New York University - Violet Yearbook (New York, NY)

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GERMAN Cbairzzzfzfz-Professor Robert A. Fowkes. As an undergraduate, despite too many campus activities, I was on Dean's List and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. I received the Crisi medal for Italian, and played loudly in the orchestra fdouble bassj, sang in the Glee Club, ran cross-countryg the present coach, joe I-Iealey, was a classmate. I also dabbled in campus politics and was senior vice-presi- dent. I have taught full-time at NYU since 1938, and had previous part-time experience here and at Columbia College. I have been to Europe four times for travel and study, and am not, despite campus rumor, speaker of a great number of languages. I do speak a few, but have as a chief interest linguistics, the systematic study of language relation- ships, development. and structure. I am a bit of a fanatic on things Welsh tiny ancestral language,-language, literature, music, and am active in Welsh-American societies. I have taught the NYU Glee Club to sing Welsh and a few other languages: I taught Welsh at Columbia for four years, and was also a lecturer in Sanskrit there for fourteen years. -I was the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship for re- search on the Welsh language, and went to Aberystwyth fsiclj for work in the National Library of Wales. I am completing what will be the hrst etymological dictionary of that language Cand probably the lastj. I am a member and have held offices in several national societies, and am the author of between thirty and forty articles on Germanics, linguistics, etc. I have also written four small books, including no best-seller. A graduate of University College, I am still proud of the school, and hope to see it continue to flourish and improve where there is room for so doing. Izzrirzzctorr-Guenther Gerlitski, John D. Barlow, Fred Ulfers, Constantine Michos, Esther Schneider. GOVERNMENT AND INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS Chaimzazz-Professor Ralph A. Straetz. Friends often suggest to me that being a college teacher must be a wonderful and rewarding experience. And so it is. But the picture others have 'of the professor peering over his spectacles in a study, paneled on the inside, ivy-covered on the outside, and venturing out only to teach a class or two before returning to the purity of scholarly contemplation, is somewhat removed from reality. Books, classes, and study are certainly central to our lives, but surrounding and complementing them are such essential activities as faculty committee meetings, departmental meetings, conferences with students and colleagues, 'or with administrators, some sessions take hours, and other matters are settled during a five-minute walk across campus. These activi- ties only deal with my professional life. The effective college professor is usually also an effective citizen in his com- munity. Party politics, educational problems, church and re- ligious interests, promotion of the arts-such demands on one's time and energy are, or can be, enormous. Not all, but many college professors are thus involved. Many of our students come to us knowing where they are going professionally. Our task is to help them make sure that their original choice is correct from the point of view of aptitude, interest, and temperament. Sometimes we assist in gently dissuading a parent from insisting that a son or daughter must enter a profession where money and prestige seem assured. Increasingly, undergraduate training is not suffi- cient, so that students look to the college teacher for advice, suggestions, and recommendations about graduate schools and specihc areas of specialization. In general, if we have a guidance role, it is to encourage the student to reach academic decisions by himself, After consulting with others, he alone must select the area in which he can contribute most to the community. The spirit of an institution is something one senses and is not subject to clear and accurate description. Its most im- portant ingredient is the manner in which the pursuit of knowledge is carried on and complemented by a yearning for the creation of a better world for those who come after us. This ingredient I hnd in full force at University College. Profermr-Edward C. Smith. Arrorifzfe P7'0f6JJ01'-H. Mark Roelofs. Arrjrffmf Profermr-Irving L. Marko- vitz, James T. Crown Con leavej. Izzrfrzzclol'-Robert Burrowes.

