Norris Rakestraw, Third Editor, 1940-1955 - ACS Publications

Chemical Education Today

Journal History

Guiding the Journal of Chemical Education The next several pages provide snapshots of the periods of service of the Journal ’s seven editors, based on poster papers at the 15th BCCE and Boston ACS meetings. On the 25th and 50th anniversaries of the Journal, and now on the 75th, the editorial staff have reflected on what has gone before. This is beneficial for both readers and staff, because the Journal is a product of synergism among its readers, authors, reviewers, staff, and editor. This is a peer-reviewed scientific journal like many others, but with differences. There is a tradition of interaction with the chemical education community that the Journal serves. This goes back to Neil Gordon (see below), and readers and authors have a strong sense of ownership: this is their Journal ! Over the years editors have tried to inform, inspire, guide, question the readership by means of their editorials. Vintage quotes from past editorials are included below and on the following pages.

There has always been scope for an editor to set a style and guide the Journal on a particular course, but other factors contribute as well. The following pages reflect the world at large at the time as well as the Journal; depressions, wars, and Sputniks made their inevitable mark. Digging into the past has revealed that in addition to carrying out the major task of editing the Journal, each editor has played a role in the larger scientific community. Neil Gordon’s interest in scientific communication led him to found the familiar Gordon Conferences. Otto Reinmuth simultaneously was managing editor of J. Org. Chem. Norris Rakestraw established marine chemistry at the Scripps Institute. Textbooks, curriculum projects, publications abound— some of them influencing the Journal ’s course. So, 75 years after Neil Gordon with legendary energy and determination started this Journal, here it is, alive and well and listening.

From the Editor’s Standpoint It is hoped that the chemistry teachers may glean from the above that this Journal is their property, and hence criticisms, both pro and con, are earnestly requested by editors in order that each succeeding issue may contain many improvements. Neil E. Gordon

[Reinmuth] wanted [the Journal] to be something more than a teachers’ journal and his conception of chemical education was too broad to be confined within the walls of the formal classroom. He maintained a high editorial standard, for he felt that the readers deserved the best. Otto Reinmuth

The decade of the 1940’s was the Journal’s critical time. For successive months we scraped the barrels, financial and editorial. … Each month the editor’s desk was cleaned out, leaving us wondering where the material for the next month was coming from. Norris Rakestraw

My editorial tenure, 1955–67, was at a remarkable time for science and science instruction. Catalyzed by the implications of Sputnik, the quality of science in the laboratory and classroom became an issue of national importance.

…we would wish that readers might think of this Journal as a place wherein countless generative ideas, old and new, that form both the substance and the catalysts for chemical science and chemical thought are described with a freshness and excitement akin to that accompanying their discovery, and wherein a thousand great chemistry teachers of the past and present live and speak and teach and write.

W. T. Lippincott

…this Journal is rededicated to the proposition that teachers of chemistry are also students of that subject. J. J. Lagowski

The most important item in this editor’s philosophy is that the reader comes first. Though we could not publish a journal without authors, it is readers who make this publication worthwhile, useful, and yes, possible. …If you are an author…we depend on you to provide manuscripts…In return we provide a forum for your ideas.

John W. Moore

William Kieffer

JChemEd.chem.wisc.edu • Vol. 75 No. 11 November 1998 • Journal of Chemical Education

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Journal History

Neil E. Gordon, Founding Editor, 1924–1932

The facts are that the teaching of our great science is worthy of our best young men and women. A river never rises above its source nor are we likely to graduate greater chemists than we find in our teaching profession. JCE 1924, 1, 85

Since it was now December 10, a quick decision had to be made if we were to bring out the first issue with the beginning of the year.

Neil Elbridge Gordon was born October 7, 1886. He received the Ph.B. degree from Syracuse University in 1911, with a major in mathematics and a minor in chemistry. In 1912 he received an A.M. in mathematics from Syracuse University, and in 1917, a Ph.D. in chemistry from Johns Hopkins University. He married Hazel Anna Mothersell on June 29, 1915. He had two children, Fortuna Lucille and Neil Jr. Fortuna Gordon, Professor Emerita at the University of Louisville, has written his biography, The Price of Decision: Neil Elbridge Gordon: 1886–1949. He died May 30, 1949, in Detroit, Michigan. His academic career began at Goucher College where he was an assistant professor of inorganic chemistry from 1917 to 1919. From 1919 to 1928 he was professor of physical chemistry at the University of Maryland; from 1928 to 1936 he was professor of chemical education at Johns Hopkins University. In 1936 he moved to Central College in Missouri, where he chaired the chemistry department until 1942, at which time he moved to Wayne State University in Detroit. At Wayne State he chaired the chemistry department until 1947. Neil Gordon was known for his remarkable vigor, vast enthusiasm, and rugged determination, all of which were used in the cause of communicating science. In 1924 he founded the Journal of Chemical Education. In 1931, while he was at Johns Hopkins University, he began holding small, informal conferences among leaders in research; these were known originally as the Gibson Island Conferences. The conferences were established on a permanent basis in 1938 under the auspices of the AAAS; they were renamed the Gordon Research Conferences in 1948. While at Central College he acquired the Hooker Scientific Library, a great private collection. When he moved to Wayne State he was able to purchase and move the library to Detroit, where it was remains today as the Kresge-Hooker Library.

