00:00:00 I think I should give this to Professor Gerrard so she can populate and introduce our speaker.

00:00:10 Well, it is a real pleasure to introduce our speaker today.

00:00:15 I've only come to know Dave Adams in the last year and a half or so, almost two years at this point,

00:00:22 but many folks have known him a lot longer and he has an awful lot to offer us that we've been able to benefit from this semester in particular

00:00:33 because he's been taking a sabbatical in the department from Babson where he is the director of natural sciences and associate professor of chemistry.

00:00:41 He's a 1967 graduate of the department, did undergraduate research with Marv Rausch at a time that I understand was a lively involvement of undergraduates

00:00:51 in the research of Marv's program, exciting and productive, absolutely.

00:00:55 And Dave has maintained, he went on to do his PhD at the University of Connecticut and distinguished himself in his academic career

00:01:05 and has had a series of positions since then.

00:01:09 And he has maintained a very, very high loyalty to the department and active interest in its history.

00:01:18 This is what we will benefit from today.

00:01:20 But the other things that you won't see perhaps as vividly today are that he is very dedicated in his teaching of organic chemistry,

00:01:30 in his interest in communicating science to the public, and in a very broad way, just acting as a true science educator.

00:01:38 I was chatting with him today and I've always been very impressed by Dave's enthusiasm and how quickly he engages one.

00:01:47 And it just came through that the teaching he's doing for us this semester in our non-majors organic course is really just a boon to us.

00:01:57 The students are absolutely ecstatic about what they're learning.

00:02:01 They are brought along with him to understand the field of organic chemistry and to appreciate its applications.

00:02:09 And it's just a joy that we've been able to work out a synergistic relationship.

00:02:13 At the same time, he's delving into the archives of the institution, digging up pictures that you wouldn't believe, many of which we'll get to see,

00:02:21 writing articles about the history of the department, including biographies of some of its key figures,

00:02:29 including a history of our much-loved building, Gissman.

00:02:33 And all of this is really to our benefit and it's really been a pleasure.

00:02:39 And the last thing I'd like to thank him for is that he's also helped us to get started, I hope, on really rallying alumni support for the department.

00:02:47 He was pivotal in setting up the first reunion of the chemistry department that we had last June

00:02:53 and single-handedly gathered together a very, very good attendance from the classes of folks that he knew.

00:03:01 And so we really appreciate everything you've done, Dave, and we can't wait to hear the story.

00:03:06 Thank you.

00:03:08 Applause

00:03:19 Well, thank you very much, Lana, for that introduction.

00:03:21 I have been spending the last several years looking into the history of chemistry,

00:03:26 and up until last summer, at least, I spent a lot of time looking at historical chemical figures from lesser-known institutions in Boston and Cambridge,

00:03:35 Harvard and MIT, and as a result of last summer's UMass Chemistry Reunion,

00:03:40 which was the first annual one, which I thought went very well,

00:03:43 I decided at that point that I would really want to focus my efforts in chemical history to my alma mater,

00:03:49 which is the University of Massachusetts.

00:03:51 So within the last year or so, I've been spending quite a bit of time looking into the history of the UMass Chem Department.

00:03:58 And I'm on sabbatical this year from Babson College, as Lila said.

00:04:02 I spent the fall really writing a paper on Joseph Chamberlain, who you'll hear about in a few minutes,

00:04:07 one of the professors who worked in this department for a number of years.

00:04:10 I wrote a little story on the Guessman Laboratory.

00:04:13 And really since January, I've spent a lot of time at the archives and delving into the history of the department.

00:04:20 So what you're about to hear is a work in progress.

00:04:23 It's the results of about two and a half months of the work I've been able to do.

00:04:27 I've tried to pull it all together.

00:04:28 It's awful hard to talk about 130 years of rich and varied history in an hour, but I'm going to try to do that.

00:04:35 And hopefully I won't get through all of it, so that I'll be invited back again at some other time.

00:04:41 Okay, if we could just have the first slide, I guess.

00:04:50 It's changed a little bit from the announcement that went out.

00:04:53 I want to call it UMass Chemistry Catalyst for Constructive Change,

00:04:57 because I think that's exactly what this department has meant to the university over the last 130 years.

00:05:02 And I guess I can control this.

00:05:05 There we go.

00:05:07 To start off with, over at the campus center outside of the Blue Wall Cafeteria, there is a painting.

00:05:13 And on this painting, there are these two individuals.

00:05:16 You've probably walked by this a number of times and not really taken a close look at it.

00:05:19 But the title of this painting is Massachusetts Agricultural College at its Opening.

00:05:24 This was the year 1867.

00:05:27 The gentleman to the left is Levi Shockridge.

00:05:29 He was the farm superintendent.

00:05:31 He, in fact, was the first faculty member hired at the University of Massachusetts,

00:05:35 well, in those days, Massachusetts Agricultural College.

00:05:38 The man to the right in the top hat is William S. Clark.

00:05:43 William S. Clark was a Ph.D. organic chemist.

00:05:47 He was the third president of the Massachusetts Agricultural College.

00:05:53 And he received his Ph.D. from Friedrich Wolle in Göttingen in Germany.

00:05:57 And so he was a true chemist, one of the first chemists to work at Massachusetts Agricultural College.

00:06:03 You can see some of the early buildings in the background.

00:06:05 We'll come back to those in a minute.

00:06:08 At this point in time when Clark was the third president of Mass. Agricultural College,

00:06:13 there was no chemistry department.

00:06:15 There were no chemistry faculty.

00:06:16 There were no chemistry courses.

00:06:18 Those all needed to be developed.

00:06:20 This is a copy of the first page of Clark's Ph.D. thesis under Wolle at Germany.

00:06:27 It's entitled Metallic Meteorites.

00:06:29 So it looks like a geology Ph.D. thesis,

00:06:33 but if you spend the time to read the thesis, which I did,

00:06:36 you'll see that it really involves qualitative and quantitative analysis.

00:06:40 And so, as far as I'm concerned, William S. Clark was ahead of Ph.D. in chemistry,

00:06:45 if not organic chemistry, certainly inorganic chemistry.

00:06:51 Clark was a professor of chemistry at Amherst College prior to coming to MAC.

00:06:56 He was also a Civil War hero.

00:06:58 Here he is in his uniform.

00:06:59 He was a volunteer for the 41st Regiment from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

00:07:04 He was reported killed several times during the war, but he always was resurrected.

00:07:10 At one point, a telegram went from his family to the South saying,

00:07:14 please send his body back.

00:07:16 He spent three days behind rebel lines,

00:07:19 eventually crawled to safety in the Union lines

00:07:21 and sent the telegram back saying,

00:07:23 I'll be coming, but I'm bringing my body with me.

00:07:25 I still need it.

00:07:27 This is the kind of gentleman who became the third president

00:07:30 of Massachusetts Agricultural College,

00:07:32 and he was the first sitting president,

00:07:34 the first president when there were students at the college.

00:07:37 The first person who really is associated with chemistry at this campus

00:07:41 is Paul Chadbourne.

00:07:42 He was the second president.

00:07:43 He was only the president for about a year.

00:07:46 He was the professor of chemistry at Williams College,

00:07:49 and he, as I said, served here.

00:07:51 But it was Chadbourne, really,

00:07:53 who designed and partially supervised the construction

00:07:57 of the first four buildings on this campus.

00:08:00 This is a photograph from the coffee shop over at the Campus Center.

00:08:04 It shows the early view of the campus

00:08:07 with some of the buildings along the ridge where the chapel is right now.

00:08:12 And one of those first four buildings that were built in 1867,

00:08:15 one of those first four buildings that was here

00:08:18 when the students first arrived for classes on October 2, 1867,

00:08:22 was the old chem lab.

00:08:25 This is the old chem lab.

00:08:27 This building was approximately on the location

00:08:30 of the west wing of Mackler Hall,

00:08:32 and this was the main entrance right here.

00:08:35 That will assume some importance a little while later on.

00:08:37 This was the bell up here in the belfry.

00:08:39 This was the bell that woke the students up at 6 o'clock in the morning

00:08:42 for physical labor seven days a week, two hours a day.

00:08:46 Don't forget, back in those days, this was an agricultural college,

00:08:49 and working in the fields was a big part of the education.

00:08:52 The key person, though, who really made chemistry central to this campus

00:08:59 was William S. Clark.

00:09:01 He was an Amherst resident.

00:09:03 He was a state legislator.

00:09:05 He was involved in the Massachusetts Agricultural Society.

00:09:08 He was a strong proponent of bringing Mass Aggie to Amherst.

00:09:13 And today, there is a memorial to William Smith Clark

00:09:17 up on Vanmita Hill, the old Orchard Hill that we used to call it

00:09:21 when I was a student here, and it's an interesting memorial

00:09:23 and you should take a look at it sometime.

