial program before spending about ten weeks at a number of solid state laboratories throughout the country; they returned for a wrap-up at the end of the summer.
Undergraduate enrollments in chemistry continue to grow. Registration for Chem. 107 is 675, and Jim Dix will have two lecture sections to accomodate the students. Bruce Norcross has 385 enrolled in Chem. 231 (Organic I), Cliff Myers has 48 in Chem. 341 (Inorganic), and Dave Doetschman has 89 in Chem. 351 (Physical).
Some of you have asked about former faculty members. Here are some addresses:
Professor Lolita O. Zamir Inst. Armand Frappier Crt. Bact. Univ. Quebec 531 Blvd. des Praires Montreal, PQ H7N 4Z3 CANADA Dr. Eugene E. Schrier P. O. Box 3130 Guttenberg, NJ 07093 Professor Leslie Loew Department of Physiology MC-3505 School of Medicine University of Connecticut Health Center 263 Farmington Avenue Farmington, CT 06030-3505 Professor Philip J. Kocienski Department of Chemistry Southampton University Southampton SO 95 NH, United Kingdom
Dorothea Mueller, who died on Sunday, September 4, 1994, in Kettering, OH, after a long illness, was a member of the Chemistry Faculty at Harpur College/Binghamton University from 1957 to 1969. She was a native of Leipzig, Germany, and, after study at the University of Leipzig, completed her PhD in biochemistry at the University of Berlin in 1934. She and her husband, Dr. F. W. H. Mueller (1905-1992) emigrated to the United States in 1935. She is survived by a son and daughter, three grandchildren and two great grandchildren.
For a period of six weeks this past summer we again had a coterie of 11th graders participating in our NSF-funded ($74,000 this year) Young Scholars Research Program (YSRP). Udo Brinker was project director, and Richard Quest and Carole Kull had responsibility for planning and day-to day operation of the program. We had over 140 applications, primarily from the Northeast, from which were chosen the 20 participants. Most of the participants (15) were assigned to research groups in chemistry, and the remaining ones to psychology (3) and physics (2). Underrepresented minorities made up 45% of the group. The primary focus was on participation in research programs, but there were field trips to Proctor and Gamble Pharmaceuticals in Norwich and the IBM Research and Development lab in Endicott. In addition, there were numerous educational and social events. The culmination of the program was the poster session in which the Young Scholars described their summer's work.
Our department, like all other chemistry departments across the country, finds itself in need of additional resources. Funds from the state are limited in amount and are fenced in by numerous regulations. Research grants from external sources make possible the vitality of individual laboratory efforts but necessarily have a circumscribed focus. We have been able to generate some additional support for our undergraduate program by publication of our own lab manuals for the big courses. However, we still have needs which you can help us meet. These include:
Your gifts should be to the Binghamton University Foundation, Account #785 (for programs in the Chemistry Department).
Thanks to all of you who responded to our request for personal and professional news.
John S. Judge (BA '58; PhD Syracuse, '67, physical-inorganic) is Chief Chemist at Advanced Recording Technology. He works on the development of advanced magnetic recording media. He and his wife Inge (Nitka) have 6 children and 2 grand children. Their address: 11 Magrath Rd., Durham, NH 03824.
B. Edward Cain (BA '64) is Professor of Chemistry at Rochester Institute of Technology where he edits that department's newsletter. Address: P.O. Box 40257 Rochester, NY 14604-0257.
Mark Wolraich (BA '66) is Professor of Pediatrics and Director of the Division of Child Development at Vanderbilt University. His wife Debra (Kowaloff), class of '68, is a learning disabilities tutor. They have 3 children: Michael 22, Leanne 20, and David 16. Their address: 5328 General Forrest Court, Nashville, TN 37215.
Marcy Rosenkrantz (BA '69, MA '76, PhD '84) became Associate Director for Supercomputing Technologies at the Cornell Theory Center in January. Her husband, former faculty member Dan Konowalow, still works for the prime contractor at Edwards Air Force Base, but manages to do the work at Cornell. Their home address: 25 Franklin Drive, Lansing, NY 14882. E-Mail: marcyr@tc.cornell.edu and dandk@tc.cornell.edu.
