Rice Opens New Courses in Chemistry

Today's article interestingly is about the Chemistry department. Ethel would have been a Junior in 1939 and a student of chemistry so this subject close to her heart. Noteworthy is the last section when she mentions which of the students were awarded fellowships. All four were men. In her unfinished memoir did describe the discrimination she felt applying for jobs in chemistry once she graduated. I wonder if she began noticing this kind of discrimination within the department as well. It will be interesting to see future articles about the chemistry department in the future. 

RICE OPENS NEW COURSES IN CHEMISTRY  9/3/1939

Revision of Senior and

Graduate Section. of Department at Institute Is Completed

Six new half-year courses and one new full-year course in chemistry have been established at Rice Institute this year in a complete revision of the senior and graduate section of the chemistry department, it was announced this week.

Half-year courses in chemistry will give short, concentrated presentations of highly specialized branches of the science. In previous years, only the longer, more generalized courses were offered. The new courses will enable advanced students to acquire more thorough grounding in chemistry, Dr. George H. Richter, assistant professor of chemistry, explained.

Special Examinations.

Also new this year are the special examinations required of candidates for master's and doctor' degrees in chemistry that have been added to the general requirements for these advanced degrees. Courses open only to students passing these examination have, furthermore, been created. The comprehensive examination to be given before October 1 on the academic year, will cover analytical, inorganic, organic and physical chemistry, as well as scientific German.

Senior students will have two new courses to choose from during the second halfyear—advanced physical chemistry and advanced inorganic qualitative analysis. Graduate students working toward an M.A. degree have open to them three new courses during the first half-year—adsorption, the theory of valence, and advanced physiological chemistry.

Heterogeneous Equilibrium.

A new course in heterogeneous equilibrium will be presented during the second half-year. Three courses will be open only to candidates for the Ph.D. degree. The most modern type of X-ray diffraction apparatus, installed this summer, will be used in chemistry 610. Heterocyclic chemistry

640 has been newly-created, and advanced inorganic chemistry completes the group. Four new men have been given fellowships in the reorganized department: Sam R. Bethea and Ervon J. Eggemann of Iowa in chemical engineering, and James Holmes of Georgia and William R Purcell of Mattoon, Ill., chemistry.

This is the second article dated September 3rd (yesterday's post, Professor A. C. Chandler, was about a Biology professor). There seems to be a science theme to day. I doubt new courses in any department at Rice would make the local newspapers today. It's interesting to think that type of information was worth of a newspaper article back then. Today, we may hear about new innovative programs at universities, but not a minor expansion of courses in a small department nor a trip to a conference by a conference by one professor.   


Remember Professor Pattie from the psychology department? The one Ethel wrote about in an article earlier the same week which I shared on the debout of this blog? Yes, the assistant professor who ran off to marry a student? Well, I was curious about him, and decided to look up the "scandalous" couple in the Rice Yearbook, the Campanile. There he sits at the bottom of the page. His bride, Miss Whatley is conspicuously missing from the Sophomore class where she reportedly belonged. I hope to find her in the future!

A page from Campanile, Rice Institute Yearbook 1938
Assistant Professor Dr. Frank A Pattie, Jr. bottom right.
(Click to Enlarge)

Ancestry.com. U.S. School Yearbooks [database on-line].
Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2010.
Original data: Various school yearbooks from across the United States.

Friday's Faces from the Past: Professor A. C. Chandler

Yesterday's launch of Ethel's Scrapbook was quite successful! The blog enjoyed 100 visitors! +Jana Last was the first to join! Thanks +Jana Last and welcome to all my new members and readers!

One of mysteries posed by Ethel's scrapbook is which publication the articles came from. By process of elimination, I believe I have narrowed down the possibilities from three to two. After studying the Thresher weekly online, on the The Portal to Texas History website, I am convince these clippings do not come from the Rice student newspaper. The Thresher articles, for the most part, list the author. My grandmother is credited to quite a few articles. Therefore, I believe the articles in the scrapbook come from her job as the Rice correspondent for the two local Houston papers, the Houston Chronicle and the Houston Press.

Today's article is titled Rice Professor Leaves To Talk at Biology Meeting. Interestingly, the article is crossed out (see image below). Several other articles throughout the scrapbook are crossed out as well. I am hoping to discover a pattern that might explain why she chose to draw a line through some of these articles. I present to you, article #2 from Ethel's scrapbook:

Rice Professor Leaves To Talk at Biology Meeting 9/3/1939

Dr. A. C. Chandler, professor of biology at Rice Institute, left Saturday for a three-week visit to New York, where he will give a paper on "Investigation of Immunity in Tape Worm Infections" before the Third International Congress of Microbiology.

The congress will be held from September 4 to 9, and will feature talks by leading biologist from many nations. Doctor Chandler is corresponding member from the section on parasitology, and is the only Texan who will be on the program. 