00:09:26 When Clark was hired to be the third president,

00:09:30 he already had Stockbridge as the farm superintendent,

00:09:33 but he immediately hired Henry Goodell to teach languages

00:09:36 and Ebenezer Snell to teach math,

00:09:38 and those four faculty were the initial faculty of four

00:09:43 at Mass Agricultural College.

00:09:45 They did everything for the first year.

00:09:47 They administered, they taught, they worked in the fields,

00:09:50 they admitted students, they started the library.

00:09:52 Those four faculty did everything for that first year and a half.

00:09:57 In fact, during that first year, there were no chemicals,

00:10:02 there were no supplies, no equipment.

00:10:04 The old chem lab was empty.

00:10:07 In fact, Henry Goodell felt so bad about that old chem lab being empty,

00:10:10 he used it as a gym.

00:10:13 It was pretty obvious that Clark needed a chemist at Amherst

00:10:17 to get things started.

00:10:18 A year and a half had gone by.

00:10:20 The students needed chemistry in their curriculum.

00:10:22 There was no chemist to do that,

00:10:24 and so Clark thought about his former classmate and good friend

00:10:29 during the Göttingen days,

00:10:31 and he gave Carl Anton Gessmann a call at this time.

00:10:35 Gessmann was in the United States.

00:10:37 He was working at the Amandager Salt Works.

00:10:39 He was there at the bequest of his former students,

00:10:44 his American students.

00:10:46 There was a problem with using dairy salt to make butter.

00:10:49 American salt just wouldn't work,

00:10:51 and so the great German chemist Gessmann

00:10:53 was summoned to this country to work on that problem.

00:10:55 This is him in his office at the Amandager Salt Works.

00:10:58 There are some of his books in the background,

00:11:00 a photo of Wohle up on the wall there.

00:11:05 Gessmann didn't want to come at first.

00:11:07 Clark wrote to him repeatedly, 1866, 1867, 1868,

00:11:12 each letter getting more desperate.

00:11:15 Finally, Gessmann, I don't know what induced him to finally say yes,

00:11:20 but he was appointed on March 18, 1868

00:11:24 as the first professor of chemistry at MAC,

00:11:27 and he came to Amherst in December of 1868

00:11:32 to begin his duties in January of 1869.

00:11:35 This is the contract letter,

00:11:37 a lot different than today's contract letters,

00:11:39 that Gessmann received from Clark,

00:11:41 my dear Dr. Charles A. Gessmann.

00:11:43 He had changed his name.

00:11:44 He had anglicized his name by that time

00:11:46 from Carl Anton to Charles A.,

00:11:48 and he goes down here.

00:11:49 He's going to pay $2,000 a year to do this work,

00:11:54 $250 housing allowance,

00:11:56 and for that he was going to teach four hours a day,

00:11:59 five days a week, 39 weeks a year,

00:12:01 and he was going to develop the curriculum,

00:12:03 both lecture and laboratory,

00:12:05 and keep the lab open on Saturday

00:12:07 for senior students who wanted to work in it,

00:12:09 and do any experimental analyses of agricultural products

00:12:13 which any farmer in the state wanted him to do,

00:12:16 all for $2,000 a year.

00:12:18 So you can see why I say why he accepted it.

00:12:20 Who knows?

00:12:22 But it's our good fortune that he did.

00:12:24 One thing I want to point out

00:12:26 on this second page of the contract letter

00:12:28 is how important Clark was

00:12:30 for setting the standard for this department.

00:12:35 In his letter to Gessmann, he says, quote,

00:12:37 I intend to have the chemical department of this college

00:12:39 equal to any in the country.

00:12:41 Clark believed that.

00:12:43 He hired Gessmann to do that,

00:12:45 and that standard was set high in the very beginning,

00:12:47 and it's been maintained over the years.

00:12:51 Gessmann came to Amherst in January of 1869

00:12:54 to begin his teaching duties.

00:12:56 The curriculum at that time

00:12:58 involved general chemistry in the first year,

00:13:00 basically organic and analytical in the second year,

00:13:04 with agricultural chemistry in the third year,

00:13:06 and that agricultural chemistry course,

00:13:08 that was really advanced quantitative analysis,

00:13:11 analysis of fertilizers, water, soil,

00:13:13 that type of thing.

00:13:15 What's amazing about this curriculum

00:13:16 is how similar it is today.

00:13:18 General qualitative analysis, analytical organic,

00:13:20 and then advanced analytical.

00:13:22 So even though this was in 1869,

00:13:25 the same kinds of courses are still around.

00:13:28 You can see some of the other courses

00:13:30 which the students, in fact, took at that time.

00:13:33 What's important to note about the curriculum

00:13:35 is that every student in the college

00:13:37 took all the same courses.

00:13:39 No majors, no concentrations, no specialization.

00:13:42 Every student took the same courses.

00:13:44 So there wasn't a problem with advisement.

00:13:47 What a wonderful thing.

00:13:48 Everybody took the same thing.

00:13:53 One of the things that Gessmann did immediately

00:13:56 was to start a whole series of agricultural experiments

00:14:01 at the Mass Agricultural College.

00:14:03 He did this in the old chem lab

00:14:05 once it was outfitted

00:14:06 and once he bought chemicals and equipment.

00:14:08 He did experiments on cranberry growth.

00:14:10 He did experiments on sugar beet growth in this country,

00:14:14 salt marsh reclamation, fertilizer analysis,

00:14:17 and the things he worked on are much too long

00:14:20 for me to even begin to touch upon here.

00:14:23 But suffice it to say that his success in this area

00:14:26 was not only known around the state of Massachusetts,

00:14:29 but was known literally around the country and the world.

00:14:32 And it's factual to say

00:14:37 that when this college was on the brink

00:14:39 of closing up in the late 1880s and early 1890s,

00:14:42 as it was, there was a bill in the Massachusetts legislature

00:14:46 to simply make MAC, Massachusetts Agricultural College,

00:14:50 a branch of Amherst College.

00:14:52 The proposal was to simply make it

00:14:54 the ag component of Amherst College.

00:14:57 So it would be Amherst College and ag down up the road.

00:15:00 That didn't happen because of Gessmann's success

00:15:03 in agricultural experiments.

00:15:05 His value to the farmers and the commerce of this commonwealth

00:15:08 was so important that a lot of people believe,

00:15:11 as I have come to believe,

00:15:13 that his success led to the retention of this institution,

00:15:16 MAC, back in those days,

00:15:18 and allowed it to become what it is today.

00:15:21 Gessmann did it all himself.

00:15:23 From 1869 to 1884, he was a one-man show.

00:15:26 He was a one-man chem department.

00:15:28 He did everything, taught, researched, advised,

00:15:30 bought the chemicals.

00:15:32 This is a picture of him in about 1875

00:15:35 as a fairly young man.

00:15:37 And it was pretty apparent to Gessmann at that time

00:15:39 that he needed help.

00:15:41 There was no help forthcoming from new professors,

00:15:44 so he did the very next best thing.

00:15:47 He got some of his best undergraduates

00:15:50 after they graduated from MAC

00:15:52 to stay on and work with him.

00:15:55 And these people helped him in the laboratory,

00:15:58 helped him in the experiment station,

00:16:00 helped him do his agricultural experiments.

00:16:02 And this all started about 1873.

00:16:05 In fact, Gessmann,

00:16:08 in his 10th annual report of the chem department,

00:16:11 said in the chemistry department annual report,

00:16:15 quote,

00:16:17 I believe it to be for the interest of the college

00:16:20 to offer inducements to graduates

00:16:22 who have made themselves noticeable

00:16:24 for interest and efficiency in chemistry

00:16:26 to remain and assist in the laboratory

00:16:28 and field work of such experiments.

00:16:30 So it was Gessmann who first conceived

00:16:33 of the idea of this kind of change,

00:16:35 that graduates could stay and help as postgraduates.

00:16:38 And while they were here working in the laboratory,

00:16:40 it was a natural thing for those students

00:16:42 to ask Gessmann,

00:16:44 gee, could you teach us a little bit

00:16:46 about some advanced topics in chemistry?

00:16:48 And so he did.

00:16:50 The first postgraduate courses at the college

00:16:52 were often in chemistry by Gessmann,

00:16:54 and the whole idea of the graduate school

00:16:56 sprung directly from that.

00:16:58 Three years later, in 1876,

00:17:01 in the 13th annual report

00:17:03 of the Mass Agricultural College,

00:17:05 there was an announcement for graduate degrees,

00:17:07 the doctorate degree would be awarded

00:17:09 for anybody who wanted to work with

00:17:11 Professor Gessmann in chemistry.

00:17:13 So another change, that of postgraduate studies,

00:17:16 that emanated directly from the chemistry department

00:17:19 due to Gessmann's need for help.

00:17:21 It turns out...

00:17:22 It turns out, by the way, that Gessman never supervised a master's or a Ph.D. student.

00:17:30 No student ever graduated under him.

00:17:32 He knew that the college wasn't ready really to deliver a full Ph.D. or a full master's

00:17:37 degree, even though the announcement was in the catalog.