Douglas B. Gersh (BA '70) is Clinical Assistant Professor of Neurology at the Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia and has a private practice of neurology in Wilmington, DE. He, his wife Ronnie and their two children (Jason 15 and Carolyn 12) live at 3 Staten Drive, Hockessin, DE 19707.
Ray Leubner (BS '71; MS, Texas A&M) was 3 years with Dow Chemical and has been 17+ years with Johnson Matthey. He is currently Managing Director, Europe, and splits his time between the U.K. and the States. He is an avid sailing and rowing buff but now has little time for either. He is married with children 17, 15, and 12. Address: E. 4640 English Point Road, Hayden Lake, ID 83835.
Alan Rosen (BA '71) is a radiologist at the Raleigh (NC) Community Hospital. He is married with children 5 and 1. His address: 1105 Cowper Drive, Raleigh, NC 27608.
Larry Wier (BA '72) is finishing his fourth year as Chair of the Chemistry Department at St. Bonaventure University. He is married with one child and is keeping busy with church activities. He has recently taken up fishing and notes that there is plenty of H2O in his part of N.Y. S. He and his family live at 1403 Washington St., Olean, NY 14760.
Judy Weinstein Lloyd (BA '72) was recently promoted to full professor at SUNY/Old Westbury and is doing NSF and DOE-sponsored research in environmental chemistry. Her husband is also a chemistry prof., and they have a 12 year old daughter. Address: 178 East Cabot Lane, Westbury, NY 11590.
James F. Pankow (BS '73; PhD '78, environmental engineering science with a minor in Chemistry, Cal Tech) is a full professor and former department chair (for about 6 years) in Environmental Science and Engineering at the Oregon Graduate Institute. Some of you may remember Jim's NSF-funded Student Originated Studies project in the summer of '73.
Bruce Lipshutz (BA '73; MS '74, PhD '77, Yale) is Professor of Chemistry at the University of California at Santa Barbara. He has had a number of awards, including an Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship and recognition as a Camille and Henry Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar. He was Chair of the Gordon Research Conference on Reactions and Processes in 1992 and is Chair of OMCOS-8 for 1995. His research group in synthetic organic chemistry consists of 6 graduate students, 10 postdocs, and 2 undergrads. His wife, Charlene Daly ('74) is a contracts administrator with the Santa Barabara Research Center of Hughes Aircraft. They have children Abbey 13, Douglas 11, and Mitchell 3. Their address: 425 Albany Ct., Goleta, CA 93117-2168. A question: "Lenny Klevan, where are you?"
Wilfred Shum (BA '73; PhD '79, Columbia, inorganic chemistry) is in process research with ARCO Chemical Company. He still enjoys research, especially on homogeneous catalytic oxidations and asymmetric synthesis. He and his wife Annie have a 5 year old daughter Jacqueline. They live at 2603 Winterbridge Lane, West Chester, PA 19382.
Andrew and Joan Stolzar (BAs '73 and '74)recently celebrated their 20th wedding anniversary. Andy is an internist with a practice in Dover, NJ, and Joan recently went back to work as an administrative assistant (part time) in Chester, NJ. They and their two children, 11 and 7, live at 14 Valley Road, Succasunna, NJ 07876.
Diana Shannon (BA '76) is still working a manager of a branch of the Environmental Protection Agency, cleaning up hazardous waste sites. Her address: 2255 18th Street, Boulder, CO 80302.
Jeffrey Gorelick (BA '77) went on to medical school and a psychiatry residency. He is Assistant Professor, Department of PMR, Medical College of Wisconsin. He and his wife live at 7360 N. Seneca Road, Milwaukee, WI 53217.
Paul Gelburd (BA '78) writes that, after getting a MS (Physical-Organic) at Illinois, he entered the business world through an MBA at Columbia. He was with Booz, Allen and then Morgan Stanley. He's now with a buyout firm which invests other people's money in financial service companies. As he says, that's a long way from his research with Dr. Loew! His address: 36 West 84th St., New York, NY 10024.
Stephen A. Payne (BS '78) got his PhD in chemistry in 1983 and did a postdoc at Penn. Since 1985 he has worked as a physicist at Lawrence Livermore Labs. He is the inventor of several laser materials. He and Patricia Clifford (BA '79) were married in '81 and their daughter Jessica was born in '88. He says, "earthquakes are not fun!" Their address: 18301 Pepper St., Castro Valley, CA 94546.
