Harvard School of Public Health - Yearbook (Cambridge, MA)

Page 7 text:

International Statesman of Engineering and Public Health TJOR 47 generations of Harvard students, including 39 at the School of Public Health, Professor Gordon M. Fair, who retires this year from active teaching, may be remembered best as a brilliant, xvitty and poignant lecturer. Many of our own Class recall his lecture this year relating, in terms perhaps worthy of the late Cecil B. DeMille, how there was dancing in the streets when siveet water came to Boston and New York, and how the introduction of textile manufacturing in New England brought degradation of the atmosphere and of the human spirit. Some of us may be less aware of his other broad interests and his pioneering work in our field, and so we have reprinted here excerpts from the citation read to Professor Fair earlier this year by Dr. Thomas, during a testimonial in his honor given by the Faculty of Public Health: a A VIEW of the career of Gordon Maskew f Fair is a view of some of the most ex¬ citing and significant movements in the annals of engineering in public health. From his early research on water disinfec¬ tion by ultraviolet light that followed completion of his training at Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, until the present time, Professor Fair has been one of the ablest engin¬ eers in the service of his nation and his university. The development of his seminal concepts of the role of the engineer in public health, and his pathmaking work as an educator in implementa¬ tion of these concepts mark outstanding achieve¬ ments of his professional life. His scientific work has ranged from fundamental studies in limnol¬ ogy, the complex processes of water filtration, and the bio-degradation of organic wastes in streams, to the application of principles of physical chem¬ istry and microbiology in the maturation of engin¬ eering practice in water and waste-water treat¬ ment. Among notable accomplishments was his leadership during World War II of a research group that solve d difficult and important problems of water disinfection for military and civilian or¬ ganizations. Professor Fair has long served as a statesman of engineering and public health in national and international agencies and in professional societies. In 1921—in the aftermath of World War I—he worked toward the restoration of public health facilities in the countries of middle Europe as Assistant Director of Sanitation for the Feague of Red Cross Societies. In 1942 and 1943 he organized the Engineering Section, Division of Health and Sanitation, of the Office of the Coor¬ dinator of Inter-American Affairs. These are two activities in a long list. One should also cite his sustained, skillful, and unsparing efforts for the Rockefeller Foundation and the World Health Organization in establish¬ ing centers for the education of sanitary engineers in the Americas and in Europe, Asia and Africa. In this work he guided and suppor ted the careers of many former students who derive from an un¬ broken academic sequence of forty-seven classes at Harvard. His accurate predictions and insights have been a key to advance in the great venture of protecting the health of the public by control of man’s environment.” 3

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DEDICA TION TO GORDONM. FAIR Teacher and Investigator at Harvard University since September 1, 1918. Member ot the Faculty of Public Health, September 1, 1926 to June 30, 1965. Gordon McKay Professor of Sanitary Engineering, September 1, 1935 to June 30, 1965. Abbott and James Lawrence Professor of Engineering, March 1, 1938 to June 30, 1965.

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In Appreciation: To Wintbrop Laboratories The successive classes of the Harvard School of Public Health have a friend in Winthrop Laboratories, who annually have sponsored our Yearbook, and this year the editors have asked Winthrop to tell us something about their activities, which bear so directly on the field of public health. The following article and photos were provided to us by Winthrop, and we are pleased to reprint them here: Pioneer in Anti-Malarial Research W INTHROP Laboratories, the pharmaceu¬ tical manufacturing division of Sterling Drug Inc., has made a considerable number of substantial chemotherapeutic contributions to the treatment and cure of disease in this country and abroad. Perhaps its most significant accomplishment in terms of public health has been the pioneering role it has played for some 30 years in the field of antimalarial drugs. While malaria may be of rel¬ atively minor concern in the United States today, many thousands of American servicemen in World War II learned at dose hand about the disease. At the same time they became very familiar with Winthrop’s Atabrine, the drug produced as a sub¬ stitute for quinine which was no longer available. In 1944, Winthrop scientists developed a com pound called Aralen which proved to be even Eleven-day old embryonating eggs being innocu- lated with various strains of influenza virus in producing Winvac, Winthrop Laboratories’ influ¬ enza vaccine, at Rensselaer, N. Y. 4