Harvard University - Red Book Yearbook (Cambridge, MA)

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...4-nl i l i K i i ii I. A. Richards invented Basic English, was the founder of the school of New Criticism. ,4 rfs, letters Hlhe Dark Visions of those who reed Antici- patory Funeral Services over the Humanities Have Been Dispelledf' In 1942, a Harvard professor, famous for his scholarly achievements in a branch of the humanities, found himself in an army uniform and stationed near one of the foreign theatres of war. The abrupt change from classroom and library to a military office, the reports of combat, and the daily contact with the material implementation of war, were so upsetting that he wrote solemnly to a colleague that the day of such scholarship as his was over and that after the war students and teachers of the humanities would be barely tolerated in universities, if indeed they could hope even for that. Ab- sorbed by his new environment he looked back on Harvard as a remote backwater, and on his previous career as one which had outlived its usefulness. He was not alone in his pessimism. Others at home and abroad doubted whether the liberal arts at Harvard could survive the world struggle. The University was formally committed to a whole-hearted effort to win the war, and all its resources were turned to that end. Naturally it looked as if routine military training or the study of scientific techniques were in the ascendant. Most of the official pronouncements of the Harvard authorities either said nothing about the study of the humanities during the war, or stressed the importance of other work so heavily as to give the impression that the University was neglecting everything but its drill grounds, barracks, laboratories, and workshops. It was easy for dis- ciples of the humanities to lose heart. The leaders of some other colleges were no less firm in dedicating their institutions to war service but spoke out plainly for the continued study of the liberal arts as a necessary part of that service. When official Harvard was for the most part silent on this point, there were plenty of gloomy prophets who made invidious comparisons and asserted that the University had renounced its tradition by adopting a sterile and limited concept of its duty in the crisis and for the future. War, Chaos, Perhaps Death Those who were actually at Harvard during the war years had plenty of evidence that such dark forebodings were false. Although enrollments in courses in the humanities fell off as the pressure of war programs forced students into other fields, and although most liberal arts departments were under- staffed because many of their teachers were in war service, no i381

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Professor Aik g ac ine, capable of operating at speeds several times faster than the pioneer IBM machine. The latter consists of two buildings joined by a corridor. One houses the huge frequency-modulated cyclo- tron with its massive magnet, the extensive shielding and the auxiliary equipment. The other is a two-story research and control building. The machining of the 750 tons of iron forgings for the cyclotron magnet frame was done at the Watertown Arsenal, and the transportation from the Arsenal to the new building, north of the Univers'ty Museum, was fortunately completed just prior to the heavy snowfalls of late December, 1947. en's new digital calculatin m h' Both of these projects were made possible in large degree by funds supplied by the Office of Naval Research. The cost of the cyclotron installation, exclusive of building costs, is for example of the order of 35750,000. The research carried on in the two laboratories is, however, ofa fundamental nature. Most of it is unclassified -in the parlance of ONR -and the results are therefore available for publication. Professor Bainbridge, in charge of the cyclotron, is assisted by several graduate students and thus the Navy is realizing One of its aims in supporting University research, namely the ffil . t the moment, Professor Bainbridge and his associates a re concerned primarily with positron studies, the thermal-diffusion separation of isotopes, mass spectrometer and spectrograph studies, and the investi gation of fission products and radioactive ' ining of younger scientists A ISOIOPCS . The Scientists are Honored As one might expect, even from this very sketchy report on the natural sciences at Harvard, numerous honors have come in these years to many of the outstanding members of the staff. Professor Bridgman received the Nobel Prize in 1946 for his work on the physics of high pressures. Professor Kistiakowsky was awarded the Nichols Medal of the American Chemical Society. Professor Hunt received the Presidential Medal for Merit in recognition of the research contributions of the Harvard Underwater Sound Laboratory. Professor Francis Birch was awarded the Legion of Merit for services in connec- tion with development of the atomic bomb. Many others were recognized beyond the Harvard community by the conferring of honorary degrees and election to honorary positions in scientific bodies in foreign countries as well as in the United States. Nobel Prize winnin h ' ' g p ys1c1st Percy Bridgman is th autho ' ' e world's rity on the effect of high pressures upon atomic and mole- cular structures.

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and Wlilasaphy one of them stopped its work and in many the difficult times furnished an incentive for reappraisals of the soundness of their methods and aims. The students, in spite of the new burdens they had to shoulder and in spite of what often looked like ofhcial indifference, persisted in their loyalty to the humanities. Men carrying full war service programs, strug- gling with unfamiliar subjects, and working at top speed to fit themselves for military usefulness, somehow found time to include in their over-filled schedules courses in literature, philosophy, and music. Some of them completed their training for commissions in technical branches of the Army or Navy and still managed to finish the work for honors in humane fields of Concentration. For many it seemed as though they were being given their last chance. Ahead was war, chaos, perhaps death. It was now or never if they were EO get what they wanted in college, and for many of them what they wanted most was to be found only in the humanities. They saw more clearly than some of their elders that winning the war meant little or nothing unless they knew how to make the most of eventual peace. The writer of Harvard Today in the 1943 Album saw the point and stated it excellently. He ended his summary of the Harvard which the Classes of Philosopher Ralph Barton Perry, an expert on the theory. of values, carried on the tradition of Royce, Santayana, and William james, He retired in 1946. One of the first to recognize the Nazi menace, his latest book is One World in the Making. By Kenneth B. Murdock, Professor of English 1943 and 1944 had known, by characterizing 1939 as a year of fear, 1941 as one of challenge, and 1942 as one dedicated to intellectual action, and he declared that the power of thingy must no longer masquerade as the power of ic!ea.r, that ideas are . . . necessary to create and protect democracy, and that students can not fight or live without faiths. They could not fight or live with the old faiths and so must live with new ones produced and remodeled from the old. There were many, like the transplanted professor in uniform, who would have dismissed this, either cynically or with regret as for a dream too fair to grasp. With a war to fight, guns and machines, mathematics and electronics, tech- nical skills and physical prowess, were plainly useful and necessary, how could as good a case be made for literature, painting or music? Ideas, perhaps, were wanted, but only of the sort which in laboratories, drafting rooms, and staff head- quarters, produced stronger explosives, more accurate range- finders, or more deadly strategic devices. There were many who foresaw the giving up of the humr nities in colleges and everywhere else except as an ornamentation of life and a way of escape from important affairs, innocent no doubt but tolerable only as amusement after serious work was done. One of the youngest men ever to hold the coveted Boylston Chair of Rhetoric and Oratory, Theodore Spencer died unex- pectedly in january, 1949. He was a well-known poet and Shakespearean scholar. 139 l