Worcester Polytechnic Institute - Peddler Yearbook (Worcester, MA)

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■ Professors A lthough every ap - proach to a diploma at the Institute bristles with Sci¬ ence and its queer machines and experiments, Jenny, known to the world as Professor George H. Haynes, amid all this stress and strain, sits peacefully in his inner sanctum and reads,— reads papers, reads men and their actions, totally oblivious and unconcerned with whether the gears in the next building are meshing properly or whether some careless chemist a few doors below is preparing to make a quart or more of nitrogen tricloride. And again, he is one of many, for where will you find another man combining such thorough knowledge of his subjects with such delightful irony and equipped with such a voice for utterance? Where will you find a man so refined and thoughtful of others, so broad, yet so congenial? The mere mention of Jenny’s lectures brings a smile of pleasant reminiscence and amusement. How delicately he could shake theo¬ retical hands with the Standard Oil Co., his soft voice telling all the while what a damnable, corrupt business it was; how graphically he would denounce the tariff without saying one word against it, his delicate irony telling so clearly and entertainingly what he retrained from saying. We remember with amusement his far-away look at the Washburn Shops while the late arrivals struggled and tumbled over the rapidly outstretched feet in an effort to gain their seats noise¬ lessly; we recall his twitching lips, nervous tongue and oscillating pedal 21

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Faculty Levi L. Conant, Ph.D., Acting President and Professor of Mathematics John E. Sinclair, Ph.D., Professor of Higher Mathematics , Emeritus George H. Haynes, Ph.D., Professor of Economics and Political Science Walter L. Jennings, Ph.D., Professor of Organic Chemistry Zelotes Wood Coombs, A.M., Professor of English and Modern Languages Harold B. Smith, M.E., Professor of Electrical Engineering Arthur Willard French, C.E., Professor of Civil Engineering A. Wilmer Duff, D.Sc., Professor of Physics William W. Bird, B.S., Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Director of Washburn Shops Alton L. Smith, M.S., Professor of Drawing and Machine Design Charles M. Allen, M.S., Professor of Hydraulic Engineering Joseph O. Phelon, M.M.E., Professor of Electrical Engineering Albert S. Richey, E.E., Professor of Electrical Railway Engineering Carleton A. Read, S.B., Professor of Steam Engineering Arthur W. Ewell, Pii.D., Professor of Physics Arthur D. Butterfield, M.S., A.M., Professor of Mathematics Howard Chapin Ives, C.E., Professor of Railroad Engineering John H. Nelson, M.S., Professor of Applied Mechanics David L. Gallup, M.E., Assistant Professor of Gas Engineering Carl D. Knight, E.E., Assistant Professor of Experimental Electrical Engineering Frederick Bonnet, Jr., Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Chemistry Robert C. Sweetser, B.S., Assistant Professor of Analytical Chemistry Clarence A. Pierce, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Theoretical Elec¬ trical Engineering Raymond K. Morley, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Mathematics Albert W. Hull, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Physics Absent on leave.

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extremity as a joke threaded its way enjoyably and slowly thr ough his mind to utterance. What a picture he made with his long legs coiled up and carefully folded over each other in an effort to keep them on the platform with the rest of his person, and the number of positions he could occupy in the space of an hour gave us constant cause for wonder! And the questions that his mind conceived to harass us: (1) Would a child, born of a Chinese father and English mother, be an American citizen, if born on a ship flying the French flag, having Span¬ ish papers and resting in an Amer¬ ican port? (2) a. If the wool mar¬ ket were glutted with an excess of wool, what would be the effect on the price of beef? b. How would you finance a war under such conditions? But there is another side to Jenny that brought us closer to¬ gether than these questions, which rather kept us apart, for he knew the answers and usually we didn’t! From him we gained some¬ thing of his kindliness toward erring humanity, some of the char¬ acteristics of the true gentleman, some of his love of fair play and cleanliness in all things, and through him we realized as we never realized before that true politeness is thoughtfulness for others. And these things are of paramount importance, for we should be men and gentlemen first, and scientists, engineers or what-not afterwards. And it was he who instilled into some and developed in others that most valuable attribute, civic and national pride, unobscured by bigotry or prejudice. It was he who pushed back our narrow horizon that we might have a broader outlook on life and its problems, on politics and its mysteries,—on law and its obscurities. It was he who brought home to us that but a few years intervened before we would be called upon to help solve these problems. And for these things we thank him. Jenny came to us from Amherst, via Johns Hopkins. We don’t know but we think we would like to have been his crony at Amherst, for analysis and deduction leads us to believe that they were 22