Rob Rosen (BS '79; PhD, Minnesota, organic chemistry) is currently Technical and Operations Manager with TosoHaas, a producer of chromatographic resins for purification of biopharmaceuticals. He is married to Sue Lawson (BA '77) and they have 2 kids - Miriam and Elliot. Address: 516 Lanfair Road, Melrose Park, PA 19126.
Susan Marcus Stern (BS '79) is a Materials Engineer with Rocketdyne Division of Rockwell and is working on the Space Shuttle Main Engine and other types of space propulsion. She has been married and living on the coast for 12 years. Her address: 21115 Vintage Street, Chatsworth, CA 91311.
Catherine Procino Deutsch (BA '79) is working in Regulatory Affairs at Forest Labs, NY, doing mainly New Drug Applications and ANDA's. Since the birth of her new baby, Julia Suzanne (9/2/93), she has been part-time in a job sharing arrangement. She and her husband, Mark Deutsch ('81), make their home at 201 E. 77th Str., Apt. 15D, New York, NY. 10021.
Alan S. Andacht (BA '81) went on to medical school and is now practicing with Northside Anesthesia Consultants in Scottsdale, AZ. He has Board Certification in Anesthesiology and Critical Care Medicine. His address: 4809 E. Monte Cristo Ave., Scottsdale, AZ 85254.
Linda Mayer Wood (BS '81) has been on leave of absence from AT&T Bell Labs where she was responsible for Product Management and Marketing for a software platform product. She and husband Tom were married in '87 and their son Ryan Edward was born last July. Tom is a Distinguished Member of Technical Staff at AT&T Bell Labs in the Photonics Research Department. Their Address: 20 Heather Hill Way, Holmdel, NJ 07733.
Steven Cohen (BA '81) completed his MD in '86 and was a resident at Seton Hall University, including a position as Chief Resident and Instructor of Medicine. He had a Cardiology Fellowship at the University of Pittsburgh and is now in private practice. Steve still runs daily, but not competitively. He and his wife Chari have 4 children and live at 7982 Tennyson Ct., Boca Raton, FL 33433.
Joel Geller (BA '82) is a podiatrist in Brooklyn. He joyously announces the arrival of Avigail Chana, 7 lbs 2 oz, on Sept. 19, 1993. His address: 482 E. 9th St., Brooklyn, NY 11218.
Scott Klein (BS '82; PhD '87, Yale) is Associate Research Fellow, Rhône-Poulenc Rorer in Collegeville, PA. His address: 1612 Meadowview Lane, Mont Clare, PA 19453
Mitchell Cohen (BA '83) went on to get DDS and MSD degrees and is an orthodontist with practices in Scranton and Pittston, PA. He is married and has daughters ages 1 and 2. Address: 502 Willow Lane, Clarks Summit, PA 18411.
Chris (BA '83, MS '87) and Kathy Rawlins (PhD '90) Duda stopped by recently with their 13-month old daughter, Coleen. Chris works for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)and Kathy for the U.S. Patent Office. Their address: 3806 Tedrich Blvd., Fairfax, VA 22031.
We noted in a recent issue of Chemical and Engineering News that Elizabeth M. Kirschner (BS '84; MA, Journalism, NYU, '91) has joined the Northeast News Bureau of C&EN after being at Chemical Week and, before that, at Bellcore.
Patrick J. Pagano (BA '85; PhD '91, NY Medical College) has completed a postdoc at Boston Univ. in a biochemical study of vascular disease and has begun an instructorship at the Boston Univ. Medical Center. He was married in February '94. Pat says, "I enjoyed my time in the Chemistry Department at Binghamton. It was very supportive. Dr. DuPont, with whom I did an independent study was great to work with and encouraged me to go on to graduate school and not medical school. I am grateful to him for that." Pat's address: 295 Harvard St., #206, Cambridge, MA 02139.
