Chemistry for Everyone
The Professorial Career of Clifford R. Haymaker: A Life of Chemistry Imagined and Bequeathed John J. Eisch* Department of Chemistry, The State University of New York at Binghamton, Binghamton, NY 13902-6016; *
[email protected] Daniel T. Haworth Department of Chemistry, Marquette University, Milwaukee, WI 53201-1881
As university professors of chemistry, who first met in our student days at Marquette University some fifty years ago, we have had occasion to look back at our lives in science and to reflect especially upon those few inspiring teachers who have been decisive in our careers. A name recalled with singular respect and admiration is that of Clifford Robert Haymaker. Some twenty years ago, the profession of chemistry lost a singular, remarkable colleague, Clifford R. Haymaker, who was an exemplar for his profession and for the human spirit. Although he was not widely known outside his university, he exerted a powerful and lasting influence on generations of chemistry students at Marquette University in the postWorld War II period. We, two of his former students, speak for these generations with the conviction that his odyssey through life deserves the attention of the entire chemistry community. Blind from birth, he overcame seemingly insurmountable barriers to attain the doctoral degree in possibly the most visual of the physical sciences. In the succeeding 35 years at Marquette he offered lectures at all levels on theoretical and experimental organic chemistry with unforgettable vividness and verve, a performance admirable even for a sighted professor. Such a triumph over adversity must strike a resonant and cheering chord in every person who has encountered forbidding barriers to realizing a professional dream. We therefore think it heartening to trace the path and the milestones in his extraordinary career. The Early Years: Adversity and Precocity Clifford Robert Haymaker was born on November 8, 1907, as the only child of Edward and Frances Haymaker in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, known for its middle-class burghers of German descent. Throughout his life he retained a delight for things German, in language, in culture and in the approach to chemistry. His father was a successful printer by trade and his mother proved to be an extraordinary tutor for her congenitally blind child. In their home studies together, his mother marveled at his precocious brilliance as he mastered Braille and the elementary school textbooks then available. He easily qualified to enter Washington High School, the leading secondary school in his district, at the age of thirteen and was graduated as the valedictorian of his class after seven semesters of study. There being available no Braille versions of his high school texts or necessary readings, his mother became his reading companion. All that he was to learn from reading or lectures was comprehended and retained aurally. But since he became intensely interested in the experimental physical sciences, especially chemistry, during his high school
years, his teachers arranged that he would be paired with a sighted student peer, who could give him a running verbal account of all visual observations that were made in the course of each experiment. By touching or manipulating every part of glassware, hardware, or apparatus, by noting any sounds, and often by sniffing any odors associated with the chemicals or reactions involved, the young scientist augmented the visualization of each laboratory experiment with vivid clarity. When his mother complimented him on his great achievements, he replied empathetically rather than proudly, “Mother, if you could see how some people have to dig to learn, you would say the marks have come easy to me”.1 In leading his high school graduating class overall and especially in Latin, English, geometry, and chemistry, he also developed a lifelong interest in music, both as a critical connoisseur of classical and popular music and as an avid performer on the piano and the saxophone. Later, as a student and then as a faculty member at Marquette University, he was an eager participant in various social and sports events. The Student Years at Marquette: Achieving the Astounding Haymaker enrolled in the baccalaureate of science program at Marquette University in September 1925 and studied liberal arts with a major in chemistry and with minors in physics and philosophy. Employing a similar modus operandi as in his previous education, he gave an outstanding display of his scientific gifts and was graduated in June of 1929 with the B.S. degree in chemistry bestowed magna cum laude. In addition to his deep gratitude to his mother and nurturing classmates, he expressed his great indebtedness for his success to longtime chairperson of the chemistry department and professor of organic chemistry, John R. Koch, who helped Clifford Haymaker find his perfect lifelong métier, the teaching of organic chemistry. Why this branch of chemistry captured his interest we cannot know, but we are attracted to a dual explanation. On the theoretical side, there is the clear rationality of three-dimensional atom connectivity within organic molecules, and on the experimental side, most organic compounds have characteristic odors that gave him access to an additional avenue of sense data in place of the visual. His promise as an engaging, articulate teacher of chemistry led the chemistry department to recommend his appointment as a fellow in chemistry, with a stipend and tuition scholarship, during his graduate studies for the M.S. degree (1929–1933). He submitted an experimental thesis entitled “Studies on the Decomposition of Mixed Ethers by