[A] good executive, a fine organizer, and a promoter of inexhaustible energy… I was then, and still am, fascinated by the riddle of his achievements. He had none of the aspect nor mannerisms of the supersalesman. Whatever aspirations toward scientific scholarship he may once have entertained, he early recognized his own peculiar abilities as an organizer and promoter, and subordinated all else to the furtherance of projects which he felt would advance the cause of chemistry and chemical education. …he would engage the best talent the funds at his disposal could secure, regardless of any possibility that their scientific achievements might overshadow his own.

JCE 1943, 20, 369 Otto Reinmuth about Neil Gordon GRC 50 Years in New Hampshire, Program, 1997

Typical Articles in Volume I Editor’s Outlook What We Teach Our Freshmen in Chemistry The Response of High School Pupils to Chemical Education What Kind of Research Is Essential to Good Teaching The Advantages of Laboratory Work in the Study of Elementary Chemistry The Teaching of Biochemistry Motion Pictures as an Aid in Teaching Chemistry Chemical Reactions Visualized for Beginners

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Journal of Chemical Education • Vol. 75 No. 11 November 1998 • JChemEd.chem.wisc.edu


Otto Reinmuth, Second Editor, 1933–1940

That the JOURNAL survived all that happened to it immediately preceding and during my regime as editor I attribute to the fact that it really embodied a worthwhile idea… JCE, 1948, 25, 646.

Few of us recognize the dangers of false ambition. We would do well to convince first ourselves and then others that it is not more honorable to be…a nonentity among scientists than a jewel among laboratory technicians. JCE, 1941, 10, 66.

Otto Reinmuth was born in 1900. He did his graduate work with Neil Gordon at the University of Maryland and was first Gordon’s assistant editor (see below) and then his associate editor, a position that he held until Gordon retired as editor in 1932. During his tenure Reinmuth moved the editorial office from the University of Maryland to the University of Chicago. At the University of Chicago Reinmuth collaborated with his friend Morris S. Kharasch on a textbook of organic chemistry (Grignard Reactions of Nonmetallic Substances). He also became the managing editor of the Journal of Organic Chemistry when it was founded in 1936, a position he held simultaneously with the Journal editorship. He synthesized a long list of pharmaceuticals and also published many articles in this Journal, including one series on the electron in organic chemistry and another on the structure of matter. When Reinmuth became editor in the midst of an economic depression he did so without the previous substantial support of The Chemical Foundation, Inc., which had been obtained through the interest of Francis P. Garvan. His diligence enabled the Journal to survive this period and also to make visible changes—the page size became essentially as we know it and covers were more graphic and changed each month. Reinmuth was a quiet man, unable to feel at home in a crowd. Photographs, too, are difficult to locate. Norris Rakestraw has characterized him as “too reticent for his own good….At the same time, his personal influence upon the field of chemical education will be no less profound for being largely unrecognized.” He died on June 23, 1956.

My introduction to the JOURNAL was rather casual. As a part-time graduate student I was employed by the Maryland Free State as an inspector and analyst (of feeds, fertilizers, and limes), and Dr. Neil E. Gordon, automatically State Chemist by virtue of his chairmanship of the chemistry department of the University of Maryland, was my chief. For some occult reason he decided that my talents were better adapted to journalistic than to regulatory pursuits. He measured out a pile of manuscripts by the simple expedient of estimating its thickness with thumb and forefinger, informed me that this was the next JOURNAL, and dubbed me assistant to the editor. Armed with youthful energy, self-confidence, and a printer’s manual of copyreaders’ symbols, I set to work. JCE, 1948, 25, 646.

Advertising provided muchneeded revenue and also reveals much about the times. Ads were often on the cover.