"In experiments I found that tape worms absorb the food from nourishment a person takes into his body, and that if there is only one tape worm its growth is successful and long lived. But if more than one are found in a person , all die except for one. 

"There might be two reasons for such results. Either the person is immune from tape worm or the other can not grow because they are crowded.
"In the experiment, I fed rats already infected with tape worms with larve worms from beetles. After observing the rats for several days an operation was performed and all but one of  the worms removed. The result was that the worm continued to grow after the others were removed. This proved that the person was not immune, but that worms could not grow because they were crowded. 

"Experiments with vaccine were not successful  A vaccine had no effect on the worm in the infected rat. Even when the vaccine was given by mouth the tape worm was not harmed. 
"Premunition was the conclusion of the experiments," Doctor Chandler said. 

Premunition means protection against infection while the patient is infected. In other words if a person is the victim of tape worm disease, no other tape worm can become dangerous until the infectious one is destroyed. 

The Summary of his address was given by the doctor before he left. 

Now what scientist today goes to a three week conference? Times have changed! This article spoke to me in several ways. My husband is a scientist who uses rats and mice in his experiments. Apart from the length of the leave, I notice a few other major differences in the evolution of scientific research since my grandmother roamed the Rice campus. For one, no one would draw conclusions on humans directly from a mouse experiment. Mice are a good model, but one can not conclude the same result in human with human trials. Secondly, I had a difficult time reaching the conclusion he drew from the experiment of surgically removing the worms. I read the paragraph several times and I'm still not sure of the conclusion. If it wasn't a direct quote from his report, I would think my grandmother might have misunderstood his experiment. Finally, I'm curious if his results hold true today (I've made a note to look this up). 

Since today is Friday Face's From the Past day, I thought I would try to find a picture the renown parasitologist. I did even better. I found a great blog post about him on the Rice's Historian's Blog by Melissa Kean. Melissa wrote about a series of coincidences which lead her to learn about professor Chandler. Ethel's article will continue the stings of serendipitous events.

Professor Chandler c1940 from Historian's Blog

One of Melissa Kean's readers, relayed a rumor that Dr. Chandler smuggled a tapeworm inside himself. Another recalled that he named a tapeworm Homer and provided the bibliography to support his claim. 
The good news is, this professor did not run off and marry a student like his colleague Dr. Frank Pattie from the psychology department (see yesterday's post).

Welcome to Ethel's Scrapbook!

Ethel, 1936, graduating from
Sam Houston High School. She was a top
 student and at fourteen, the youngest in her grade. 

Welcome to Ethel's Scrapbook! I invite you to join me on a remarkable journey. Each day, I will post another articles from the hundreds of articles I discovered in my grandmother's scrapbook.

Ethel worked as a reporter and associate editor for the Thresher, the weekly student publication at Rice University. She also was the Rice correspondent at The Houston Press (a Scripps Howard paper) and The Houston Chronicle. Her prolific career as a young reporter is even more impressive, when you take into account that she enrolled at Rice, at the age of fourteen.

Today, as an inauguration post, I would like to start with a picture of the scrapbook, a photograph of Ethel and at her High School graduation, and the first article in the scrapbook. Do check the About page, and the scrapbook page of this blog for more information about Ethel the scrapbook. I will be posting everyday, so do check often!

Ethel's Scrapbook 1939-1940
Rice University

The inside cover has the following sticker identifying the owner of the scrapbook. From the married names on label, it's clear Ethel pasted this label much later than 1940.

This label must have been pasted after
1970 when she married Fred Alzofon.

And now...the first article from the scrapbook.

Psychology Teacher And Rice Student Wed in New Mexico 8/31/1939

A campus romance between professor and student was climaxed in Roswell, N.M. when Dr. Frank A Pattie, Jr., and Miss Billie Bess Whatley were married there, it was learned here Thursday. 

The marriage, according to an Associated Press dispatch Thursday, was performed last Thursday at St. Andrew's Episcopal church of Roswell by Rev. Frederick B. Howden, Jr., rector. It said that after a wedding trip to Mexico City, the couple will return to Houston. 

Dr. Pattie, assistant professor of psychology at Rice Institute  and Miss Whatley, who finished her sophomore year at Rice last June, became acquainted two years ago when she entered the institute as a freshman taking a pre-medical course, friends here said. 

The romance, which was not generally known on the campus, began last fall when Miss Whatley enrolled in Doctor Pattie's introductory psychology course at Rice. 

During her year's study of psychology, the young student had helped Profesor Pattie with several of his experimental research projects by serving as a subject. 

The young professor, a former instructor at Harvard University, holding degrees from Vanderbilt, Harvard and Princeton, and his bride will make their home in Houston. Doctor Pattie will continue his professorship.

Mrs. Pattie is the daughter of Mr. and Mrs.William Whatley of Roswell, N.M. 

Well, there you have it! Seems like this matrimony wasn't quite as scandalous then as it might be today. The professor was involved with a student and didn't lose his job!

Looking forward to hearing your comments!