00:17:40 He used this as a device to get people to help him out with his work.

00:17:43 And when they were through helping him out, he would advise them, if they really wanted

00:17:46 a graduate degree, to go to Germany, which is what they did.

00:17:50 One of the first people to do that was Charles Wallington.

00:17:53 He graduated from M.A.C. in 73, that's 1873, and he worked for Gessman for three years.

00:17:59 And after that time, Gessman said to him, Charles, go to Gerdingen.

00:18:04 He did.

00:18:05 Wallington went over to work for Bernhard Tollens, who has a Ph.D. in organic chemistry,

00:18:09 and eventually, as you'll see, returned to M.A.C.

00:18:14 The graduate announcement, by the way, was pulled from the catalog in 1887.

00:18:18 So it was in the catalog for 11 years, and I highly suspect the reason it was pulled

00:18:23 was because by 1887, Gessman had gone into the experiment station, had a whole host of

00:18:29 people working for him, and didn't need the student labor anymore.

00:18:34 The agricultural experiments were done in the old chem lab by Gessman and his students.

00:18:38 By 1878, the work had become so extensive that it was formally, through private donations,

00:18:45 instituted into the first recognizable experiment station on this campus.

00:18:51 Private donations.

00:18:52 Levi Stockbridge funded it, basically.

00:18:54 He gave $1,000 to start the first experiment station.

00:18:57 And by 1882, the Commonwealth finally funded, through state funds, the Massachusetts Agricultural

00:19:04 Experiment Station, M.A.E.S.

00:19:06 It was started in 1882.

00:19:09 Gessman was appointed the director in November of 1882, and he moved over into experimental

00:19:15 station work almost exclusively at that point.

00:19:18 And so the department needed another instructor.

00:19:20 Gessman had to be relieved of his teaching duties to do research.

00:19:24 This is a theme that's been around for quite some time.

00:19:28 And so the college hired Horace Stockbridge in 1884 to take over.

00:19:33 Stockbridge came on the campus and lasted one year.

00:19:37 He went off to Japan for another job.

00:19:40 And in 1885, Charles Wellington returned from Germany to take over the instructional duties

00:19:45 at Mass Agricultural College.

00:19:47 So at that time, you had Gessman working in the experiment station actively on agricultural

00:19:51 experiments, and Wellington was then put in charge of the instructional program.

00:19:56 The experiment station grew so rapidly that more space was needed.

00:20:02 In 1885, the Stone Chapel was built.

00:20:04 The deal with the Stone Chapel was, if we build the chapel, then the chapel could move

00:20:11 out of the old chem lab, because from the beginning of the time students came on campus,

00:20:15 the chapel was in the first floor of the old chem lab.

00:20:18 And so when the chapel moved out into the new one, that space that was freed up was

00:20:22 dedicated to the experiment station.

00:20:24 That was in 1885.

00:20:26 But that wasn't enough.

00:20:27 And so in 1886, the West Experiment Station was constructed under Gessman's guidance.

00:20:35 And as soon as it was done, Gessman moved in immediately out of the old chem lab into

00:20:40 this room right here.

00:20:42 This is the conical roof with a round section with a quarter cone in front.

00:20:46 It's still there.

00:20:47 It still exists the same way it did.

00:20:48 And Gessman set up his office right here.

00:20:50 And if you go over there to this very day, you can see the safe that says West Experiment

00:20:55 Station, in which Gessman kept the receipts from the farmers for the fertilizer analyses

00:21:00 that he did to pay his grad students.

00:21:02 And in fact, this is a museum, really.

00:21:04 If you go back into the bowels of the experiment station, you can see a lot of old beakers

00:21:09 and flasks and test tubes that we used in that experiment station.

00:21:19 By 1885, when Gessman moved into the West Experiment Station, he only taught seniors.

00:21:24 He taught them in his office.

00:21:26 The few that wanted a senior course, he taught them in the first floor office for the lecture.

00:21:30 But the lab was taught in this one.

00:21:32 Oh, I forgot about this slide.

00:21:34 This is another slide.

00:21:35 This is the West Experiment Station.

00:21:37 And it shows it from a vantage point.

00:21:40 This is the same station you saw in the earlier slide.

00:21:43 And this is North Pleasant Street.

00:21:45 This is Stockbridge Road.

00:21:46 You can see how wide open it was.

00:21:48 This was an agricultural colony.

00:21:50 All the fields that Gessman used to grow various plants and vegetables to do experiments with.

00:21:57 I thought this was a very interesting vantage point to see the West Experiment Station.

00:22:01 But this is the old senior lab and the old chem lab.

00:22:04 This is where the students worked when they took the laboratory portion of Gessman's course.

00:22:09 You can see the electric lights were brand new in those days.

00:22:12 They were hanging down a bulb, and that's it.

00:22:14 I mean, that was what illuminated the laboratories.

00:22:18 Kind of an interesting slide.

00:22:21 The growth of the experiment station continued unabated, and Joseph Lindsay was hired to work there in 1892.

00:22:30 Joseph Lindsay will pop up again in the history of the chem department as we move along.

00:22:36 One thing I want to mention, in 1897, Charles Peters was a graduate of that class.

00:22:43 A lot of you know and remember Doc Peters around the department.

00:22:46 This is him in 1966 at the reunion.

00:22:49 He was over 90 years old at that time.

00:22:51 Still vibrant, still healthy, still going on the metamorphic hike twice a year.

00:22:55 It's clear he graduated in 97.

00:22:58 When he graduated in 1997, he stayed behind for a year to work with Wellington in the laboratory,

00:23:06 preparing solutions and doing things in the old chem lab.

00:23:10 In the summer of 1898, a year after Peters had stayed on in Amherst,

00:23:15 some of the chemistry students went up to him and said,

00:23:17 you know, we'd like to get ahead in our curriculum.

00:23:19 We'd like to accelerate our program and maybe even graduate a little early.

00:23:24 Wouldn't you mind teaching some chemistry courses to us over this next summer?

00:23:28 And so Peter said, sure, I'll teach some chemistry courses to you.

00:23:32 And so a bunch of students, 25 to 28 students I believe it was,

00:23:37 actually took several chemistry courses with Peters in the summer of 1898

00:23:41 to accelerate their academic program.

00:23:43 The first summer school at the Massachusetts Technical and Cultural College

00:23:47 emanated from the chemistry department,

00:23:50 so another kind of constructive thing that came out of the initiative

00:23:54 and the creativity of the people in this department.

00:23:57 Peters was a lot younger in 1898 when he did that.

00:24:00 This is him some 68 years later.

00:24:04 The first master's degree was awarded in 1898,

00:24:09 and that was awarded to Edward B. Holland,

00:24:12 who some of you probably know.

00:24:14 Ed Holland worked for many, many years in the experiment station.

00:24:17 No copy of Holland's master's thesis exists,

00:24:20 but it was the first master's thesis in chemistry at this institution.

00:24:25 However, in view of the fact that Holland was an assistant

00:24:29 in the experiment station to Joseph Lindsay,

00:24:31 it's reasonable, I think, to assume that Lindsay supervised that master's degree work.

00:24:36 So to Joseph Lindsay then falls the honor of being the first professor of chemistry

00:24:42 to have supervised a graduate degree,

00:24:45 and this is Joseph Bridgel Lindsay,

00:24:48 who later became the department head and other things.

00:24:51 And he, as we indicated, was the first advisor of the master's thesis at the institution.

00:24:57 Another thing which the chemistry department thought about,

00:24:59 by 1900 it was beginning, the enrollment was increasing,

00:25:03 and so the chemistry department people thought,

00:25:04 well, why don't we have some money and we'll call a fellowship.

00:25:09 We'll pay a graduate to help us teach in the classroom,

00:25:13 and the fellowship will also help that person do their research.

00:25:16 So it was the first graduate assistantship that was ever offered on this campus

00:25:20 emanated once again from the chemistry department by thinking creatively,

00:25:24 and that was a very constructive change.

00:25:26 In fact, this was in 1900,

00:25:28 Henry Goodell was the president at that time,

00:25:31 and Henry was so impressed with the chemistry department initiative

00:25:34 that he wrote the following in the annual report of that year.

00:25:37 The advantages to both instructor and pupils are so obvious

00:25:41 that it is hoped that the same course as used in chemistry may be adopted in other departments.

00:25:46 So once again, chemistry sets the pace for the rest of the university.

00:25:55 One of the things I wanted to mention was in 1903,

00:25:58 I'm trying to go at this quite chronologically,

00:26:01 by 1903, students started to specialize.

00:26:04 For the first time, not all students took all courses in the curriculum.

00:26:08 They had what they called, quote unquote, courses.

00:26:11 There was a course in agronomy, a course in entomology, and a course in chemistry.

00:26:15 They were like majors, but not officially called majors by the university.

00:26:19 They were courses.

00:26:21 All students didn't have to take chemistry in their junior and senior years.