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ECONOMICS Cbriirman-Professor Walter W. Haines. Arfilzg Cbrzirvzazzz-Associate Professor Benjamin Katz. I was born in Brooklyn in 1923 and raised in a quaint section called Sheepshead Bay. This area still retains some of the flavor of an English fishing village at the same time as it harbors tarnished vestiges of the Gay Nineties resort it once was. My teachers alerted us early to the signilicance of history and the turbulent course it was following in those cataclysmic years of the Thirties, I recall vividly the parade of alphabet agencies of the New Deal which we school children memorized and joked about, our family gatherings around a huge radio to hear a presidential fireside chat which sounded solemn and hopeful to my ears, and the bitter, often violent, economic strife of the mid-Thirties filling the local moviehouse screen with newsreels of angry men clubbing others on picket linesg farmers spilling milk on the ground rather than sell it for a pittanceg and barely clad, skinny babies crying for food. These impressions fashioned my initial interest in economic issues and spawned a desire to contribute in meaningful measure toward a more stable and wealthier society. At James Madison High School, I had several unusual instructors whose imprint I hope I reflect in my own teaching. One marvelous lady taught us European history by means of assigned books, term papers, daily reading of the New York Timer, and the Socratic method. In that classroom, Hitler was a living hgure-and a frightening one. Three undergraduate years at Brooklyn College flew by in a swirl of exciting courses and changing plans to major in first one and then another department. After three eventful years in service. half of them spent in Europe, I began graduate study at Harvard, This was the busiest time I have experienced, as I devoted myself to acquiring technical proficiency and to earning a doctoral de- gree in preparation for a career in research and teaching. Arrirtazzt Proferrorr-Robert L. Hatcher, Bruno Stein. Adjmmf A.r.rirla17! Proferror-Bernard Hallote. Izz- rfrzfc1fo1'r-jonas Prager, Patricia F. Bowers, Pamela Kacser. ENGLISH Chrziwmzfz-Professor Edwin L. McAdam. I was born in 1905 in St. Paul, Minnesota, where I at- tended public schools until my graduation from high school. I worked two summers on a farm and two or three more in a real estate office. I went to Carleton College in Northville, Minnesota, from which I graduated in 1927. The following year I taught in a two-room high school in a small village in South Dakota. There I learned trigonometry for the first time because I had to teach it as well as a number of subjects which I had studied before, such as Latin, English and His- tory. The following year I went to the University of Minnesota and received an M.A, in English in 1929. I then taught for three years as an instructor in the American University at Washington, D.C., taking two graduate courses evenings at George Washington University. In 1932 I went to Yale and finished my doctoral work in 1935. I was an instructor at Yale from 1934 to 1957. In 1937 I came to New York University as an assistant professor and, except for four years service in the Navy as a Lieutenant and Lieutenant Com- mander during the war, I have been here ever since. As a doctoral thesis I have edited the Poemr of Samuel johnson and this was published in collaboration with Professor Nichol Smith of Oxford in 1941. I spent four summers doing re- search at Oxford. which is an ideal place to do research since when one gets tired of work he can go swimming or punting on the river. Since coming to New York University I have taught both graduate and undergraduate courses. and I have always found both types of work exciting. Since 1950 I have been Chairman of the English Department at University College and for two years I was Acting Dean of the Graduate Schools of Arts and Sciences. In i'ecent years I have published a book on Dr. johnson and the English Law and have edited two volumes for the Yale edition of Dr. Johnson, one of which has been publishedg the other will appear in a year or two. In March of this year I published. with a friend, a modern selection from Johnsons Dii'fio1mry, which cost a great deal of work but provided also many hours of entertainment. I have one more book in my head which I hope to do within the next two 'or three years. I am unmarried. My hobbies are music, gardening and travel. My favorite spot is Puerto Rico because it is always warm and I can not be reached by telephone. Proferrozzr-Gay W. Allen, George L. Anderson, john W. Knedler, Edwin H. Miller, Elkin C. Wilson. Arroci- nfe Proj'e.r.ror,r-Dan H. Laurence, Richard D. Mallery. A,1iJ'f.l'ftIllf Proferror-Gaynor Bradish. In.i'fi'11rfoi'-Mar- tin Grief.

