ALMANAC October 31, 1972
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IN THIS ISSUE " The Week of the Three Nobel Prizes " FACILITIES: Vance Hall, Levy Pavilion, Williams Hall " Revising Admissions for Undergraduates (Wood) Volume 19, Number 10October 31, 1972 " COUNCIL: Agenda " BULLETINS " DEATHS Published weekly by the University of Pennsylvania Museum and the Penn-Columbia Soccer Game at Franklin Field. Saturday they will hold a box lunch on College Hall Green before the Penn-Columbia Football Game. A survey last year showed that visits to classrooms were the most popular feature of the annual Parents Day sponsored by the University's Annual Giving Program. Page 2 The most disappointing feature: visits to classrooms where a class had been canceled without notice or where an exam was in progress instead of a lecture or discussion. This year, faculty are urgently asked to advise their students in advance if November 17 will not be a normal day. RESIDENTIAL LEARNING PROPOSALS: NOVEMBER 20 NEWS IN BRIEF Faculty members and others interested in planning and proposing living/learning projects for the academic year 1973- PRESIDENT/ PROVOSTS STAFF: DR. THACKRAY 74 must contact Mrs. Margo Marshall, Director of Residential in the Office of the Vice Provost for Dr. Arnold Thackray, Chairman and Associate Professor Programs Undergraduate Studies, November 20. The deadline for the of the History and Sociology of Science, has been named a by follow-up written is November 30. A committee will review Faculty Assistant to the President and the Provost. He joins proposals all and make its recommendations at the Dr. Robert Zemsky in that title and succeeds Dr. Renee Fox, proposals beginning of the who is now Chairman of Sociology. spring term. Dr. Thackray is Curator of the Edgar Fahs Smith Memorial Collection in the History of Chemistry. Harvard University From the AAUP: Press, which published his Atoms and Powers in 1970, will issue Dr. Thackray's John Dalton on November 17. He is currently at work on a study of the cultural uses of science Open Meeting: within industrializing Britain. Faculty Rights-and Grievances PRINTING PROCUREMENT: MRS. YEAGER What are the rights of a non-tenured faculty mem- ber? Do define these Auxiliary Services Director George Kidd Jr. has announced University regulations rights and What are the differ- the assignment of Mrs. Harriet Yeager as Director of Printing clearly comprehensively? ences between statements on the Procurement, effective immediately. She has headed the Uni- University subject and the statements of the American Association of versity Printing Office, which closes November 3. Professors? When members be- Mrs. Yeager's charge will be to insure consistent quality University faculty lieve that have been treated what re- and equitable costs for all printing work done for any Uni- they unfairly, course do have? Are the established versity budget; she will also authorize all University printing they procedures for and do work? bills for payment. Creation of the post is to allow the Uni- handling grievances adequate, they Should there be to the versity to use its full economic leverage to collective advan- special procedures protect of women and members of tage in the purchase of printing, Mr. Kidd said. rights minority groups? These are among the questions that are being kRAVITZ: FLEXNER LECTURE NOVEMBER 8 asked-with alarming frequency-of and by the of- ficers and committees of our AAUP chapter. The Dr. Edward A. Kravitz of the of department neurobiology faculty members who come to us with grievances are of Harvard Medical School will the second annual Louis give far more numerous than ought to be the case in a B. Flexner Lecture on "Studies of in Synaptic Chemistry well-run university. Identified Nerve Cells," Lecture Room Single Physiologically In order to explore some of the problems involved A, Medical School, November 8 at 4 Wednesday p.m. in the defense of faculty rights, and hopefully to find some answers, the University of Pennsylvania chap- PARENTS DAY: NOVEMBER 17 ter of AAUP is scheduling a meeting, open to all Parents of sophomores and transfer students will be on faculty members, on Wednesday, November 15, at campus all day Friday, November 17, to visit their sons' and 4:00 in David Rittenhouse Laboratory A-4. We shall daughters' classrooms; attend a seminar of their own; and fire hear at that time from the Ombudsman, from the questions at University administrators on athletics, finance, Chairman of the Senate Committee on Academic fraternities, student health, placement and vocational advising. Freedom and Responsibility, and from other mem- They will also attend a swimming and diving exhibition at bers of the faculty and the administration. Gimbel Gym's Sheerr Pool, a President's Reception at the That Was the Week That Was fac- Friday, October. 