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Journal History

Norris Rakestraw, Third Editor, 1940–1955

My recollection of the Journal’s years from 1940 to 1955 brings back many memories, not the dimmest of which is the memory of a continual pressure for increased circulation. [We] set out to increase the actual chemical content of our pages. We hunted for review articles, but at a somewhat more elementary level than that of the professional review journals. JCE, 1973, 50, 801

Norris Watson Rakestraw was born in Toledo, Ohio, in 1895. He entered the University of Toledo in 1912 but transferred to Stanford University in 1913. He continued at Stanford, earning a Ph.D. in 1921. He also studied at Yale and Cambridge. He was an instructor during his graduate career at Stanford and then spent a year as assistant professor at Oberlin before he joined the faculty of Brown University, where he remained until 1946. He left Brown in 1946 and moved the Journal to Scripps Institution of Oceanography at La Jolla, California, to establish a program in marine chemistry. He was not only a prominent marine chemist and but also an administrator at the University of California, San Diego; he was Dean of Students and then later the first Dean of the Graduate School. Despite the fact that his editorship came at a very difficult juncture, during his tenure as editor he nearly doubled the circulation, paid off debts and even accumulated a small surplus, and overcame shortages of manuscripts. He established continuing features including Out of the Editor’s Basket (1940) and Tested Demonstrations (1955). He was active in the New England Association of Chemistry Teachers while he was at Brown University and helped with the founding of the Pacific Coast Association of Chemistry Teachers after moving to California. He was known for his exciting lecture demonstrations as well as his prowess as a diver. He received the James Flack Norris Award of the ACS Northeastern Section in 1956 and the ACS Award in Chemical Education in 1957. He became Professor Emeritus at Scripps Institute at the University of California, San Diego in 1965. He died in Morongo Valley, California, in December 1982, at the age of 87.

The editor of a journal such as ours has an opportunity to express his personality and to influence his readers much more than does an editor of one of the subject-matter research journals. I feel that the 180 editorials which I wrote during my term are a major part of my contribution to the fields of chemistry and education. If anyone is curious about my personal educational philosophy there is where he will find it. JCE, 1973, 50, 801

The Journal has served the field of chemical education for twenty-five years and I think it is not mere boasting to suggest that its influence is partly responsible for the fact that in no other professional field of science is so much thought and attention given to the problems of education and training. JCE, 1948, 25, 645

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Norris Rakestraw turns over the editor’s blue pencil to Bill Kieffer, shown on the May 16, 1955, cover of Chemical and Engineering News.



William F. Kieffer, Fourth Editor, 1955–1967

Chemistry and chemistry instruction are constantly changing. So will this Journal as future Editors will adhere to the aims established by its founders. JCE, 1973, 50, 801

When I reflect on all the influences, both on what we were teaching and on how we were teaching it, those years 1955–1967 appear indeed to have been a watershed period for chemical education. JCE, 1980, 57, 33

William F. Kieffer is Wilson Professor of Chemistry Emeritus at The College of Wooster. He lives in Walnut Creek, California. He was born in Trenton, New Jersey, in 1915. He received his education at The College of Wooster (B.A. in 1936), Ohio State University (M.Sc. in 1938), and Brown University (Ph.D. in 1940 for work in photochemistry). He first joined the faculty of The College of Wooster in 1940, moved to Western Reserve University in 1942, and returned to Wooster as Professor of Chemistry in 1946. He has been visiting professor at the University of Washington, U. S. Naval Academy, and the University of California-Santa Cruz. Kieffer has been an NSF Science Faculty Fellow at MIT, a Research Participant in Radiation Chemistry at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, a Visiting Scientist in Chemistry for the National Science Foundation, and a visiting scholar at Stanford University. He served on the Advisory Council of College Chemistry, sponsored by NSF, and chaired the ACS Advisory Committee for the National Broadcasting Company for the television series “Continental Classroom”. He was a member of the writing team of the NSF–ACS-sponsored Chem Tec Project, which planned and prepared curricular materials for a two-year course to train chemical technicians in community colleges. He has described his term as editor as one of great change in the education community: “Chemistry in the college and university classroom changed dramatically during this time. The old struggle between theoretical and descriptive influences on the content of the first course almost disappeared in favor of the theoretical.” He is a writer as well as an editor. Kieffer is the author of the book The Mole Concept in Chemistry and of papers published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, Industrial and Engineering Chemistry, and the Journal of Chemical Education. He has written two textbooks for nonscience majors: Chemistry, a Cultural Approach and Chemistry Today. In 1965 Kieffer was presented with a Catalyst Award by the Manufacturing Chemists Association and in 1968 he received the ACS Award in Chemical Education.

