AM E R I C A N C 0 N TEMPO RARIES Wilder D. Karicroft ILDElt U. B A X C K 0 I ; T has just reached the age where he may be included in these thumb-nail sketches. Gaged by his looks, save fur his recently g m y hair, he would be taken for a much younger m m , but on the hasis of his published work he is nothing less than a Methuselah. Many a professor on retiring would feel that his duty in research snd M a teacher had been fully performed by t.he study of a twentieth ‘as many prohlerns and the guidimce of a twentieth as many grrduate theses M those studied and guided by Bencroft. Beside teaching and research he has given much time to the AMERICANCISEMICAL SoCIETY. He was presidont in 1910, and as past president has been active in its councils ever since. IIe was Dresident of the American Eleotroehemical Society in 1905and 1919,andserved as lieutennn&colonel in the Chemical Warfare Service during the war. For thirty-six yoam lie has editcd the .Journal sf Physical Chemistry. This wau long a single-handed enterprise, founded and financed by himself because there wss then no other American journal into wliich the articles lie and his students were producing would fit. A big active body, initidly athietic (end on the Hr~rvardfootball team), and kept in shape by plenty of golf, a big active mind, and a lot of personality mark this man who has been the o u t standing professor of chemistry a t Carnell for thirty-seven years. Thousands of Cornell ehemists trained under him may have forgotten what facts he taught them, but few have forgotten what they learned about how to think, how to recognize a vsriahlc, and how to attack a probltm. Independence of thinking, the ability to appraise things for what they are rather than what others report them to he, is the legacy “Banty” has left to many college generations of students. He was born of sn old Boston family; his greatgrandfiLther was 8 noted Unitarian minister and author, and served in the Revdntion. His grandfather, George Bancroft, founded the Nzvnl Academy at Annapolis, was minider to Great Britain and Germany, and wrote the “History of the United States.” Wilder D.’s skill with the pen is hereditary. Whether or not i t comes from his revolutionary forbenr, he has independence. In fact, few people can be as independent as Banty has always been. 130 has been financially in nuch R position that,, until his family bocame large, he did not draw his university saiary, so he har never had to worry, and he is entirely incapable of worrying. Yet, no matter how obscure his origin might have been or what his financial status, one could never imagine Banty as the boot-licking or temporizing typo of professor. In fact, he would probahly be unhappy if everybody agreed with him. He doesn’t mind being in the minority. One summer on E Cornell ohemists’ boat ride, big straw ha? of the faimer type were provided. Banty wore his on the campus for a week or so, until Mrs. Bancroft took it away from him. It wasn’t what other professors were wearing just then, hut i t WM a perfectly good hat and w5S handy. As long as it kept the sun off, it suited Banty just M well as a Panama. IIe is not very much interested in some of the things the average professor cares for. Though he has been a full professor for some
thirty years, arid has 8. Ixipzig Ph.D., he never USCS either title, and always answers the phone, “Mr, Bancraft speaking.” Ilc turned down an election to Sigma X i with a comment on its heing a sort of mutual admiration society. In 1923 he wa8 given the lionorary degree of DSc. from Cambridge University. He a e eepted t.his, but the story goes t,hat underneath the academic gown ivm a vivid golf suit, so that nfter the ceremony there treed be no delay in turning to something redly important. Striking sports costumes have always been a weakness with him. Back in 1901 van’t Hoff ed the United States. and made 8 s p e d t,o Ithaea to visit the then very young, hut xlirady world-prominent Cornell professor. In his diary van’t FIoff describes this visit and BANCROFT comments equdly upon his host’s sports costume and his skilfu’ handling of tho reins on a trip to Taughtmnnock Falls by way of the lake rand, then very fur from improved. Although a sificiently skilful driver of horses to impress van% Hoff, a t least, Banty does not drive a car. One’s mental picturo of him i s as he enters the classroom with hag full of bound journds which he dumps on tho desk and from which he puts on the board tables of dat,a nnd curves from various workom, which he knits together int.0 a eltar and definite story, but in which the chapters often show something quite &Eferent from what their original authors thought they meimt. Many of his published papers, especially those in the Journal o j Phhyyical Cherniutiy, consist of pages of quotations from different mthors who didn’t get anywhere, with a few experiments aimed to unearth the previously neglected variables, arid a few parsgraphs of Bancroft fitting together the apparently disoordant facts into an explanatory theory that does get Yomewhere. What tho facts meant to t.hose who observed them is nothing to Bancroft, what they mean to him is everything. He dislikes doing some thing that h a already been satisfactorily done and prefers to start where the others left off. To this end he is an omnivorous reader and B marvelous rememberor. He can t d l you the name of the worker, the journal in which the work was published, the year and quite close to the page, not only in regard to elassic work but also to thousands of minor articles, especially those tliat stick out in his mind like a sore thumb because they do not fit into ordinarily accepted theory. Abstracts do not sufiee him. A t one time he needed to find out just exactly what the author of a Russian article mid. Instead of getting the articlc translated, he loarned Russian so he himself could study the article. He i s not a t 1111 interested in spending m o n t h on some precise experiment in order to chase down mother decimal place in some constant. Too many things are still so discordant that they need to be straiglitened ant by qualitative experiments before quantitative ones are in ordor. Thinking is much more important to Banty than is experimenting. He prefers to figure out a theory that can he tested and outline a few crucial experiments to test it rather than t o flounder around with hundreds of experiments and then evolve the theory. His eomment on one of his students who was rated much higher by Banty than by his colleragues at Cornell was: “Yes. T. is lazy, but if you hack him intc a comer, he d l think.”