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Hydroiodic Acid”. Again, the experimental work was performed by Haymaker collaborating with a sighted colleague, but he composed the thesis text and dictated it to a stenographer. The next step, commencing studies toward the doctorate in chemistry, seemed feasible, but an experimental doctoral dissertation would place great demands on the time and energy of both Haymaker and any sighted colleagues needed to assist him. Since a career in experimental chemical research did not seem feasible, he and his doctoral mentors decided that his doctoral dissertation would involve a search of the current literature on a relevant topic. His graduate studies in this period ranged over both inorganic and organic chemistry, so he chose as his dissertation theme the topic, “The Chemistry of Atomic Nuclei”. In setting as his task the elucidation of the known nuclear reactions from the standpoint of a chemist, not a physicist, he was broaching, unknowingly, a problem of stupendous significance. In his dissertation he suggested that the fission of uranium remained a possibility and that a new or second long series of elements, similar to the lanthanide series, may have been discovered. Were these suggestions to prove correct, he predicted a “drastic modification of atomic theory”. Submitted to the Marquette Graduate School in April of 1938, this dissertation was completed in the year before the findings of Otto Hahn, Lise Meitner, and Fritz Strassmann led to the conclusion that uranium-235 had undergone fission into barium by bombarding neutrons, thereby heralding the Atomic Age. Although Haymaker’s reaction to this epic-making discovery is not known, he could be justifiably proud of his prescience.2 Professional Career at Marquette: Proponent of Organic Chemistry Imagined During his doctoral studies, Haymaker was appointed instructor of chemistry and began to offer some lectures in both general chemistry and organic chemistry. His clear, vivid, and logical presentations were especially well received by undergraduates who were not initially interested in chemistry. After receiving his Ph.D. in 1938, he was offered a continuing appointment in the chemistry faculty. For the next 30 years he offered courses in organic chemistry at all levels. Haymaker was kept up-to-date by his wife Eleanor and promising undergraduate chemistry majors who regularly read the current textbooks and journals to him. Possibly the best informed member of a faculty of eight, he was the constant motivating force in bringing the departmental chemistry curriculum abreast of the rapid developments that took place in the physical sciences after World War II. Legions of future chemists, physicians, dentists, nurses, engineers, and even many a major in the liberal arts were inspired by the clarity and vitality with which he introduced them to organic chemistry, for some a required subject that they had anticipated with dread. Afterwards, they regarded his teaching as having been rigorous in its demands and admirable in its results. His lectures were organized with great care and precision and were discussed in detail beforehand with his undergraduate assistant who would draw structures, equations, and diagrams on the blackboard in tempo with oral cues given during his lecture. Using no notes but often employing balland-stick molecular models, he depicted three-dimensional 276
structures and reactions in vivid and memorable prose, often focusing the students’ attention on the essential points by posing questions, real or rhetorical, for their consideration. In his description of laboratory experiments and the crucial information provided by specific tests or analyses, the students could only marvel over the immediacy of his recounting. For the moment they would forget that all such experience had been imagined and recreated in Professor Haymaker’s mind for their benefit. Regardless of the level of the organic chemistry course, he frequently called attention to the importance of chemical research, both past and future, in understanding our physical universe and in improving our health and environment in the here and now. In addition to inculcating the centrality of chemical research in his lectures, Clifford Haymaker regularly directed the thesis research of senior undergraduates and graduate masters candidates. The results of such studies were occasionally presented at regional or national ACS meetings. Through collaborative work with Henry Gilman (see below) two such studies were published in the Journal of Organic Chemistry (1). Personal Reminiscences The present authors were privileged to have taken courses with Clifford Haymaker in their undergraduate or graduate years at Marquette. Daniel Haworth recalls his experiences and impressions as a graduate student and eventually as a faculty colleague of Haymaker’s during the postwar years:3 During my M.S. degree program at Marquette (1950– 1952) I took three courses with Haymaker. The first was his course in Modern Organic Chemistry, which centered on stereochemistry with emphasis on optical isomerism and geometrical isomers. He taught the course with the goal of learning the “how and why” of three-dimensional configuration, rather than simply accepting the experimental facts of molecular structure. He built the course on fundamental principles beginning with the properties of atomic structure and molecular bonding; encouraged students to question how the knowledge of stereochemistry of compounds was obtained experimentally; and demonstrated these scientific observations with molecular models. At no time during his lectures did his blindness restrict his ability to help me understand such a visually demanding topic as stereochemistry. My second course with Professor Haymaker was his Chemical Literature course. His lectures on the organization of the Beilstein Handbuch der Organischen Chemie were outstanding. Given the inherent complexity of this basic organic chemical reference one would easily conclude that Professor Haymaker had been able to read this important reference firsthand. Using the means available to him, mainly caring and dedicated people, Haymaker had mastered the subject of chemistry without the abundance of present-day instructional aids and was able to convey a high level of comprehension to his students through his clear, vivid explanations of chemical phenomena. My third course with Professor Haymaker was Characterization of Organic Compounds. This course required the identification of six unknown organic compounds by means of detailed chemical analyses; no spectral method
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Chemistry for Everyone Photo courtesy of Marquette University archive.
