NORRIS WATSON RAKESTRAW
NORRIS WATSON RAKESTRAW CHARLES A. KRAUS
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Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island
H E next issue of the' JOURNAL OP CHEMICALin January, 1895. He received his early education in EDUCATION will be the first Co appear under the the Toledo city schools and was graduated from the editorship of Professor Norris W. Rakestraw Toledo High School in 1912. While an undergraduate of Brown University. When Dr. Otto Reinmuth a t Leland Stanford Junior University, he achieved untendered his resignation, he presented the Board of usual scholastic attainments and when in 1916 he rePublication with the problem of finding as his suc- ceived his Bachelor's degree, he was already a member cessor a man who could maintain the JOURNAL of Phi Beta Kappa, Sigma Xi, and Phi Lambda Upin the distinguished position which i t has come to silon. During his undergraduate days, he was an occupy under his able leadership. The choice of Dr. outstanding member of the Stanford Gym Club and a Rakestraw was the logical solution. He has been asso- star diver on the swimming team. After receiving his ciated with the Division of Chemical Education since Master's degree the next year, he enlisted in the Chemiits establishment and during the period 1933-1939 cal Warfare Service and spent eight months a t the served as its Secretary. In recent years he has been a Edgewood Arsenal. He then returned to Stanford as an instructor and was awarded the Doctor's degree i n member of the Board of Publication of the JOURNAL and, since last year, Assistant Editor. One can think 1921, having worked under Professor Robert E. Swain of few persons who combine so well as Dr. Rakestraw on the problem, "Chemical Factors in Fatigue." His early papers reflect his interest in athletics, being the various qualifications of a successful editorgeniality, sense of humor, keenness of perception, de- concerned with the effects of strenuous muscular cisiveness, energy, power of expression, and familiarity exercise upon the concentrations of common blood constituents and, characteristically, the effects of loss of with the subject matter. The second son of Edwin and Clara (Norris) Rake- sleep. In many of these experiments, he was his own straw, Nonis Rakestraw was born in Toledo, Ohio, guinea pig. An interesting offshoot of these interests
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is his work on the "body fluids of the sea-lion," the investigation of which involved a combination of travel, exercise, and chemical analyses, activities which still characterize his research. During the next two years, he held teaching positions a t Stanford and the California State Teachers College a t San Jose. Subsequent to 1923, he spent nearly two years in the East and in Enrope;studying a t Yale, Cambridge, and the University of Copenhagen, with shorter visits to the principal universities of Great Britain, Scandinavia, Germany, France, and Switzerland. He spent the year 1925-26 a t Oberlin College as assistant professor and the following year came to Brown as assistant professor to take charge of the work in beginning chemistry. Each summer finds him at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution where as a Research Associate he directs the work on the chemistry of sea water. One of his accomplishments, acquired under conditions which would hospitalize a less determined man, is the ability to titrate in the rocking laboratory of the auxiliary ketch, "Atlantis," while suffering from mal de mer. In 1933-34, while on Sabbatical leave, he visited most of the oceanographic stations of the world-at the University of Washington, Scripps Institute at La Jolla, Hopkins Marine Station a t Pacific Grove, Marine Laboratories a t Naples, and the famous laboratory a t Monaco. After this, with characteristic disregard for time and space, he made a rapid swing throughout western Europe to visit stations on the North Sea and the Baltic, especially a t Keil, Hamburg, Copenhagen, Helsingfors, Oslo, and Bergen, the Marine Biological Laboratory a t Plymouth, England, and laboratories in
Iceland. If one designates attendance a t the Florida meeting in April and the Cleveland meeting in September as the starting and stopping times for this itinerary, and remembers that this was before the days of transoceanic clipper ships, he obtains a fair sample of the startling amount of getting about which Dr. Rakestraw can accomplish in a few months. He still takes stairs two steps a t a time, plays baseball or football a t Chemistry Club picnics and accompanies the swimming team to Florida during the Christmas recess. In his early days in California he aroused the conntryside with his side-car motorcycle; in New England his automobiles travel 100,000 miles in the shortest possible time; and now he may be expected to drop down almost anywhere in search of a manuscript, as he is piloting his own plane. Dr. Rakestraw's command of his subject, his ready wit, his varied experience and his sympathetic understanding of his students and their problems have contributed to make him one of the outstanding teachers of elementary chemistry in this country. According to his philosophy of teaching, "education is self-education," and the incoming student soon learns that a knowledge df chemistry-can be gained only through persistent, personal inquiry. -While an apostle of hard work, Dr. Rakestraw never fails to lighten the apparent load by arousing the student's interest in the work he has to perform. We may confidently expect Dr. Rakestraw to attack the editorial problems of the JOWAL OF CHEMICAL EDUCATION with the same enthusiasm and energy which have characterized all his undertakings heretofore., -',