00:26:24 So by 1903, all students still had to take freshman and sophomore chemistry,

00:26:29 but some didn't have to take the junior and senior chemistry.

00:26:32 And the freshman and sophomore chemistry at that time

00:26:35 still turned out to be general chem and analytical chemistry.

00:26:42 Toward the end, Guestman received a lot of honors and a lot of awards

00:26:48 leading up to his retirement.

00:26:50 This is what he looked like in around 1905.

00:26:52 You can see what 40 years displaced into him.

00:26:55 That's the other photo.

00:26:57 There are other examples of this, but I'm not going to show them today.

00:27:01 Guestman is safely not here, so we can talk about him.

00:27:05 One of the things that he was honored with was on his 80th birthday in 1907,

00:27:11 his students got together and presented him with a Tiffany stained glass window.

00:27:16 This was in his study at his home for many years.

00:27:20 It then was hung in the Guestman Alcove when that building was built.

00:27:23 You'll see it in a few minutes.

00:27:25 But the Tiffany stained glass window today is in the wall,

00:27:29 not on the wall, in the wall,

00:27:31 opposite the front door of Old Guestman.

00:27:33 As you walk in, you can still see it there.

00:27:35 It's filled with symbolism.

00:27:37 Some of it, the German coat of arms,

00:27:41 the area where he came from, Hamburg and Fritzlaner,

00:27:44 his German name, Karl Anton Guestman,

00:27:46 die Göttinger haben den Göttingers have courage

00:27:50 from when they were attacked by the people in the olden days

00:27:54 and they defended their areas.

00:27:56 This was given to him on his 80th birthday.

00:27:58 This is chemistry test tubes, a crucible,

00:28:00 a Hessian crucible back here in the flames of fire.

00:28:02 There's a lot of other symbolism in this,

00:28:04 and this can still be seen.

00:28:06 It's in very good shape, and I'm sure that most of you have seen that,

00:28:08 in the Old Guestman Laboratory.

00:28:10 Another thing that was done for Guestman

00:28:12 is that his portrait was painted by Edward Gould,

00:28:14 a very famous portrait painter from New York City.

00:28:17 The trustees and the alumni paid to have this portrait painted

00:28:21 in January of 1910, because Guestman was 83 years old at the time.

00:28:25 And that portrait hung in the Guestman Alcove

00:28:29 for a number of years.

00:28:31 It was on display at the opening

00:28:33 and the dedication of the Old Guestman Laboratory,

00:28:35 and for a long time was misplaced,

00:28:38 and no one knew where it was.

00:28:40 And eventually it turned up a couple of years ago,

00:28:43 and today it's over in the Fine Arts Center,

00:28:45 in the back room, in the way back room,

00:28:47 dirty and unkempt,

00:28:50 and there it sits to this day.

00:28:52 You'll see the portrait a little while later on.

00:28:56 In 1907, basically, Guestman retired.

00:29:00 He was made Honorary Professor.

00:29:02 He received the Carnegie Retirement Check.

00:29:04 Back in those days, they didn't have Social Security and things like that.

00:29:07 The university didn't give out retirement,

00:29:09 but the most prestigious scientist

00:29:11 received retirement checks from the Carnegie Institution.

00:29:14 He was one such person.

00:29:15 He was made Honorary Director of the Experiment Station,

00:29:17 and Charles Wellington was named

00:29:19 the second department head in 1907.

00:29:23 By 1909, students only had to take

00:29:27 General Chemistry I and II.

00:29:30 Every student still had to take General Chemistry I and II,

00:29:33 but didn't have to take any other chemistry courses.

00:29:35 I think this rapid loss of all students

00:29:39 taking all chemistry courses

00:29:41 had something to do with Guestman's

00:29:43 loss of influence in the college.

00:29:45 I'm not quite sure about that.

00:29:47 I need to do some more research into that.

00:29:49 As I said earlier, this is a work in progress.

00:29:51 When Guestman retired,

00:29:52 the college felt that it had to maintain

00:29:54 its position in agricultural chemistry,

00:29:56 and so they hired Joseph Scudder Chamberlain,

00:29:59 Shorty Chamberlain, as he was known.

00:30:01 He was about 5'3".

00:30:03 Shorty Chamberlain was raised on a farm in Ohio.

00:30:07 He had worked for the USDA for eight years.

00:30:10 He had a lot of experience in agricultural chemistry.

00:30:12 He came to NAC in 1909,

00:30:15 two years after Guestman retired.

00:30:17 He came with impeccable references.

00:30:19 He began immediately to develop advanced organic courses.

00:30:22 He wrote organic books.

00:30:23 He wrote organic agricultural books.

00:30:25 There are some of them actually on display

00:30:27 outside the old Chamberlain Library

00:30:29 in the new Guestman.

00:30:30 I saw them there just the other day.

00:30:33 He was a real pioneer in chemical education,

00:30:35 a stalwart within the department.

00:30:37 He was very active in chemical groups.

00:30:39 Time won't allow me to go through

00:30:42 all of the things that Chamberlain did,

00:30:44 but he was the president

00:30:45 of the New England Association of Chem Teachers,

00:30:47 president of the Washington Chemical Society,

00:30:49 president of the Connecticut Valley section of the ACS.

00:30:52 He was a founding member of the Oroboros Club.

00:30:55 He was a founding member

00:30:56 of the Division of Chemical History of the ACS,

00:30:59 and on it goes.

00:31:01 As Lila indicated in the introduction,

00:31:03 I did write a referenced biography of Chamberlain,

00:31:07 some 20-odd pages.

00:31:09 It's going to be published this summer.

00:31:10 If anyone's interested in seeing

00:31:12 a full detail of what Chamberlain did,

00:31:15 I wanted to share that paper with you right now.

00:31:18 I have copies of it in my office.

00:31:20 Guestman died in 1910.

00:31:23 He died at this location, 232 Amity Street.

00:31:27 That house still exists today.

00:31:30 The Jones family lives there.

00:31:32 It used to be 40 Amity Street,

00:31:34 but today it's 232 Amity Street.

00:31:36 Amity Street runs east and west this way.

00:31:39 This is the house he lived in.

00:31:41 He lived there from 1880 until his death.

00:31:44 This is the little building out back

00:31:46 where his graduate students went in the evening

00:31:50 and translated every paper that he ever wrote

00:31:53 because his handwriting was atrocious.

00:31:56 Nobody could read it.

00:31:59 His students translated word for word

00:32:01 every one of his papers,

00:32:02 and this is where they did it,

00:32:03 so it's still there to this day.

00:32:05 When he died in 1910,

00:32:07 he was buried in St. Bridget Cemetery.

00:32:09 It had the mass just over the Amherst Line.

00:32:12 This is the family plot, Guestman.

00:32:14 On a good day, Charles Guestman

00:32:16 can still look out into the blue sky

00:32:18 and see the university library,

00:32:20 the student center, the campus center.

00:32:22 Just beyond the tree,

00:32:24 the lovely Graduate Research House,

00:32:26 the chemistry building.

00:32:27 Guestman still, in some respects at least,

00:32:30 reigns over UMass chemistry.

00:32:43 One of the things that was done in 1911

00:32:46 was to honor Guestman

00:32:47 was the establishment of the

00:32:48 Guestman Professor of Chemistry.

00:32:51 The Guestman professorship was first awarded

00:32:53 in 1911 to Joseph Lindsay.

00:32:56 He was the first one.

00:32:57 At that time, Lindsay received this cup and saucer,

00:33:00 symbolic of being the Guestman professor.

00:33:03 This cup and saucer, I think,

00:33:05 was brought back to this country

00:33:08 from Germany by Guestman

00:33:09 when he traveled there in 1900

00:33:11 on vacation with his family.

00:33:13 But it clearly looks to be of German origin,

00:33:15 and this has been passed down

00:33:17 to each successive Guestman

00:33:19 Professor of Chemistry.

00:33:20 On the bottom, there's an inscription

00:33:22 that says to be passed down

00:33:24 from Guestman professor to Guestman professor.

00:33:27 This is the list of Guestman professors to date.

00:33:30 There have been four,

00:33:31 and the current Guestman professor

00:33:33 is Richard Stein,

00:33:35 who was in possession of that cup and saucer,

00:33:37 was kind enough to not only show it to me,

00:33:39 but let me hold it.

00:33:41 And the professorship was vacant for this time.

00:33:45 I've got to correct the slide.

00:33:46 There have really, obviously,

00:33:47 only been four Guestman professors.

00:33:49 Lindsay, Chamberlain, Ritchie, and then Stein.

00:33:54 From 1968 to 1980,

00:33:56 the professorship was vacant.

00:34:00 Joseph Lindsay became department head in 1911,

00:34:02 and what he did,

00:34:04 he made a very strong effort

00:34:07 to move the chemistry department forward.

00:34:09 The old chem lab was literally falling apart.

00:34:12 It was a fire truck.

00:34:14 It was described by one group of people

00:34:18 who came to Mass Agricultural College

00:34:20 at that time for an accreditation visit.