The two most available sources of chemical information the student has are his text and his professor. These should be distinguished from each other by observing that the latter is alive. The classes in which this is most obvious will be those from which our supply of future scientists for both the laboratory and the classroom will come. JCE, 1955, 32, 549

The Resource Papers series published with the cooperative support of the AC3 not only brought subjects to teachers’ attention, but provided the background information that made possible bringing the subject into the classroom.

JCE, 1973, 50, 801

Elaine and Bill Kieffer are shown here at the Journal’s 75th anniversary celebration at the ACS Meeting in Boston in August 1998.

After January 1959 there were no more ads on the cover.


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Journal History

W. T. Lippincott, Fifth Editor, 1967–1979

As guardians, interpreters, and transmitters of the moral code of a great science, teachers of chemistry have very important work to do.

JCE, 1979, 56, 355.

William T. Lippincott, known to friends and acquaintances as Tom, lives in Tucson, Arizona, and Puerto Peñasco, Mexico. Lippincott is a native of Baltimore, Maryland. He received a B.S. from Capital University (Columbus, Ohio) and a Ph.D. in 1954 from Ohio State University. He has taught at Capital University (1948–1952), Ohio State University (1952–1954 and 1961–1973), Michigan State University (1954–1957), the University of Florida (1957–1961), and the University of Arizona (1974–1984). Lippincott’s Journal years are known for the introduction and encouragement of many feature columns that represent its diverse audience. As an editor he was known for his particularly thoughtful editorials—sometimes reflecting, sometimes encouraging, sometimes gently chiding. A sampling appears here. His teaching career was spent in the general chemistry programs of several large universities. He utilized numerous innovative techniques, including the use of computers and films and the display of information onto large screens. He received numerous awards for his teaching: the Manufacturing Chemists Association Award (1966), the ACS Award for Chemical Education (1975), and the James Flack Norris Award of the Northeast Section of the ACS (1982). In addition to editorial responsibilities with the Journal, Lippincott was very active in chemical education in general and served on a number of major projects and committees. He is co-author of the text General Chemistry (with A. B. Garrett and F. Verhoek) and editor of Essays in Physical Chemistry: A Sourcebook for Physical Chemistry Teachers; he was principal investigator of the NSF project from which came the current text ChemCom: Chemistry in the Community. Bill Kieffer has said of Lippincott: “I spoke of pedagogic innovation; I am led to recall the most significant contribution I made to the success of the Journal. That contribution was the selection and persuasion of Tom Lippincott to inherit my blue pencil.”

Perhaps it is not too trite to suggest that all of the exciting new knowledge, all the important new research, all the great new ideas developed by our generation and those that preceded us have neither lasting meaning nor real significance unless the young people of today and tomorrow can appreciate them enough to use them in discovery and building the better world for which they search. JCE, 1967, 44, 489

Features from 1967–1979 Chem 13 News Digest Chem Ed Compacts Chemical Principles Exemplified Chemical Principles Revisited Eco-Chem High School Forum

Impact Interface Series Provocative Opinion Resource Papers Textbook Errors View from My Classroom

And for the teacher who worries some about his standards, examinations and judgment there is at least some consolation in recalling that very likely no student ever returned to thank him for making it easy, but a good number probably returned to thank him for proving to them that they could do a good deal more with their minds and their energies than they ever believed possible. JCE, 1973, 50, 449.

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J. J. Lagowski, Sixth Editor, 1979–1996

Joe Lagowski is shown enjoying the Journal’s 75th anniversary celebrations the recent ACS Meeting in Boston.

The bedrock on which the Journal has been built is its numerous reviewers JCE 1996, 73, 695

Born in Chicago, J. J. Lagowski graduated from the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana in 1952. He received his Ph.D. from Michigan State University in 1957 and then spent the next two years at Cambridge University. In 1959 he joined the faculty of the University of Texas at Austin, where he is a Professor of Chemistry and also of Education. Since 1993 he has served as Director of the Institute for Science and Mathematics Education. He supervises a research group working on a wide spectrum of problems in chemistry and in education. His publications cover a broad area: chemistry education, solution chemistry, organometallic chemistry, transition metal chemistry, and chemistry instruction. They include books, book chapters, books in series, laboratory manuals, and editorials. He is the recipient of numerous awards, including the ACS George C. Pimentel Award in Chemical Education (1989). Joe Lagowski served as editor longer than any of his predecessors. The Journal experienced enlargements (the introduction of the Secondary School Section early in his term and JCE Software near the middle), innovations (such as the State of the Art Series), and all-encompassing changes (the switch to in-house computerized desktop publishing). Portions from editorials that he has selected as his best appear below, as do Journal covers.