was accepted as a final proof of structure. One student, after submitting a report on one of his unknowns, was asked by Professor Haymaker to bring him the compound used to make the derivative of his unknown. Haymaker knew this compound was not available and that the student had “cooked” his report. His failing grade was a painful lesson in academic honesty for this student. Reports written in an unclear or improper manner had to be resubmitted in correct English even though the analysis was correct. Haymaker insisted that all reports be prepared in the accepted style required by scientific journals. This course moved chemistry out of the classroom and into the laboratory. My return to Marquette as an assistant professor (fall 1960) made my association with Haymaker into a collegial relationship. I found him eager to welcome young colleagues and to share with them his teaching philosophy. Professor Haymaker tried to make his students view the physical world in terms of atoms and molecules, in order that they learn chemistry to its fullest extent. Thus all his former students are better equipped to “see” the physical universe, that is, to know how to think scientifically. This goal often remains implicit, but to Professor Haymaker it was no less important than learning the chemistry needed for a student’s future profession. His students owe a great debt to a blind professor for giving them a view into the wonderful world of organic chemistry.
John Eisch entered Marquette as a chemistry major in the fall of 1948,4 but it was not until his junior year that he had much contact with Clifford Haymaker. During my junior year, Haymaker was assigned as my advisor and at the same time I enrolled in his legendary and demanding course, Characterization of Organic Compounds. The time, energy, and chemical tests that might be required were completely open-ended and, as in chemical research, you were to invest as much time, or as little time, as was necessary to obtain the correct, unambiguous, reproducible answer. For me, the thrill and satisfaction of identifying the correct structure of an unknown organic compound was unsurpassed and I became an instant convert to the life of chemical research. As a result of my work in this course, Professor Haymaker asked me to be his reader and his blackboard assistant in his lecture courses during my junior and senior years. Our relationship was further strengthened when I took his laboratory course, Organic Syntheses, which involved more complex organic preparations. I still wonder over the detailed help he was able to offer on laboratory problems that arose in such preparations. (I learned later that such practical insight had been gained by his careful debriefing of former students.) Finally, with Professor Kenneth Brown of the Marquette Medical School, he was a co-advisor on my baccalaureate honors thesis, “Qualitative Identification of the Components of the Okra Pod Polysaccharide Fraction by Paper Chromatography” (2). The lessons learned in my senior thesis have been retained throughout my career and my debt to Clifford Haymaker remains large. But not only did my close relation with Haymaker the professor deepen my admiration for his store of chemical
Figure 1. Photograph of Clifford R. Haymaker, taken circa 1969.
knowledge, it also gave me a privileged insight into his equally attractive humanity and spirit. He would frequently invite me to lunch at a restaurant near Marquette or to dinner at his home. On such occasions I became aware of his extensive knowledge of the performing arts, especially music. Much information I might now have on music owes its origins to such conversations and running commentaries he would make while listening to concerti and symphonies from his large record collection. His palate and nose were equally trained in making nice distinctions in foods and in spirits, as when he introduced me to previously unknown delights of special spices and the Gibson martini. When it was time to select a graduate school for further studies, Professor Haymaker was instrumental in placing me in the research group of Henry Gilman, at Iowa State. There was a special bond between Gilman and Haymaker: not only had Gilman accepted several graduate students into his group on the strength of Haymaker’s recommendation over the years, but in the years after 1947 Gilman himself was to suffer steadily diminishing eyesight. In this period he was essentially and legally blind. For the next 40 years he was to remain professionally active in teaching and in research by exerting his strong will and by making use of many of the strategies Haymaker had employed throughout his life. The rapport arising from their shared disability bonded them in lifelong friendship.5 As a memorial to Clifford Haymaker, Henry Gilman donated a collection of organic chemistry monographs to the Marquette University Science Library.