00:34:22 The accreditation visit,

00:34:23 it was described in the following way.

00:34:25 A disgrace to the commonwealth.

00:34:28 The most dilapidated,

00:34:29 the most unacceptable building on campus.

00:34:32 See, things don't change.

00:34:36 And so Lindsay made a very strong push

00:34:39 to get a new building.

00:34:40 In fact, within a year of him taking over,

00:34:42 he had the trustees convinced

00:34:44 that the building should be built

00:34:45 at the location of the present Skinner Hall.

00:34:48 The trustees actually agreed.

00:34:49 actually voted to put the new chemistry building over there.

00:34:52 That's a nice area.

00:34:54 Whatever happened to that trustee vote, I don't know.

00:34:57 The lab was a very dangerous place.

00:34:59 I'll only tell you one story.

00:35:00 Fires used to break out all the time in the old lab.

00:35:02 And there were graduate students living on the third floor.

00:35:06 And the graduate students, first of all,

00:35:08 they couldn't afford apartments.

00:35:09 So it was a freebie that the chemistry department gave them.

00:35:12 But they put out a lot of fires.

00:35:14 When the smoke rose, they smelt it, went down,

00:35:16 put the fire out, and then put the fire out.

00:35:19 It was a very interesting, unsafe place to be.

00:35:22 In fact, Charles Peters described one time

00:35:25 that all of the windows that were associated

00:35:29 with laboratories in the old chem lab had glass window boxes.

00:35:33 The glass window boxes were for taking your reaction mixture

00:35:36 that was getting out of control, heating up the window,

00:35:39 into the window box.

00:35:42 So you can imagine, you can see why

00:35:45 the accrediting agencies would have these kind of things

00:35:48 to say about the old chem labs.

00:35:53 Lindsay brought Charles Peters back to Amherst in 1911.

00:35:56 Charles Peters was the gentleman, don't forget,

00:35:58 who graduated in 97, who started the first summer school.

00:36:01 He had gone to Yale to get his PhD.

00:36:03 He came back in 1911.

00:36:05 Lindsay also hired Ernest Anderson,

00:36:08 who taught the first physical chemistry

00:36:09 course at Mass Agricultural College.

00:36:12 Physical chemistry, as we know it today,

00:36:14 was just getting started around the turn of the century

00:36:17 with noise and other people like that,

00:36:18 and Oswald in Germany.

00:36:21 And so MEC brought Anderson in from the University of Chicago

00:36:26 to teach PChem in 1911.

00:36:28 They also had Charles Wellington teach the first history

00:36:30 of chemistry course.

00:36:32 And the history of chemistry course

00:36:33 was taught here continually from 1911

00:36:36 right up to the early 60s by Walter Ritchie.

00:36:39 And so a lot went on during those first couple

00:36:41 of years that Joseph Lindsay was,

00:36:44 the department head.

00:36:45 And then the very next year, 1912,

00:36:47 the college finally decided that they should institute majors.

00:36:51 And they set up the majors so that students

00:36:54 took different curricula during their junior and senior year.

00:36:57 So formally in 1912, majors were established.

00:37:01 There was an agricultural chemistry major.

00:37:03 Charles Peters was the advisor.

00:37:05 The first class that was able to graduate chemistry majors

00:37:08 in a formal sense was 1914.

00:37:12 And Carl Allen, oh, this is, I did this

00:37:16 when I was practicing, too.

00:37:17 This is Charles Peters.

00:37:18 This is a much more younger picture of Dr. Peters

00:37:21 with his little beard that always stretched down like that.

00:37:25 Peters came back in 1911.

00:37:27 But in 1914, the gentleman on the right is Carl M. Allen.

00:37:33 He was a member of the class of 1914

00:37:35 from Mass Agricultural College.

00:37:37 He was one of the first people to receive a chemistry major.

00:37:39 He's 105 years old and still alive and kicking.

00:37:43 Works out three times a week.

00:37:44 He's learning to use the computer

00:37:45 so that we can correspond by email.

00:37:47 And he's still a great supporter of UMass chemistry,

00:37:50 as you can see.

00:37:51 UMass has great chemistry.

00:37:53 And that's a little later graduate to the left.

00:37:59 But Carl wanted to come here today, as a matter of fact.

00:38:03 But he's in a living assistant home and couldn't make it.

00:38:07 The first PhD was awarded by the department in 1915.

00:38:10 It was awarded to Edward Holland.

00:38:14 Oh, wait a minute.

00:38:15 I'm getting ahead of myself here.

00:38:21 This picture is the old chem lab.

00:38:23 And this was in the 1914 index, which

00:38:27 is the yearbook of the Mass Agricultural College.

00:38:29 This was Carl's class, by the way.

00:38:31 Carl's class put this in the index of that year.

00:38:34 And if only it were true, they wanted it to burn down.

00:38:37 You know, there's the smoke coming up

00:38:39 with fire alarms, such a collaborative thing.

00:38:43 Little did the class of 1914 know

00:38:45 that their prognostication was about to turn out to be true.

00:38:50 The first PhD was awarded in 1915 to Edward B. Holland.

00:38:56 And his work for the PhD was in the analysis of fats,

00:39:00 especially with respect to butterfat and milk.

00:39:04 And Holland worked for Joseph Lindsay once again.

00:39:07 So Lindsay, as well as supervising the first master's

00:39:10 degree in the chemistry department,

00:39:11 Lindsay also supervised the first PhD degree.

00:39:14 And that was 1915.

00:39:16 In the following year, Paul Ruprecht

00:39:18 received a PhD degree from this department.

00:39:20 In 23, Paul Syrax did.

00:39:21 And the rest of them are in the library downstairs.

00:39:24 You can check them out.

00:39:25 There's a lot of them.

00:39:26 But these were the first.

00:39:28 The plans for the new chem lab were going along great guns.

00:39:31 By 1919, there was a full set of drawings

00:39:35 for the new chemistry laboratory.

00:39:37 And in fact, in 1922 and 1923, the state legislature

00:39:42 funded the new chem lab.

00:39:44 $150,000 each of those two fiscal years.

00:39:47 So the department had $300,000 to build the lab.

00:39:50 But nobody in the department could decide where to put it.

00:39:53 I think it might have had something

00:39:55 to do with the trustees' votes and them not wanting it.

00:39:58 But finally, the architect said, enough is enough.

00:40:00 We're ready to go.

00:40:01 We have to break ground.

00:40:02 He drew a line from the West Experiment Station

00:40:04 directly over to Draper Hall and said,

00:40:06 the front of the building's going right here.

00:40:07 That's it.

00:40:08 Everybody was quiet.

00:40:09 And that's where it went.

00:40:10 And so that was a decision by the architect.

00:40:12 They broke ground on January 19, 1922

00:40:16 for what we now call old Yesman.

00:40:19 Within 60 days after groundbreaking,

00:40:22 as the building was just starting

00:40:23 to rise up out of the soil, the old chem lab burnt down.

00:40:30 This is not from the yearbook of 1914.

00:40:33 This is a photograph taken by Lincoln Burns, a photographer

00:40:37 in Amherst at the time.

00:40:39 He just happened to be walking by at 530 in the morning

00:40:43 with his full photographic equipment.

00:40:46 And he was able to take a series of shots,

00:40:48 this just being one of them.

00:40:49 He was able to take a series of shots showing

00:40:51 the first billowy puffs of smoke coming out of the windows.

00:40:54 And he just sat there all day and just

00:40:55 kept on taking shots of it.

00:40:57 And this was one where it was fully engulfed.

00:41:00 You can see that the fire people are not taking great pains

00:41:02 to put it out.

00:41:05 I think the major interest at that time

00:41:07 was to keep the fire from spreading to North College.

00:41:13 And the ravine, of course, is off to the right here.

00:41:16 This is the power plant right where it is today.

00:41:18 That's why I like this shot, because you

00:41:19 can see the power plant tower kind of places

00:41:21 the ravines over here where the parking garage is.

00:41:23 And this is right about where the west wing of Mackmer Hall

00:41:25 is.

00:41:27 Some of the stories of what went on that day on September 6,

00:41:30 1922 when this fire occurred are very interesting.

00:41:33 Charles Pedens, who lived up on Sunset Street, I believe it is.

00:41:38 South Sunset, thank you.

00:41:39 South Sunset Street, saw the commotion and the smoke.

00:41:42 He went running down to the campus,

00:41:44 went right into the front door when

00:41:45 the building was fully engulfed.

00:41:47 The firemen pulled him out.

00:41:48 It was too hot for him to get in.

00:41:50 So he ordered the firemen to put the ladder up

00:41:52 to his office window.

00:41:53 And she climbed up the ladder, crawled into the building,

00:41:56 retrieved all of the student exams, the research

00:41:58 notebooks, and the valuable equipment.

00:42:00 He came back out.

