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Chemistry at Victoria the Wellington University Chemistry at Victoria The Wellington University A Personalized Account of the Hundred Years from 1899 by Brian Halton Emeritus Professor of Chemistry Chemistry at Victoria – The Wellington University A personalized account of the hundred years from 1899 Third Edition Brian Halton Emeritus Professor of Chemistry i Published by The School of Chemical & Physical Sciences, Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington, 6140, New Zealand Copyright © 2012, 2014, & 2018, School of Chemical & Physical Sciences, Victoria University of Wellington. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, scanning or otherwise without the written permission of the publisher. Third edition composited in New Zealand by Rebecca Hurrell. ISBN third (digital only) edition…………….978-0-475-12408-1 ii A university, simply stated, is an association of teachers and students, with this characteristic, that the teachers do not cease to be students. J.C. Beaglehole The University of New Zealand: An Historical Study, New Zealand Council for Educational Research, Wellington: 1937, p. 13. They work to pass, not to know; and outraged Science takes her revenge. They do pass and they don’t know. Thomas Huxley Science and Education: Collected Essays Vol 3, Macmillan, London, 1893-94. Be a physical chemist, an organic chemist, an analytical chemist, if you will – but above all be a Chemist. Ira Remsen Foundation Professor of Chemistry, The Johns Hopkins University, F. H. Getman, The Life of Ira Remsen, 1940, 71. iii Photograph from the School of Chemical & Physical Sciences, Victoria University of Wellington iv Preface Many histories of academic institutions have appeared over the years, none better known in Wellington than Rachel Barrowman’s Victoria University of Wellington 1899-1999 – A History, and in New Zealand The University of New Zealand: an his- torical study by J. C. Beaglehole. Several of the now independent universities pro- vide a synopsis of their existences and various departments and schools do likewise in accounting for their place in the way of things. However, when it comes to seeing the evolution of a single area of study in any one of the now eight independent insti- tutions, Auckland University of Technology, Lincoln University, Massey University, University of Auckland, University of Canterbury, University of Otago, University of Waikato, and Victoria University of Wellington, there are remarkably few accounts available. The Cambie and Davis book: A Century of Chemistry at the University of Auckland is an exception. What follows serves to rectify this for Chemistry at Victoria University of Wellington. The Department of Chemistry at Victoria was my home away from home until its amalgamation with the Department of Physics in 1997. The subsequent emergent School of Chemical and Physical Sciences has seen me through the last years of my formal career and into my ninth year of retirement as an emeritus professor. The need for a record of the development and evolution of the discipline of chemistry at this institution has become more pressing with the passage of time. My attempt to record the history of the Chemistry Department, and the subject as it has evolved at Victoria fills the following pages. But I am no historian and am unprepared to sit for days on end in dusty archives trawling through voluminous files. So my history is merely a personal perspective constructed from reminiscences, from information passed to me by many individuals, and from the records of the institution and its teaching through the calendars of Victoria College, Victoria University College and Victoria University of Wellington, and some of its corporate archive. The inclusion of many names in the text and the appendices has come from the generous assistance of people who remember. Nevertheless, it is the personal recol- lections of Professor Neil Curtis and his searches of ‘papers past’ that have provided significant amounts of material. Then the collective wisdom of Drs. Jim Pearce and David Weatherburn has served to amplify and correct much other information that has been gathered. These and others have provided snippets of information, names of sup- port staff, and dates. Thus, I express my gratitude to (alphabetically): Colin Bleasdale; Jannie Brown; Ian & Susan Burgess; Patricia (neé Barr) & Brian Burridge; Joan (Mat- tingley) Cameron; Alan Clark; Don Cook; Sue Creese; Neil & Yvonne Curtis; Barbara Dasent; Sally Davenport; Brian Davis; John Featherstone; Michael France; Richard Furneaux; Teresa Gen; Dave Gilmore; Margaret Gordon; Jenny Hall; Margaret Halton; Helen Harvey; Richard Haverkamp; Don House; Romini Jayasinha; Jim Johnston; Bill Jordan; Jackie King; Robert Keyzers; Douglas MacFarlane; Ken MacKenzie; Anwyn Martin (neé Long); Kerie McCombe; Arch Matheson; Peter Northcote; Jim Pearce; v Harry Percival; Alan Rennie; Dick Singleton; David Stead; Ian Torrie; Darcy Walker (via his daughter Jenny Lendrum); Tricia Walbridge; David