Cumulative Attainments: Personal and Departmental Clifford Haymaker continued his uniquely effective and inspiring teaching of organic chemistry for 35 years. On the strength of such outstanding teaching he rose to the rank of associate professor in 1954. Furthermore, his high professional
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standards and judgment were invaluable as the chemistry department grew and greatly expanded its physical facilities in the 1960s. With the reintroduction of the doctoral program in 1969, Haymaker judged that it was time to pass the torch of science over to his younger colleagues, who were trained to nurture a modern, experimental program of graduate studies. A grateful faculty strongly supported his appointment as Professor of Chemistry Emeritus upon his retirement in 1973. Until his death in 1981, he kept in close touch with departmental developments and took pride in its advances. With our greater understanding of techniques and the greater availability of electronic devices for instructing the physically disabled, a blind person today might well undertake a research career in the laboratory or at the computer (3). But even without these, Clifford Haymaker’s professorial career was a remarkable achievement; his most enduring legacy to his students has been his courage and his commitment to the profession of chemistry. Notes 1. Clifford Haymaker’s academic attainments were the subject of several newspaper articles appearing in The Milwaukee Journal and The Milwaukee Sentinel during the 1930s, such as those from June 25 and June 26, 1938. That a blind student and educator could be so acquainted with experimental chemistry was even then a source of amazement. 2. (a) Haymaker, C. R. The Chemistry of Atomic Nuclei, with Special Reference to the Artificial Production of Radioactive Isotopes. Ph.D. Dissertation, Marquette University, Milwaukee, WI, April, 1938, 442 pp. The doctoral program in chemistry, begun in 1924, was suspended during World War II because many faculty members were in service; it was reintroduced in 1969. (b) An anonymous referee has commented on Haymaker’s doctoral dissertation: “Of greater interest to chemistry, perhaps, it appears that he predated Seaborg’s suggestion of the actinide series by about a decade.” 3. Daniel Haworth was born in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin in 1928. He received the B.S. degree in chemistry at the University of Wisconsin–Oshkosh in 1950, the M.S. degree from Marquette University in 1952, and the Ph.D. degree in inorganic chemistry from St. Louis University in 1959. He joined the faculty of Marquette University in 1960 and is currently professor of chemistry. 4. John Eisch was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in 1930. He
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received the B.S. degree in chemistry, summa cum laude, from Marquette University in 1952. The Ph.D. degree in organic chemistry was awarded by Iowa State in 1956 for research supervised by Professor Henry Gilman. A postdoctoral fellowship sponsored by Union Carbide supported his studies with Nobel-laureate Karl Ziegler at the Max-Planck-Institut für Kohlenforschung, Mülheim, Germany, during 1956–1957. In 1972 he assumed the chair and became professor of chemistry in the State University of New York at Binghamton in 1972, where he is currently distinguished professor of chemistry. 5. After Henry Gilman’s death in 1986 at the age of 93 John Eisch composed an appreciation of Gilman’s professional career and the impact of his character and spirit on his students and his colleagues: Eisch, J. J., J. Organomet. Chem. 1988, 338, 281. In another instance of indomitable courage in the face of adversity, Gilman published over 500 scientific articles in the four decades after 1947, when retinal detachments and later glaucoma were to deprive him of his sight. As a memorial to Clifford Haymaker, Henry Gilman donated a collection of organic chemistry monographs to the Marquette University Science Library.
Literature Cited 1. (a) Miller, K. E.; Haymaker, C. R.; Gilman, H. J. Org. Chem. 1959, 24, 622. (b) Miller, K. E.; Haymaker, C. R.; Gilman, H. J. Org. Chem. 1961, 26, 5217. 2. Eisch, J. J. Qualitative Identification of the Components of the Okra Pod Polysaccharide Fraction by Paper Chromatography, Honors Thesis in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the B.S. degree, Marquette University, Milwaukee, WI, May, 1952, 98 pp. 3. The role of chemical education in teaching chemists with disabilities is treated in four recent publications: (a) Riendl, P. A.; Haworth, D. T. J. Chem. Educ. 1995, 72, 983; (b) Woods, M. Working Chemists with Disabilities: Expanding Opportunities in Science, Blumenkopf, T. A.; Stern, V.; Swanson, A. B.; Wohlers, H. D., Eds; American Chemical Society: Washington, D.C. 1996; (c) Lytle, F. E.; Wilder, S. A. “Chemistry Degree Programs for Blind Students”, CPT Newsletter 2001, 3, no. 3, American Chemical Society: Washington, D.C.; (d) Teaching Chemistry to Students with Disabilities: A Manual for High Schools, Colleges and Graduate Programs, 4th ed., Miner, D. L., Nieman, R., Swanson, A. B., Woods, M., Eds.; American Chemical Society: Washington, D.C., 2001.
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