00:42:02 And then he went back up to the library,

00:42:04 threw out one of his old white lab coats,

00:42:06 and told the firemen to hold the white lab coat

00:42:08 and spread it open while he threw the chemistry library

00:42:10 books out.

00:42:11 And that's how Weilstein was saved that day.

00:42:13 Almost all of the chemistry books

00:42:15 were saved by Peters actually going

00:42:17 into this burning building.

00:42:19 While Peters was doing that, Joseph Chamberlain

00:42:21 was going down in the cellar to retrieve the chemical supply

00:42:24 order that had just been delivered the previous day.

00:42:27 It was a $800 chemical order.

00:42:31 And Chamberlain risked his life.

00:42:33 There were bottles of chemicals.

00:42:34 You can imagine the bottles of chemicals

00:42:36 were flammable, catching on fire.

00:42:38 And finally, the explosions became so frequent and loud,

00:42:41 the firemen ordered Peters and Chamberlain out of the building.

00:42:45 And it eventually burned to the ground.

00:42:49 Finally, in October of 1924, the new lab

00:42:51 was ready to be dedicated.

00:42:52 This is the first page of the program.

00:42:54 It was a grand and glorious event.

00:42:56 On the bottom of the slide, it says October 3, 1924.

00:43:00 This was the dedication.

00:43:01 There's what the building looked like when it was brand new.

00:43:04 Professor Chamberlain referred to this as a palace.

00:43:08 And at that time, it was a palace.

00:43:11 There you go.

00:43:12 October 3, 1924, this was the dedication.

00:43:15 The lab was all decked out, trees on the front steps

00:43:18 going up to the front door.

00:43:21 It was a grand occasion.

00:43:23 This was the state-of-the-art, top-raw, modern,

00:43:27 Guesstimate 20 lecture hall.

00:43:29 It still exists there today.

00:43:31 These are the dedication ceremonies.

00:43:33 These are the brand-new table armchairs

00:43:35 that are all falling apart today, the same ones.

00:43:37 They're the same ones.

00:43:42 And this isn't very clear.

00:43:46 But I don't think you can see the people's faces anyway.

00:43:49 This is Joseph Lindsay, the department head at the time,

00:43:51 at the front desk.

00:43:53 Oh, there you go.

00:43:54 That's Joseph Lindsay, kind of graying hair on the side.

00:43:57 This is Charles Peters, who was really

00:43:59 the senior man at the department at that time.

00:44:01 And these are some of Guestman's books.

00:44:03 The college trustees voted money to buy Guestman's library.

00:44:07 They bought his entire chemical library.

00:44:10 And there is just a portion of it.

00:44:11 Where they are today, I don't know.

00:44:14 But at the time of the dedication,

00:44:16 some of them are on display.

00:44:17 And there is the portrait.

00:44:19 There is the portrait painted in 1810 of Guestman

00:44:22 by Edward Gould of New York.

00:44:23 It's now over in the Fine Arts Center.

00:44:33 Quite a few speeches that day.

00:44:34 I heard the speeches were quite long.

00:44:36 I heard that from different people who were there.

00:44:39 No.

00:44:40 Some of the features of the new laboratory, which we now

00:44:44 call Old Guestman, was the library.

00:44:46 This is what the library looked like.

00:44:47 This is the Guestman alcove.

00:44:49 If you had very good eyes, you could

00:44:50 see that says Guestman alcove.

00:44:52 That was behind here in this wall cut out.

00:44:54 And behind in the alcove were Guestman's books,

00:44:58 some of his apparatus.

00:44:59 And his portrait actually hung in there for a while.

00:45:02 That's not his portrait here.

00:45:03 That's just a photograph of him, one

00:45:04 that we saw a little earlier.

00:45:07 That library was moved to the new Guestman,

00:45:10 when it was constructed in 1959.

00:45:13 And one of the other features of the old Guestman laboratory

00:45:18 was this state-of-the-art organic chemistry laboratory.

00:45:21 I remember it well.

00:45:22 This is where I had an organic chemistry lab.

00:45:24 It was bought over by Ralph Gennetti.

00:45:26 And it was just as dangerous then as it

00:45:28 was back when this picture was taken.

00:45:29 And the old lab glass was unheard of.

00:45:33 You walk inside the glass, and there it is.

00:45:35 This was, at the time, however, much improved

00:45:38 from the old chem lab.

00:45:41 In fact, when the Guestman lab was built,

00:45:43 it allowed rapid growth in the graduate program.

00:45:46 Joseph Chamberlain himself, shown here working

00:45:48 in his private laboratory, Joseph Chamberlain himself

00:45:51 from 1928 to 1936 advised 18 masters and PhD graduates.

00:45:57 And so the additional space in the new building

00:45:59 allowed a very large expansion in the graduate program.

00:46:04 In the 1920s and 1930s, Chamberlain

00:46:06 became department head in 1928.

00:46:08 This is him standing on the front steps of Guestman

00:46:11 in 1928, the year he assumed the department headship.

00:46:17 This is the graduating class of 1928.

00:46:19 And there's Chamberlain, their advisor, in the middle.

00:46:21 I see why they call him Shorty.

00:46:23 And he was very well admired and loved by his students,

00:46:28 a compassionate man, a taskmaster, but compassionate.

00:46:32 I got these photographs from Bert Holland, class of 1928.

00:46:36 Bert's still alive, indeed, en masse.

00:46:38 And was more than happy to share some of the photographs

00:46:41 with me, for which I thank him.

00:46:42 This was the 1928 chemistry majors graduating class.

00:46:50 Immediately upon becoming department head,

00:46:52 Chamberlain, being astute, applied for sabbatical leave.

00:46:56 And he went on sabbatical for a year to Oxford University,

00:47:00 where he worked with Sir Robert Robinson

00:47:02 on the synthesis of hydrosteine, which at the time

00:47:04 was an antiseptic molecule.

00:47:07 And it was Chamberlain, really, who

00:47:09 did some of the breakthrough synthetic work

00:47:11 on that molecule, published in the Journal of the Chemical

00:47:13 Society.

00:47:14 He was at Oxford for a whole year, came back in 1931.

00:47:18 And by 1931, the college that he came back to

00:47:21 was no longer Mass Agricultural College,

00:47:25 it was Mass State College.

00:47:27 The college was moving into the modern, more broad, diverse

00:47:33 area.

00:47:34 And this was the president who oversaw the name change.

00:47:38 It was very dramatic at the time,

00:47:39 because a lot of philosophies clashed.

00:47:41 But Roscoe Thatcher, seen with his cabinet here,

00:47:44 was the president at the time that that name change

00:47:47 took place.

00:47:48 This is significant, because Thatcher was a PhD counselor.

00:47:51 He had a PhD in organic chemistry.

00:47:53 He was the president of the institution.

00:47:55 When he retired as president in 1932,

00:47:58 the trustees made him an honorary professor

00:48:01 of organic chemistry.

00:48:01 He took up residence at the lab in the old guest room

00:48:05 up in the experiment station on the third floor.

00:48:07 And on December 6, 1933, he died while working

00:48:11 at the laboratory bench.

00:48:12 He died right in the building.

00:48:15 In 1934, the department called upon Walter Ritchie

00:48:19 to be department head.

00:48:20 And many of you, I'm sure, remember Walter Ritchie

00:48:24 and his wife, Maggie Bell.

00:48:26 Ritchie came in 1934, assumed the department headship.

00:48:30 And one of the things that Ritchie loved to do,

00:48:32 and I'm forever grateful that he did,

00:48:34 was to gather the members of the chem department,

00:48:36 put them on the front steps of the guest room,

00:48:37 even though they didn't want to be there, some of them,

00:48:40 and take these group photos.

00:48:41 It's a valuable historical record.

00:48:44 This is Walter Ritchie here.

00:48:46 This is Joseph Chamberlain.

00:48:47 This is the department in 1935, the year

00:48:49 after Ritchie ascended to the department headship.

00:48:54 This is Peters, Chamberlain, Ritchie, Ed Holland,

00:48:57 who got the first master's and PhD degree, Doc Fessenden,

00:49:01 and Ed Parent, and some of the other people.

00:49:04 I haven't been able to identify all of the people

00:49:06 in all these group photos yet, but that's

00:49:08 a nice picture on the front steps of the 1935 chem

00:49:11 department.

00:49:14 Well, we're getting into the mid-1930s.

00:49:16 And in November of 1936, a fairly significant event

00:49:22 took place in the history of the UMass chem department,

00:49:24 well, then Mass State College chem department.

00:49:27 The students wanted to honor two of the chemistry professors

00:49:32 which they felt had given so much of their time

00:49:35 to their education.

00:49:36 And these professors were Joseph Chamberlain and Joseph Lindsay.

00:49:40 And so in November of 1936, the class of 1937

00:49:45 got together and decided that they

00:49:47 were going to plant some trees, one each,

00:49:49 to honor Chamberlain and Lindsay.

00:49:52 And these were the students who were involved.