David Manuta (PhD '85) is with Martin Marietta in Waverly Ohio. Previously he was on the faculty of Upper Iowa University. He enjoys his work in industry, but misses being in academe. Dave lost his wife to cancer last December. His address: 431 Gordon Ave., Waverly, Ohio 45690-1208
Yung John Han (BS '86; MS, MD, Georgetown) is presently doing an internship at Yale and will start Anesthesiology Residency at the Mayo Clinic soon. He sends his "Welcome back!" to Dr. Lees, his former research advisor. John's address: 650 Ellsworth Ave., New Haven, CT 06511-1636.
Elliot M. Scherr (BS '86; PhD '92, Penn) is employed by Colgate-Palmolive as a detergent formulator. He married Dr. Linda Bregstein in October of '93. Elliot gave us some news about a couple of his fellow students: Kevin Lax (BS '86) received his MD in '90 or '91; Jeffrey S. Beck (BS '84; PhD '89, Penn) works for Mobil Oil Co. and lives in Princeton, NJ. Elliot's address: 33 Ketley Pl., Princeton, NJ 08540.
Cheryl M. Coffee (MA '87) began work in January in the Chemistry and Heat Exchange Group of B&W Nuclear Technologies. Her address: 1210 Dandridge Ave., Lynchburg, VA 24501. She says, "Hi ALL - I really enjoyed the Newsletter".
Karen Mattia (BS '87; MS '89, PhD '93, Penn State, organic chemistry) has a postdoctoral fellowship in bioorganic chemistry at Penn State. Her address: 248 Toftrees Ave., Apt 308, State College, PA 16803.
Stewart Getzow (BS '90; MS '93, Pittsburgh) is working as an analytical chemist at Colorcon, Inc., in West Point, PA. His address: 1159 Roberts Road, Warminster, PA 18974.
Suvana Lam (BS '90) has been working as a GC/MS analyst for 3 years at Environmental Testing Co. Recently moved to: 50 Chumasero Dr., 1G, San Francisco, CA 94132.
Sherry L. Dudeck (BS '90; MAT '92) is a high school teacher in Mahopac, NY. Says Sherry, "I enjoy teaching Regents chemistry as well as coaching varsity softball and advising the outdoor club - explorer post - 2001. I spend most of my vacations traveling and exploring the rivers in the northeast and Canada. Most of my adventures are done by kayak, which allows me to paddle into some of the most beautiful environmental scenes that I have ever experienced." Her address: 656 Route 82, Hopewell Junction, NY 12533.
Michele C. Durso (BS '92) has just completed the first year in the Vermont Law School.
Stacy L. Lawrence (MA '92) was promoted in May '93 to Development Engineering Manager for IBM Charlotte Electronic Card Assembly and Test Division. She is currently a Big Sister through United Way and was recently elected Treasurer of Alpha Lambda Omega Chapter of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc. She lives at: 5227 Cressingham Ct., Charlotte, NC 28227.
Marsha J. Ferziger (BS '92) wants everyone to know that not all chem. majors go to grad school, get jobs, or go into the health professions. She is in her second year at the University of Chicago Law School and hopes to be a patent lawyer. She says, "..I'm definitely not letting my chem degree go to waste...If any current chem majors want info on Law School, please have them give me a call! 312-363-4413." Marsha gave us some information about a couple of classmates: Mike Orlep (BS '92) "has finished his MAT at Union and is now teaching chemistry and general science to junior high and high school kids in Malverne, Long Island. Last I heard, Jen Monteith (BS '92) was still in grad school for geochem at Columbia." Marsha's addresses: 46 Fair Lane, Jericho, NY 11753 (permanent); 3635 Dorchester, Apt 3, Chicago, IL 60637 (school).
Jeff McCreary (BS '90, MS '92) and Kristen Peake (BS Management, '90) were married August 6. Jeff works for Corning, Inc., in Danville and Harrodsburg, KY. Their address: 206 Citation Dr., Danville, KY 40422.
John MacNair (BA '93) is pursuing a PhD at the University of North Carolina on a Board of Governor's Fellowship. His research project involves two dimensional separation of proteins from a complex mixture. John tells us that Paul Schnier (BS '93) is working on a PhD at Berkeley and is doing well. John's address: 306 N. Estes Dr., Apt. 10A, Carrboro, NC 27510.