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l HISTORY Cbairmfzfz-Bayrd Still. At the risk of making these biographical comments sound like a testimonial for the admissions ofhce, I will say that I count the chance that brought me to New York University, and hence to New York City, as the most noteworthy develop- ment in my career. To that date, with two exceptions, I had admired big cities from afar: from Woodstock, Illinois, where I was born and grew up, from the campus of the University of Wisconsin, where I earned the B.A., M.A., and Ph,D. degrees, and from Durham, North Carolina, where I was a member of the History Department of Duke Univer- sity. The two exceptions were a six-year sojourn in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on the history faculty of the University of Wiscon- sin-Milwaukee, and a period of more or less enforced residence in Washington, D. C. There I fought the battle of the Potomac, not in the Civil War, but in World War II, emerging from a three-year tour of duty at Gravelly Point fan annex of the Pentagonj with the rank of lieutenant colonel in the Army Air Force. Throughout these years wherever I lived, the big city connoted intellectual excitement and cultural richness for meg and I was giving increasing thought and study to the history of urban growth in American life. To my good fortune, New York University had the foresight in 1947 to project a program of studies in urban development and called me, from Duke University, to pioneer in developing them. This has proved to be a continuously rewarding .ex- perience. It has given me the opportunity to offer courses in urban history both at University College and in the Graduate School, to do some writing on the history of American cities in general and of New York City in particularg and to become acquainted with the metropolitan-molded students of New York University. Most important of all, it brought me to New York City to live and work. Who could ask for anything more? Profeffoza-Marshall W. Baldwin, Harold E. Ham- mond, Carlyton Sprague-Smith. Arrorifzzfe Profermrr- Chester C. Tan. Arfirlfznl Pfofermrf-Edwin G. Olson, joseph Reither, Frederick C. Schult, john W, Wilkes. Imwmtoi'-Lawrence Oliva. MATHEMATICS Cbairmmz-Professor Frederick A. Ficken I had little to do with my birth, The same relaxed acceptance of the inevitable marked my early years in the Middle West. Depending shamelessly on my parents, I earned absolutely nothing. Shortly after my fifth birthday, it is true, I was in- stalled on a street corner with several copies of the Sazuwiay Evening Party they brought Sc each. This enterprise Hourished only briefly, however, and cannot be construed as a genuine breach of driftsmanship. Only years later, during the summers, I rather incautiously became involved with camp counseling, pumping gasoline, keeping books, clerking in stores, and peddling vacuum cleaners from house to house. This last indis- cretion confirmed the attractions of drifting quite conclusively. Meanwhile, back at the schoolhouse, my gift for drift led me into the classroom of a stimulating teacher of geometry and then brought me, two years later, under the influence of a teacher who believed that high school students could learn calculus. Thus nudged, I drifted as a college freshman through the sophomore course. and kept on drifting, ever since, with no essential change of direction. The usual sort of thing, you know-degree by degree, Then teaching, here and there, a frail bark battered from one beach to another by seas of students. I did one thing that might be called undrifty. but there is some doubt that it would constitute a true violation. In college days I earned my board by waiting on tables in a girls' dormi- tory. There was always cream for the cereal, however, a second slice of pie, and lively humor. How else, moreover, could one arrange to drift frequently into a room of pretty girls? It was not until years later that mid-century driftsmanship coined a term useful in recognition of these redeeming features of my hoard job, The word is serendipidity : it means finding good things in unexpected places, which is one criterion of an accomplished drifter. ProfeJJ'0rr-Marek Fisz, Horace A. Giddings, Arthur S. Peters, Irving F, Ritter. Adjunct Proferror-Richard W. Hamming. Arforifzfe Profefrorr-Salvatore Bernardi, Albert Bland, Claude W. Burrill, 'lack Heller, john R. Knudsen, Edward I.. Reiss, Martin Schecter, Leopoldo V. Toraballa, Martin Zuckerman. A.r,ri.rta11t Proferrorr -Ira A. Carl, Malcolm Goldman, Morris Meisner, Richard Pollack, Peter A. Rejto, Norman S. Rosenfeld, joseph G. Stamptli. Adjzmrf Alprimvzt Pr0ferr0r.f-Ro- muald Slimak. Izzrlrnrlorr-Arthur Babakhanian, jacob E. Goodman, Daniel Kocan, Cornelius W. Langley, Arnold Lebow, David Nebeker, George Riddle.