00:49:55 And if you have very good eyes, you

00:49:57 can see amongst this class a person who

00:50:01 was a got his bachelor's degree in 1937, Professor Richardson,

00:50:06 who was a member of that class that did the tree dedication.

00:50:10 And the group of people who were present at that day,

00:50:15 these were not shipped in from Chicago.

00:50:17 These were actually.

00:50:18 So this was Dean Mackmer.

00:50:26 He was there at that time.

00:50:27 This was Shoddy Chamberlain.

00:50:29 President Baker attended the occasion.

00:50:32 Walter Ritchie, Joseph Lindsay in his later days.

00:50:34 Anthony Ferrucci, who was the president of the student group

00:50:37 at that time.

00:50:38 And you can see Peters.

00:50:40 You can see Doc Fessenden back there.

00:50:42 This was the group of people who dedicated the two trees.

00:50:46 This was taken last summer.

00:50:48 This is the Chamberlain tree to the right of the front door

00:50:51 of Gessman Lab.

00:50:51 It's still fairly healthy, although Ritchie

00:50:53 used to claim that it was dying away

00:50:56 due to the organic fumes coming out of the organic lab.

00:50:58 It looks pretty healthy to me.

00:51:00 It's a little corroded in the middle, but it's still there.

00:51:02 And the grounds department is doing all they

00:51:04 can to make sure it survives.

00:51:05 This is the Lindsay tree.

00:51:07 That tree died.

00:51:08 This is a replant.

00:51:09 But both of these trees were affixed at the time,

00:51:14 in 1936, with concrete bases.

00:51:16 If you walk there today, you'll see those.

00:51:18 These concrete bases had bolted to them plaques.

00:51:23 The Chamberlain plaque is gone.

00:51:26 Last fall, I found the Lindsay plaque loose.

00:51:29 And here's the concrete base.

00:51:30 There's the plaque.

00:51:31 You can see it's not bolted down at all.

00:51:32 It was loose.

00:51:33 Anybody could have walked away with it.

00:51:34 This maple stands to honor Dr. Joseph B. Lindsay, chemist.

00:51:38 And the plaque now is over in the Special Collections

00:51:41 and Archives section of the Du Bois Library.

00:51:44 And there it will stay until such time

00:51:45 as it's reinstalled, as it should be,

00:51:49 to honor Chamberlain and Lindsay and to keep faith

00:51:52 with the class of 1937, who spent the time and effort

00:51:55 to make sure those plaques were put down.

00:51:57 The last thing I want to mention about curriculum

00:51:59 is that in 1939, it was the first time

00:52:03 in 70 years of the institution that not all students

00:52:06 had to take general chemistry 1 and 2.

00:52:09 And so there were some students who escaped after 1939

00:52:13 without taking at least one year of chemistry.

00:52:16 So the curriculum began its move toward specialization in 1903

00:52:21 and finally finished up in 1939.

00:52:26 The impact of the World War was huge on the university.

00:52:30 Returning GIs, women who populated the college

00:52:33 during the war, wanted access to higher education.

00:52:37 The privates were not about to provide it.

00:52:39 James B. Conant said, no, we can't do that.

00:52:42 Speaking of Harvard and the other private institutions.

00:52:44 And the burden for providing reasonably priced higher

00:52:49 education fell to the state colleges, namely

00:52:52 the Massachusetts State College.

00:52:54 And so during and after the war, a huge boom in growth

00:52:57 occurred at the state college.

00:53:00 And this was designated by the fact

00:53:05 that the name was changed again.

00:53:06 In 1947, Mass State College became

00:53:09 the University of Massachusetts.

00:53:11 So the bonnet era began 51 years ago with the university ascending to a full university.

00:53:17 And in attempting to keep up with that name, the university began colleges of engineering, began colleges of education, business,

00:53:25 and the student undergraduate population exploded. In the early 60s, there were student population growths of a thousand students additional per year.

00:53:35 This was going on. The chemistry program in the early 50s, 200 students taking general chemistry, freshman chemistry I should say, in all of its forms.

00:53:43 200 students. By the early 1980s, 2,000 students taking general chemistry. The growth of the university was awesome.

00:53:51 And in order to keep pace with that growth and to keep pace with the fact that graduate education was growing,

00:53:58 Walter Ritchie expanded the chemistry department noticeably from 1943 to 1950.

00:54:06 And during that seven year period, he hired those people who really brought the chemistry department through the 50s and 60s and into the 70s.

00:54:16 And those people included J. Harold Smith, who was hired in 1943. When Harold Smith got here, he immediately developed a theoretical chemistry course,

00:54:26 a theoretical inorganic chemistry. He also brought in Dick Stein, who developed the first statistical mechanics course at the college,

00:54:35 quantum mechanics, polymer chemistry, and led the future growth in that area.

00:54:40 George Cannon, an organic chemist who really started a rigorous, small but rigorous research program in organic chemistry.

00:54:48 And George Oberlander, who came in 1947 but transferred from the Fort Devens program where he would work for a year from 1946 to 1947.

00:54:58 George eventually became director of operations and director of general chemistry laboratories and taught general chemistry

00:55:04 and also taught chemical literature for a number of years until his retirement.

00:55:10 George Richardson was hired in 1947 and came back to his alma mater.

00:55:14 And George, as we all know, was really the general of general chemistry for many, many years.

00:55:19 And also, among his many, many roles, he supervised the building facilities, planning, and construction of the department from the early 50s really until the early 70s.

00:55:31 He had a lot to do with all of the construction that's going on within the department.

00:55:35 And some of the other people here, this is Walter Ritchie, and that's Doc Fessenden, and that's Henry Little.

00:55:44 And some of the other people I don't know, I'm sure that there are people in the audience who do know,

00:55:48 and they'll be glad to let me know at some point over the next month who these other people were.

00:55:55 The major problem in the early 1950s when Ritchie was growing the department by hiring these individuals was space.

00:56:02 I mean, space was already too small.

00:56:05 And there were lots of other problems, though.

00:56:07 I mean, research problems, instructional problems.

00:56:10 The university was having growing pains.

00:56:12 The chemistry department suffered right along with the whole university.

00:56:15 Just a couple of examples, research.

00:56:18 When Dick Stein first came, he received a federal research grant from the Office of Naval Research to fund his research.

00:56:26 The money went to Boston.

00:56:28 He did the research.

00:56:30 The money never came to Amherst.

00:56:31 There was no way to get money from Boston to Amherst.

00:56:34 And so, as Professor Stein tells it to me, a special act of the legislature had to be filed and passed before the money could, in fact, get out of Amherst to pay for the research that was done.

00:56:45 From that episode came the idea of trust fund accounts, so the money could go right into trust fund accounts.

00:56:51 And that was another innovation, another piece of constructive change that came from the chem department, which now was assumed to be standard procedure around the whole university.

00:57:00 When the department was small and there was one section of general chemistry, it was easy to examine the students.

00:57:05 When the department became large and there were thousands of students taking the course, you had multiple sections, it was not so easy.

00:57:12 You had a lot of professors writing a lot of exams that may or may not be consistent.

00:57:16 They may or may not have tested the students consistently.

00:57:20 It was George Richardson's idea to have evening examinations so that you would make one exam, give it one time, all the students would take it, it would save time, and it would make it consistent across the board.

00:57:31 Students would all be getting the same examination.

00:57:33 Another innovative idea that at the time was quite new, but now is taken for granted.

00:57:40 Another piece of change in the chem department that I think was constructive that's now diffused out through the university as a whole.

00:57:49 There are many more examples of the kind of problems that came about for which the chemistry department had a creative solution and were used university-wide.

00:57:58 The new Gessner lab was built in 1957-59.

00:58:02 George Richardson really had a lot to do with organizing that.

00:58:05 It doubled the laboratory capacity.

00:58:07 There was a subcritical nuclear reactor in there.

00:58:10 It's now gone.

00:58:11 Charles Peters was honored with an auditorium named after him.

00:58:15 Joseph Chamberlain was honored with a library named after him.

00:58:19 Their pictures hung in those rooms, in the beginning at least, for a number of years.

00:58:24 Chemical engineering was included as part of the new Gessner, which we call the new Gessner today.

00:58:29 In fact, chemical engineering was born in the chemistry department.

00:58:33 From 1948 to 1953, this department was not called the chemistry department.

00:58:38 It was called the chemistry and chemical engineering department.

00:58:41 Chemical engineering spun off.

00:58:43 Along with the experiment station and other things that have spun off from this department, the chemical engineering department has to be numbered amongst those.

00:58:52 The modern era really began in 1960.

00:58:56 Walter Ritchie retired that year.

00:59:00 This was the last group photo that Walter Ritchie summoned the chemistry staff for in the front steps of Gessner Hall.

00:59:07 You can see some of the professors who were there at the time.

00:59:11 Casey Stengel, Luke Carpino, Judd Cannon, Earl McWhorter.

00:59:16 I think Clarence Powell has worked in the sonic room.

00:59:19 Dick Stein, Jan Perdition.

