University of North Carolina Chapel Hill - Yackety Yack Yearbook (Chapel Hill, NC)

Page 17 text:

' I ' l ' I ' I ' I ' I ' I ' I ' I ' IMTI ' l ' I ' ITT 119W1KOTY 1M120.) I ' l ' l I ' lTI ' I ' I ' I ' l ' I ' lW (Eljarlea fStaahmttll? AS loyally as October rolls around, bringing Alma Mater ' s birthday, a telegram of - good cheer comes to her signed in the filial devotion of Charles Baskerville. Six- teen years ago, Dr. John H. Finley, the President of the College of the City of New York, came to Chapel Hill for commencement and took back to New York the head of the Chemistry Department of the University to become the head of the Chemistry Department of the City College. Dr. Baskerville ' s career in New York has been watched with affectionate interest by the University and particularly by the chemistry depart- ment which he had helped to promote, a department builded and made famous before his time by the scholarship, teaching, and research of Dr. Francis P. Venable, discoverer of acetylene gas, author, and one time president of the American Chemical Society, and after him by Dr. Charles H. Herty, inventor of the revolutionary Herty turpentine cup, twice President of the American Chemical Society, and later Editor-in-Chief of the Industrial and Engineering Chemistry, and head of the Dye Commission to the German Republic. Dr. Baskerville thus has the distinction of sharing with two chemists of the major class, the headship of a chemical department of national standing. Dr. Baskerville, who was the constructive head of the department between the regimes of Dr. Venable and Dr. Herty, came to the University in 1891 as a student and assistant in chemistry, having graduated from Virginia in 1 890, and having done special work at Vanderbilt in 1891. He won his B.S. degree in the University of North Caro- lina in 1892 and his Ph.D. degree under Dr. Venable in 1894, by brilliant scholarship. His distinction as a student here was more than scientific; he was socially and athletically distinguished. As a football player in 1892, 1893, and 1894, he wrote his name high in Southern athletics. He was fullback and manager of the famous team, captained by Michael Hoke, that defeated the University of Virginia 26 to o in Atlanta in 1892. His clever diagnosis of Virginia ' s offense, his own fast attacks and punting were large factors in the decisive victory. Although weighing only one hundred and forty pounds, he was considered by Dr. Joel Whitaker, in selecting the All-time University Football Team, for the position of fullback along with such legendary giants as Belden, Graves, Holt, and Abernethy. Belden out-pointed him, however, by forty pounds of steel weight. His interest in athletics continued after his football days. As a member of the University Faculty Athletic Committee, Dr. Baskerville stood solidly for class sportsmanship and amateur athletic standards in the pioneer days when it required courage to stand against the taint of professionalism. His influence as a good sportsman is felt to-day both in the City College and in the club life of New York. But it is not as a club-man that we now think of him in New York where he belongs to a score or more of social, commercial, and scientific associations — local, national, and foreign — in addition to the honorary and social fraternities of Phi Beta Kappa and Delta Kappa Epsilon. In continuance of his splendid work here as head of the department, he has built up a strong college department in City College. Here his department grew Eleven » i 1 1 ' I ■ I ■ I . I ■ i ■ I . t ■ 1 1 1 x I ■ I I . t t . I 1 1 1 1 [ 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 r t ■ 1 ■ 1 1 1 ■ I ■ I ■ I . I . « . I ■ I . f 1 . 1 . . I ■ I . P . t I r I . I . I . I I . t , I , t . i t . t ■ I . I ■ 1 . t , I ■ 1 , t . t . 1 , t . t ■ 1 TTTTTT-n-r r3 NGtJ