Weatherburn; Jenny Wol- lerman; and Tony Woolhouse. The staff of The Beaglehole Room in the Victoria University Library, especially Sue Hirst and former archivist Danny Naylor, have been exceptionally generous with their time by seeking and having archival materials ready for me to peruse at my lei- sure. Claire Angliss, of the Development Office, kindly provided an electronic copy of the UNZ Roll of Graduates, Steph Livick of Campus Care, many architectural site plans of campus buildings, and Vanessa King, the Records and Archives Administra- tor, additional access to records. Dan Thompson and Liza Wilson of SCPS have been of great assistance in gathering other archival records for this work. I am especially grateful to my wife, Margaret, Joanne Harvey and Neil Curtis for proof-reading the entire manuscript. Rebecca Hurrell, the Managing Editor of Chemistry in New Zealand has transposed the text and its illustrations into the book form that the Canterbury Edu- cational Printing Services have so professionally produced for me yet again. Finally, I am more than grateful to Prof. John Spencer (Head) and my colleagues in the School of Chemical and Physical Sciences at Victoria University of Wellington. They have shown me their friendship, patience, tolerance and good humour over many years, and made retirement a more than worthwhile occupation. BH Wellington, October, 2012 Preface to the Second Edition The revisions, additions and corrections to this edition of Chemistry at Victoria have been made possible by comments from many readers on the first edition and especially the input of Joan (Mattingley) Cameron (BSc 1949, PhD 1977), Ray Carman (PhD 1958), Bruce Cockburn (MSc 1957), Anwyn M. (Long) Martin (MSc 1956), and Emeritus Profs Neil Curtis (Victoria) and Brian Davis (Auck- land). These have allowed not simply for the necessary corrections to the textual matter of the first edition that were incorporated into the digital edition in May 2013, but also to the expansion of several sections of chapters two–seven, nine and the appendices. A photograph has been added to Chapter Two, new material about Prof Robertson (Chapter Three) and Drs. Monro (Chapter Three), Martin and the ironsands project (Chapter Four), as well as an eye witness account the accident with his furnace and sodium-potassium alloy (Chapter Nine). Expansion of the coverage of Prof. Slater (Chapter Four), Drs. Carman and Coomb, Prof Curtis, Drs. Dasent, Harvey (W.E.), Johns, Martin (J.W.L.), Metcalf, Turney, Ward, Viney, and Mr. Barbour and Mrs. Curtis have been made, while Appendix I has a new entry for 1957 and VIII carries eighteen entries. BH Wellington, January 2014 vi Contents Chapter 1 The Foundation Professors 1 Chapter 2 Chemistry, Slop Buckets and Spirit Lamps 9 Chapter 3 A Research Ethos for Chemistry 19 Chapter 4 The Flagship of Victoria’s Science Expands 31 Chapter 5 Divide and Rule 46 Chapter 6 Assistants, Instruments and Technicians, and Secretaries 55 Assistants 55 Instruments and Technicians 58 Secretaries 71 Chapter 7 Growth in Research, Decline in Numbers 75 Physical Chemistry Research 79 Inorganic Chemistry Research 81 Organic Chemistry Research 86 Chapter 8 The Evolution of Chemistry Teaching 94 Chapter 9 Mayhem, Madness and Marvels 109 Mayhem 109 Madness 114 Marvels 118 Chapter 10 Retrench, Regroup, and Revive: The Second Century Awaits 122 References and Notes 129 Appendix I Chemistry Academic Staff 1899-1999 131 Appendix II Assistants, Demonstrators & Junior Lecturers 134 Appendix III Chemistry Support Staff: 1955-1999 136 Appendix IV Heads & Chairmen of the Department of Chemistry 140 Appendix V: Some Noted Graduates in Chemistry 141 Appendix VI: PhD Thesis in Chemistry 1899-1999 145 Appendix VII: DSc Degrees Awarded in Chemistry 153 Appendix VIII: Chemical Bonding 154 Appendix IX: Timeline: Buildings Occupied by Chemistry at Victoria 155 Appendix X: Student Numbers at Victoria - 1899-1995 156 vii Appendix XI: Publications of the Staff of Victoria College & Victoria University College 1899-1959 157 M.H.Briggs 157 W.E. Dasent 157 T.H. Easterfield 158 B.D. England 159 W. E. Harvey 160 R.B. Johns 160 R.A. Matheson 160 W.S. Metcalf 161 A. D. Monro 161 P.W. Robertson 161 S. N. Slater 164 R. Truscoe 165 Selected Papers of Victoria University College (to 1961) and Victoria University Staff (alphabetical) appointed after 1959 166 A.F. M. Barton 166 G.R. Burns 167 R.G. Burns 167 M.D. Carr 167 C.L.L. Chai 167 J.T. Craig 167 N.F. Curtis 168 J.F. Duncan 169 R.J. Ferrier 169 A.G. Freeman 170 O.P. Gladlikh 171 B. Halton 171 R.W. Hay 172 J.O. Hoberg 173 J.H. Johnston 173 P.T. Northcote 174 viii E. Sinn 174 S.I. Smedley 175 J.N. Smith 175 R.J. Speedy 176 J.L. Spencer 176 E.P.A. Sullivan 177 A.M. Taylor 177 J.W. Tomlinson 177 D.C. Weatherburn 177 A.T. Wilson 178 ix x The Foundation Professors Chapter One The Foundation Professors The first university to be established in New Zealand was the University of Otago, created by an ordinance of the Otago Provin- cial Council in 1869.
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