00:59:22 Bob Williams, Tom Zajac, Howard Stidham, Walter Ritchie, George Richardson, John Chandler, J. Harold Smith, and George Oberlander.

00:59:38 There's another historical fellow whose name is Joe.

00:59:41 Joe Tresesti.

00:59:42 Joe Tresesti, thank you, Judge.

00:59:44 This was in 1960.

00:59:47 When Walter Ritchie retired, Moyer Hunsberger was brought in to head up the department.

00:59:51 Moyer headed the department for about eight months.

00:59:55 He was so good at it.

00:59:57 He was elevated to be the Dean of Arts and Sciences, which probably, if not probably, was a good thing for the chemistry department.

01:00:03 There was about a year and a half hiatus there where there was no official department head.

01:00:09 George Richardson, during that time, served from early 1961 to the fall of 1962, served as acting department head.

01:00:18 Then in the fall of 1962, from the University of Kansas, William McEwen came to take over the reins of the chem department.

01:00:25 He was the head of the chem department for 15 years, from 1962 to 1977.

01:00:31 A long time in the modern era with so much explosive growth.

01:00:37 The early 60s is about as far as I've really gone in terms of my study in detail, but I want to tell you a few things about the early 60s.

01:00:45 From 1963 to 1970, McEwen brought on board 18 new faculty in the chem department.

01:00:52 Many of those faculty are still in the department today.

01:00:56 Those people really augmented the expertise that already existed in the department

01:01:02 and expanded the reach of the department into new areas, such as organometallic chemistry.

01:01:08 Those people really laid the groundwork for the 80s and 90s.

01:01:12 As I continue my research in the chem department, I'll explore the 80s and 90s a little further.

01:01:18 At this point, though, I just wanted to mention that in the early 1960s, several things happened that were significant to the history of this department.

01:01:28 One of them was the beginning of the Polymer Research Institute.

01:01:31 This is the board of trustees, the advisory committee, and this is in Peters-Odd.

01:01:37 I know the names of all these other people, but I'm not familiar with them, but I do know Professor Stein.

01:01:43 The Polymer Research Institute was started in 1961.

01:01:47 This was in Peters-Odd. There's the picture of Peters in his auditorium, where it should be, looking through the microscope.

01:01:54 This is a later picture of Professor Stein meeting with Chancellor Duffy and another gentleman to his right, I'll left.

01:02:03 Another thing that happened in the early 60s was the beginning of the university entrance into computers.

01:02:13 As it happened, Professor Stein and co-workers were working on some long-hand type calculations on the polarizability of hydrocarbons

01:02:23 and decided there's got to be a better way to do this.

01:02:26 Once again, from the chem department, that better way translated into the acquisition of an IBM 1620 computer.

01:02:34 Here it is, state-of-the-art in 1961.

01:02:37 That's a 1620 Plymouth Rock computer.

01:02:39 There's the teletype.

01:02:41 There's Professor Stein, who, as chairman of the college computer committee, had a lot to do with not only the setting up of the computer science department,

01:02:51 but with the setting up of the Office of Information Technology, as we know it today.

01:02:56 Professor Stein, along with Bob Rowell, who came in 1960 to work with Stein on this project.

01:03:02 Between Professor Stein and Rowell, that really was the beginning of research computing at the University of Massachusetts.

01:03:11 Again, another good idea, another change, another spin-off from the department that now is university-wide.

01:03:19 I wanted to show you a few last things that I have.

01:03:22 These are slides I'll just point to.

01:03:25 About an hour has gone by, and I wanted to get to the last summary statement fairly quickly.

01:03:31 In my research, I've pulled together a lot of what I call the history of the department.

01:03:35 To me, the history is different than the heritage.

01:03:37 The history is the name, states, people, who, what, when, and where.

01:03:41 The heritage is how the chemistry department has changed the university.

01:03:46 How has it changed the state, the citizens of the state?

01:03:49 That's what's left behind when all the numbers are not there anymore.

01:03:53 These are the chem department heads.

01:03:55 There have been 10 officially appointed department heads of this department.

01:03:59 Starting with Guestman, Wallington, Lindsay, Chamberlain, Ritchie, Hunsberger, McEwen, and Ron Archer, Louis Quinn, and Lila Hirosh.

01:04:07 There are 12 listed here because there were two acting department heads, namely George and Bob Rowell,

01:04:13 who acted for longer than a couple months when someone was on sabbatical.

01:04:17 It's kind of interesting that in 130 years of rich history, there have been 10 official department heads.

01:04:24 I think it speaks to longevity and a place that's reasonable to work at.

01:04:29 Another slide I put together, and this is a slide that's very much in progress,

01:04:36 but what I wanted to get down onto one slide was all the things that have sprung from the chemistry department.

01:04:42 The title of this seminar is UMass Chemistry, Catalysts for Constructive Change.

01:04:46 These are the changes.

01:04:49 Graduate program, experiment station, summer school, grad assistantships, modern alumni, lab fees, seminar program.

01:04:55 The first seminar program came from the UMass chemistry department in 1972.

01:04:58 Chemistry engineering, trust funds, polymer labs, computer science, polymer science, chemistry resource center.

01:05:06 I know that there are other kinds of things that this department has done that have emanated here

01:05:12 because of the thought amongst members of the department that there has to be a better way to do this.

01:05:18 These things are spread out throughout the university.

01:05:21 I'll be more than happy to entertain any additions to this list as well.

01:05:28 I'm going to be here at least until the end of May, and I know there are others.

01:05:31 I want to make sure I get them all.

01:05:33 One last thing I'd like to say before I conclude the final part of my presentation on the history of UMass chemistry

01:05:41 is that I, for one, would like to put a strong vote in for the preservation of this history.

01:05:49 I think this history is too rich and too important to not rediscover it.

01:05:55 I think it needs to be rediscovered and restored and highlighted.

01:06:03 The various artifacts that we've talked about today that point to and are significant to the history and heritage of the department

01:06:10 include things such as the murals and pictures over in the campus center, the Guestman portrait, the Guestman balance,

01:06:17 the Guestman stained glass window, the Lindsay tree plaque, the Peters auditorium, the Peters picture,

01:06:22 the Peters 50-year ACS certificate, the equipment over in the West Experiment Station,

01:06:27 the Chamberlain library, the Chamberlain plaque, the Chamberlain picture,

01:06:30 the Pheasant and Student Award plaque, the McEwen seminar room.

01:06:33 There are lots of things around this campus that are very meaningful to the heritage of this department.

01:06:39 I think they should be highlighted and placed in a prominent mode.

01:06:44 Down at the National Archives in Washington, D.C., carved in stone to the left of the front door, there is a quote.

01:06:51 The quote says, the heritage of the past is the seed that brings forth the harvest of the future.

01:06:57 I guess that's pretty much how I feel about the heritage of this department.

01:07:01 I could even envision a walking tour of UMass chemistry history where there was a brochure

01:07:08 and people walked around to these various areas and were introduced to some of the key individuals

01:07:13 and things that happened here that were part of the history and heritage of this institution.

01:07:18 That's my vote for that.

01:07:21 I'd like to thank a few people for this.

01:07:24 Nothing is done in a vacuum.

01:07:26 I wouldn't be standing here if it weren't for Lila Harris.

01:07:29 I thank her very much for first suggesting the opportunity that I come here and spend part of my sabbatical

01:07:35 at my alma mater and look into this and also teach a class.

01:07:38 Although she never told me it would be 210 students.

01:07:41 I always thought it was going to be 20 or 30, but it's 2,200.

01:07:48 I'd like to thank the chemistry faculty who have spent their time meeting with me.

01:07:54 I've met with many people to talk to them about the history of the department

01:08:00 where a lot of this information comes from.

01:08:02 I'd especially like to thank George Richardson in that regard

01:08:06 because George has talked with me more than he needs to and he tells me he wants to,

01:08:12 but I appreciate all the information he's given me, so thank you very much, George.

01:08:16 Last but not least, I'd like to thank the people over at the archives here.

01:08:20 It's a very valuable resource over there.

01:08:22 They have a lot of information over there.

01:08:24 Mike Molesky in particular is a guy who knows everything that's over there,

01:08:28 so I found that to be a very valuable resource and thank them a lot over there.

01:08:32 It's a valuable place.

01:08:33 Thank you.

01:08:34 Applause

01:08:47 I really think it's we who thank you, Dave.

01:08:50 That was wonderful, and your enthusiasm for the department is contagious and great.

01:08:58 We really thank you for taking the time to do all this

01:09:02 and obviously getting into it so thoroughly.

01:09:05 I don't know whether folks would like to ask Dave some questions now,

01:09:09 but I know there's a group of students that's going to meet him for lunch

01:09:13 and there's an opportunity to chat with him.

01:09:15 Perhaps what we can do is just invite people to come up and chat individually for a moment

01:09:20 since we have to all go on to the next thing.

01:09:24 A hearty, hearty thank you.

01:09:27 Applause