It has become increasingly clear that a number of major issues need attention if we are to engage effectively in triage as a process to maximize what can—and should—be saved in higher education. The following list summarizes discussions that have appeared in a variety of disparate publications. • Establish and prioritize the institution’s educational goals. • Establish value and reward systems for students and faculty that are consistent with the priority goals.

“No man is an Iland, intire of it selfe.” Donne’s meditation is easily transferred to the person who was, is, and will be, editor of this or any journal. No editor is an island. … The Editor of the Journal rides on the tide generated by his staff, his reviewers, and his readers. JCE 1996, 73, 695

• Develop leverage and constraint mechanisms to effect change and improve student orientation to the new priorities • Establish a relationship between the price and cost of education and access to it, perhaps incorporating some sort of internal subsidy system. • Develop a relationship between the demonstration of public accountability through the reallocation of resources and the measurement of tangible outcomes that justified enhanced public and private investment. • Devise a use of technology that improves productivity, which in turn requires the definition of productivity in an academic setting.

JCE 1995, 72, 861

For the educated layman who cannot understand science, the alternative to a priestly elite in a democracy is to vote science out. Given these alternatives, can scientists afford not to expand the resources, both mental and physical to insure that the education of non-scientists is taken at least as seriously as we make of science students? A democratic elimination of science would make us slaves of a different sort. JCE 1981, 58, 597


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Journal History

John W. Moore, Seventh Editor, 1996–

[V]olunteer to join us in the exciting task of encouraging and disseminating excellence in chemical education. JCE, 1997, 74, 5

Applying to the problem of improving undergraduate education the same kind of thought and creativity that go into research projects is something we all should do more often.

JCE, 1998, 75, 935

The students…are crying out for teachers who respect them enough to ask for their very best performance JCE, 1998, 75, 255

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John Moore was born in Pennsylvania in 1939. He received the A.B. from Franklin & Marshall College in 1961 and the Ph.D. from Northwestern University in 1965, concentrating in physical inorganic chemistry. He held an NSF postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Copenhagen and then taught at Indiana and Eastern Michigan Universities before joining the faculty of the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1989. Concern for teaching and students is the focus of his career, manifested in projects that include curriculum reform (the New Traditions chemistry curriculum project), teacher workshops (the Institute for Chemical Education), and dissemination of educational materials (Project SERAPHIM). He has written several texts, including ones for general chemistry (The Chemical World and Chemistry), environmental chemistry (Environmental Chemistry), and kinetics (Kinetics and Mechanism). Moore was co-editor of the Computer Series in this Journal when the first article appeared in 1979. It was the intention of the series to delineate the state of the art of computer usage while at the same time accommodating the needs and background of readers with little or no computer expertise. Then in 1988 he founded Journal of Chemical Education: Software. One of its primary aims was to give authors of software genuine publication credit for their work. He has received many awards for his teaching and his work in chemical education in general, including the CMA Catalyst Award (1982), ACS George C. Pimentel Award in Chemical Education (1991), and the James Flack Norris Award (1991). Much of his educational philosophy is captured in the quotes taken from editorials that are on this page. Other insights were expressed in the FIPSE Lectures in Chemistry, which he organized in 1988. Under the title of “Chemistry Plus Technology Plus Teachers Yields Curricular Change”, the message of these lectures can be summed up: “Though technology could help to speed the assimilation of factual material, this is not the theme that runs through the four FIPSE Lectures. Instead there is general consensus that technology provides for a richer, more diverse environment within which students can learn. Many of the applications of technology allow for a more inductive approach to the subject—students are encouraged to experiment, to develop hypotheses, and to proceed on the basis of their observations and conclusions instead of being asked to memorize a set of facts. Stimulation for, and freedom to develop what Einstein called ‘the holy curiosity of inquiry’ can be provided in many ways by technology as well as by human teachers.”

In a world in which change is the norm, only an educated student has been properly equipped to prosper. JCE, 1998, 75, 135

If we tell students how to answer every question…, then how can we expect them…to learn how to learn on their own? JCE, 1997, 74, 613


Norris Rakestraw, Third Editor, 1940-1955 - ACS Publications

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