C. Max Hull joined the chemistry faculty of Harpur College in 1953. He had previously served on the faculty of the Associated Colleges of Upper New York (ACUNY) at the Sampson and Champlain campuses. A native of Clinton, Illinois, he was an undergraduate at the University of Illinois and did his graduate studies at Ohio State. Prior to his time at ACUNY he held positions at DuPont, Standard Oil of Indiana, and the Research Foundation at Ohio State. He retired from Binghamton in 1974, and he and his wife of 60 years, Dorean (BS, Illinois, '30), still live at 18 Audubon Avenue, Binghamton, NY 13903. This interview was recorded at the Hull's home on Tuesday, July 19, 1994.
CEM - I went to "American Men and Women of Science" and looked you up. It says there that you are a native of Clinton, Illinois.
CMH - That's right.
CEM - And you went to the University of Illinois and received your bachelor's degree in 1930. Did you go there to study chemistry from the start?
CMH - I went there as a sophomore. I went to Hanover College (Indiana) my freshman year.
CEM - What made you decide to go into chemistry?
CMH - Well, I always liked chemistry and did well in chemistry in high school.
CEM - So who were some of your professors?
CMH - I had "Speed" Marvel for organic chemistry.
CEM - Did you do research with him?
CMH - No, I did research, a senior project, with Ralph Shriner who later went to Indiana University and then to the University of Iowa. He was co-author, with Fuson, of the well-known book on organic qualitative analysis.
CEM - Was Roger Adams there at that time?
CMH - Yes, he was head of the department.
CEM - What did you do after graduation?
CMH - I worked for DuPont for a year in Wilmington, Delaware, and then went to graduate school at Ohio State where I was a graduate assistant.
CEM - You went straight for a PhD?
CMH - Yes, that's right. I received my degree in 1935.
CEM - Then what did you do?
CMH - I went to work for Standard Oil of Indiana in Whiting, Indiana. We lived in Chicago, and I commuted to Whiting which is just over the state line on Lake Michigan shoreline. I was there until 1943.
CEM - Then you went back to Ohio State?
CMH - Yes, as a research associate at the Research Foundation. It was a rubber project sponsored by Firestone Rubber Company. I was working on vulcanization.
CEM - Now, when that was over, you went to Sampson College. What and where was Sampson College?
CMH - Sampson was on the east shore of Seneca Lake, a few miles south of Geneva, NY. It was a unit of the Associated Colleges of Upper New York (ACUNY) which included Champlain College at Plattsburg and Mohawk College at Utica, in addition to Sampson. [ACUNY was established to provide for the veterans of World War II who were taking advantage of the so-called GI Bill of Rights. There were so many returning veterans that the existing colleges and universities could not accommodate them. The ACUNY colleges were located at military facilities in New York State which were being decommissioned: Sampson at the Naval Training Center near Geneva, Champlain at the Plattsburg Army Barracks, and Mohawk at the Rhoads General (U.S. Army) Hospital in Utica.]
CEM - Who set up ACUNY?
CMH - Governor Dewey initiated it. [He brought together the presidents of colleges and universities in the upstate region to find solutions to the problem of the large number of veterans who would be seeking to go to college, and eventually they were constituted as the Board of Trustees of ACUNY.]
CEM - How did you happen to make the move to Sampson?
CMH - Amos Horney, whom I had known in graduate school at Ohio State, was over-all head of chemistry at ACUNY, and he asked me if I wanted a job. I told him I would only be interested if I were to be head of chemistry at the Sampson unit, which he agreed to. We had a pretty big department.
CEM - You had quite a number of students in that program, didn't you?
CMH - Yes, in the freshman chemistry course we had twelve hundred students.
CEM - That's bigger than we have at the university now, and we have twelve thousand students. Here you had a school with enough students to have twelve hundred in freshman chemistry, but a year before there was nothing - why was that?
CMH - Well, most of the students were GIs, just back from the war.
CEM - Now you were at Sampson for how long?
CMH - For two years (1946-48) and then at Champlain until 1953 as head of the department.
[ACUNY's mission was a limited one: providing for the large number of GIs after the war. As the number of students which needed to be accommodated began to decrease, a phase-out was initiated. Mohawk campus was closed in 1948, the Sampson campus in 1949. In 1950 Champlain College became a unit of the State University of New York, and ACUNY ceased to exist. This was the same year that Triple Cities College of Syracuse University became Harpur College of SUNY. Champlain was closed in 1953, and a number of members of its faculty and administration moved to Harpur, Professor Hull among them.]