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After Buncroft htis tliougbt and determined i n h a own mind the facts are and what they mean, he is willing to tell the world about it in no uncertain terms, and i t is a matter of supreme indifference to him whetlror anyone else Ires the am^ opiniun. This holds wliether the subject ia one on which there is much expert opinion or not, and whether Bant,y has previously worked in that field or not. Eence, to many experts whose toes have becn stopped upon in his appmisal of their opinions, his iianie is anstliem:i. Rut I3nnty hiis been right so many times tliiit thr dlnnces of his being right when he is the only one holding :LEopinion trrc still suclr that, by and large, it’s ~tfairly srrfe bet to gamble that tho v w t majority of his opinion* will ultimately prove correct. With all his positiveness, with his way of replying to ndvcrse discussion (alrr-nys striking and in later years often tun bitingly strrcmtie), and with a decided degree of intolormoo fur thusc who do not see t,liings as he does, hc has yet opened the p g e s of tho .loicmal 01I’hysical C h m i a t q to various articles fa? from ovt.hndcm and prohuhly doc to hc exploded in time. B ~ i n t yis a3 likely to explode thew as anybody else when lio gels wound to it. &me professors pick out a litble Reld, :ind they and their stuileiitv stay peaceably within ita cunfincs. A Tenti ranch couldn’t hold Bmty, he’d nlways he sticking his nose ovcr the line. Ilr started out m an orthodox physical ehemiwt, one of his endy works being n book on the phase rule. Many s d t and alloy systems were studied by him and his students, but he soon took electrochemistry under his wing and in notable articles on the “chemistry of olectrachernistry” he strsightened out meny points then obscure. In this period he and his students worked out. the foundations on which modern chromium plating is bnsed. The classic work of Sargerit w i ~ spartly carried out ns a thesis and partly afterwards a t Bancroft’s expense. Banty tried to arouse commercial interest in chromium plating a t that time, for he could see its many applications, but he was ahead of the times, and others Inter cashed in on the facta he had brought to light. When industry was ready to take the matter up, Bnnty’s interest w&s somewhere else. During the eleetrochmiicnl phme of his interests, he wanted u. special generator set that would give high amperage with great flexib i l i t y i n v o l t a g e f o r Some special electrochemical w o r k , but the bids were far n h o v e what the universit.y c o u l d afford, so Bmty made up the difference. Among his outstanding contributions to physical chemistry has been the eorrolution of the scnttered work in, and the d e v e l o p m e n t of a g e n e r a l theory of contact c a t a l y s i s . The main points of his theory have been aubstsntinted by the developments of the last fifteen n hat
*.. Dr. Faustus hY Remhrandt van R g n While Goethe’a F a u s t is hased largely on legend, there seema to be some bsvis of fact in the story, in that Dr. Johano Faustus, a German astrologer, alchemist, and soothsayer, wm
yeun. Others have since tilled that Geld exhaustively, without strayirig much from it, and their nnrnea are now more closely o m nected with it in the minds of the younger generation, but Rimcroft’s contributions were fundamental and of liisting value. I’hoiogmphy then came in for 8 good deal of his attention, anti next lie iiecume interestod in colloid chemistry, starting one of the first college courses on tlmt subject in this country. He did pioneor wwk 011 emulsions, being the first to draw definite attention to the two possible types of emulsion and to deduce a working mothod of obtaining either type a t will. Many commercial developmmtq of the present day dong the line oi a*phdt emulsion,s, fur cmmple, clearly t r i m their descent from the work of Bancroft and his cnllnborators a t Cornell. Pedagogic methods OCCIIpied some thought, with l i i s outline of “pandemic chemistpy.” Then h e mxrde a few excursions into physics, with studies of t plasticity of 1\11 his iiitrrest in science, liis interest in nthletics diao cunt.iiiues un:i,l,ated. He knows more about modern football than the average undergrnduate docs. Ze knows dl the big le:~giiebutt,ing averages and slips away from B Chemical Society mecbirig for a ball game now and then. A collengue who slipped awny with him one day says he’ll never forget the yell Bnuty let out whet1 Babe Ruth obligingly hit a home run. Perhaps nobody has learned much tact from Banty, but iit any mte nobody evcr learned from him how to pussy-foot. His hest friends will not deny thst he hm his faults, but his faults are those of strength, not of weakness. Without his positiveness and self-ruffirierrcy, he would not be the personality he is, nor havc made so deep an impression on his students. Is it, not in the order of things that a few investigators and educators oi his type should be scattered through our universities to leaven the mass who leach only what everybody accepts, whether it is right ur wrong, i n s t e n d of what thry have thought out for t h e m selve.9? T o have watched n miird like his work, to h a w had his guidance, and p e r h a p s t o have gained Borne degree of his ind e p e n d e n c e of thought a e p r i v i l e g e s that make any Cornellian who has w o r k e d u n d e r h i m p r o u d to clsss himself a s “one of Banty’s II. W. GILLmen.”
... active irr South Germary d w ing the Grst half of the 16th C e n t u r v . A t o w e r ia still standing et tho Abbey in ~knittligen in W u e r t t e m b e r g . m which Faustus is said to have carried on his alchemical ea&mentation. (No.?; of Perooistor Series. The m g m d ie an angra+ng. Sea page 1173,thia xasue.)