20: In almost any office there was only proportions: Nobel Prizes back-to-back, to alumnus and one topic: "I was listening to the news..." "I was in the ulty member in one week. But a final tremor was yet to come. shower and my wife came rushing in. ." or "I was half asleep In the early-morning excitement many had missed the an- when the man from Reuters called. ." nouncement of alumnus Christian Anfinsen as one of this was a at Dr. Schrief- It sounded as if half the University gets up at 6 a.m. to year's laureates in Chemistry. It reporter President listen to newcasts while the other half lies abed until someone fer's afternoon press conference who corrected Mey- the week. from New York calls to tell them that a colleague has won erson in mid-speech to make it three for Almanac's Oc- the Nobel Prize. (Seasoned Nobelwatchers also reported that tober 24 list of former Penn men who later won the award 8:30 that members of the Physics Department By morning should have included the name of Granit, a Swedish had assembled at David Rittenhouse Laboratory ready for ac- Ragnar scientist who was at the Johnson Foundation with Haldan tion. Led Drs. and Wood, they painted by Heeger, Langenberg Keffer Hartline in the 'sixties and who shared the prize with and a banner NOBEL LAU- strung (CONGRATULATIONS Hartline and Wald in 1967. Most remembered Simon Kuz- REATE BOB) across Walnut Street to the LRSM Building. nets's award in Economics in 1970, and some recalled that Between classes signs in the teaching they posted felt-penned Dr. Otto had won the Nobel Prize when he lobbies and ordered and more people Meyerhof already champagne telephoned came to serve as research of chemis- and waited. professor physiological here from 1940 until his death in 1951.) one man on the New try The problem was that driving Jersey At his conference, Dr. Schrieffer shone as a scientist radio on: the Amanda Wood press Turnpike didn't have his Mary and as a man, the teacher to the Schrieffer. His wife Anna gifted explaining lay press Professor of Physics, Dr. J. Robert the of for which he and Dr. John at Linden, theory superconductivity Grete had phoned ahead to his destination packed Bardeen and Dr. Leon share the Prize. children off to school, and then waited with Cooper the growing Dr. Schrieffer was a 25-year-old graduate student of Bar- "What if he doesn't find out all day?" anxiety, deen's at the University of Illinois when it all happened in found out. The he was meet- But Bob Schrieffer colleague January of 1957. Bardeen already had one Nobel. "Cooper Dr. Fred R. Gamble, rushed to ing at Esso in Linden, up was a postgraduate down from Columbia with a strong back- Kilmer on the and his car at the Joyce stop Turnpike greeted ground in high energy physics. Bardeen had the lifelong in- You won the Nobel Prize." him with "Congratulations. just terest, the background, the contact with experimental facts; Said Schrieffer: "Yeah, what else is new?" and I was his student," Schrieffer recalled. Leaving out his Then he began to believe it. "My friend is a very serious part in the breakthrough (which others credit to a sudden man," he said later, "so I turned around and headed back to inspiration of his on a New York subway), he described the Philadelphia." feverish 13 days in which they worked out the theory, using At campus he met the signs, the banners, the students in disciplines of solid state physics and quantum mechanics to transport, and the refined and scholarly jubilation of a faculty explain what had been unexplainable for fifty years. that had its first on-site Nobel laureate in the history of the Onnes had established in 1911 that the phenomenon of University. superconductivity occurs-that when some metals and alloys Cen- Suddenly the honor of a week before-Dr. Gerald Edel- have been cooled to near absolute zero (-273 degrees The man's sharing of the Prize in Medicine-took on awesome tigrade) they become perfect conductors of electricity. 2 ALMANAC October 31, 1972 Edelman: Medicine Dr. Gerald M. Edelman's day of celebration came the week before at Rockefeller University, where he was the first alum- nus in that school's history to win the Nobel Prize. (He took a PhD. there several years after his M.D. from Penn.) He shares this year's prize in Medicine with one other scientist, Oxford biochemist Dr. Rodney Porter. The two men were honored for separate research on the chemical structure of antibodies-work that stimulated "a fervent research ac- tivity the whole world over, in all fields of immunology in science, yielding practical values for clinical diagnostics and therapy," the Nobel Prize Committee said. Dr. Edelman (M '54) took his B.S.