CEM - Then you came to Harpur College in 1953.
CMH - Yes, as Professor of Chemistry. It was on the old campus in Endicott. I was Chairman of the Division of Science and Mathematics from 1956 until 1963 and became Chairman of the Department of Chemistry in 1965.
CEM - When did you make the move to the present campus?
CMH - The move started in 1958 when the gymnasium and the first group of dormitories were finished. Most of the other activities moved the next year, but the science division stayed in Endicott for a year after that. During that last year, as chairman of the division, I was the top man on the Endicott campus. One of our early secretaries was Annie Beavers (now Annie Cron), and she was terrific, real good. She really took over and ran the place.
CEM - When did you learn that Harpur was going to become one of the university centers?
CMH - That would have been in the early sixties. Most of the detailed planning for the PhD program in chemistry was done during my term as department chairman which began in 1965.
CEM - What do you remember about those days? What were some of the issues in setting up the PhD program?
CMH - The most important issue was whether we had sufficient qualified faculty.
CEM - I know you brought in some consultants to help assess the proposed program. Who were some of those people.
CMH - Of course, Paul Flory (physical chemistry) is one I remember since he had been at Ohio State, and Stan Madan suggested his graduate advisor, John Bailar of Illinois, for inorganic. Then there was Stanley Tarbell (organic) who was head of the department at Rochester. Tarbell is still around; he's at Vanderbilt. He got into the history of chemistry in recent years, and he and his wife collaborated on a book in that area. The visits of these people had to do with getting approval of the program to give advanced degrees.
CEM - What students do you recall?
CMH - One of my earliest students, over at the old Endicott campus, was Peter Zayac. He was from the community and, after going to medical school, came back to practice here in the Binghamton area. He died just a few years ago.
CEM - Are there other students you remember?
CMH - John Welsh did his master's degree with me. At the time he was working at GAF; some time later he went with IBM-Endicott.
CEM - Well, tell me a bit about your family. You have how many children?
CMH - Four. My oldest, Jim, is a pediatrician in Los Gatos, California; he has four sons, all pretty well grown - the youngest is in college. Next is Ed who has a doctorate in music from Memphis State and lives in Branford, Connecticut. His wife, Diane, is also in music; she has a BA from Syracuse and MFA from the Manhattan School of Music. They have three boys and a girl. I tell the girl she's my favorite granddaughter, and she replies that she's my only granddaughter.
CEM - Then you have two daughters?
CMH - Yes. Margaret (PhD, U. Mass.-Amherst) is a clinical psychologist at a mental health clinic in Atlantic City, New Jersey. She lives in Pomona, NJ. Liz and her husband live in Minneapolis; they have two boys. Liz is also in music; she has a BA from Harpur and MFA from U. Cal.- Santa Barbara. She studied piano with Walter Ponce.
CEM - Your youngest grandchild is how old?
CMH - That would be Liz's younger son who is five.
CEM - And the oldest?
CMH - Jim's son Steve is thirty four.
CEM - I know you're proud of them all.
CMH - Oh yes!
Our advertisement for a new faculty position appeared earlier in the summer in C&EN:
State University of New York at Binghamton ASSISTANT PROFESSOR ANALYTICAL OR PHYSICAL CHEMISTRY, tenure track position starting January 1995. Outstanding applicants with interests in spectroscopy or environmental chemistry are especially encouraged to apply. Ph.D. in the Chemical Sciences is required. This University is committed to high quality undergraduate and graduate education (PhD/MS). Applications including a curriculum vitae, research plan and 3 letters of recommendation should be sent to Professor Udo Brinker, Chair, Department of Chemistry, SUNYBinghamton, Binghamton, NY 139026000. "..strongly committed to affirmative action. Recruitment conducted without regard to race, color, sex, religion, age, disability, marital status, sexual orientation, or national origin." Applications will be considered starting August 15, 1994.
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Mail to: Chemistry Newsletter c/o Professor C. E. Myers Chemistry Department Binghamton University (SUNY) P. O. Box 6000 Binghamton, NY 13902-6000 FAX: (607) 777-4478 E-Mail: CMYERS@BINGVMB.cc.binghamton.edu