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Title: Geer, E. Harold, 1886-1957 -- Memorial Minute:
Creator: Pearson, Donald M., Swain, Barbara, Peirce, John M.
Description
Date: [After 1957]
Text: E. HAROLD GEER 1886 - 1957 It was with genuine regret that we learned during the Christmas season of the sudden death of Profes- sor Emeritus E. Harold Geer at the age of seventy-one years, more than half of which were spent as a member of the Vassar faculty in the Department of Music. Those of us who knew him well respected his musician- ship, and his uncompromisingly high musical standards. He gave unstintingly of his service to the college as a teacher, organist, director of the Vassar...
Show moreE. HAROLD GEER 1886 - 1957 It was with genuine regret that we learned during the Christmas season of the sudden death of Profes- sor Emeritus E. Harold Geer at the age of seventy-one years, more than half of which were spent as a member of the Vassar faculty in the Department of Music. Those of us who knew him well respected his musician- ship, and his uncompromisingly high musical standards. He gave unstintingly of his service to the college as a teacher, organist, director of the Vassar Choir and of the Madrigal Group, and as chairman of the Music Department for a period of years after the resignation of Professor Dickinson from that position. Mr. Geer was born in Tabor, Iowa in 1886. He received the B. A. and M. A. degrees fro Doane College in Nebraska, and a Mus. B. degree from the Oberlin Con- servatory of Music in Ohio. In l9h9 Deane College bestowed upon him an honorary Mus. D. degree. He studied organ and composition with Widor and Gedalge in Paris, organ with T. Tertius Noble and piano with Ernest Hutcheson in this country, and composition and conducting at the Conservatoire Americain de Fontainebleau in France. Before coming to Vassar College Mr. Geer taught at Lake Erie College for Women in Ohio and at Albion Col- lege in Michigan. From 1913 to 1916 he was organist and choir director of the First Congregational Church in Fall River, Massachusetts. In 1916 he came to Vassar College as Assistant Professor of Music and taught here for thirty-six years. After his retire- ment in 1952 he went to Cbatham College in Pittsburgh. Subsequently he served as acting chairman of the Music Department at Hood College in Maryland. Last summer he taught at the Yale Music School in Norfolk, Connecticut. He was a member of the College Music Association, Pi Kappa Lamba and a Fellow of the American Guild of Organists. He edited and arranged over one hundred compositions of choral music for women's voices. He edited the beloved "Peace I Leave with You", originally harmonized by George Coleman Gow for women's voices. He also made an arrangement of this for mixed voices. Mr. Geer was editor of The H al for Collegasand Schools published in 1955 By %€e Yaie University Press and now in use in the Vassar Chapel. His last publication E. HAROLD GEER (Continued) was a book, Or an Registration in Theo and Practice, which came out last mnnth (December, IéE7I. The study of this subject was carried on by Mr. Gear for many years at Vassar College. Grants frm the Salmon Fund aided his research and the publication of the book. Mr. Geer gave organ recitals at the Prague Municipal Auditorium in Czechoslovakia and at York Minster, England. He had numerous appearances in recital in this country, playing programs of organ music in col- leges, universities, civic auditoriums and churches. His Sunday evening organ recitals on the Vassar Campus offered a wide variety of excellent literature skill- fully performed. To many generations of students these programs came to be known as "dark music" since they were performed in the dramatic setting of the dimly lighted chapel. Unquestionably Mr. Geer's primary musical interest at Vassar College was the Choir, which he directed from 1920 to 1952. He devoted scholarly research to the selection of choral material which represented the world's finest settings of sacred texts. The music he introduced ranged in style from the works of English composers in the,Renaissance Period to those of Vaughan Williams and Kodaly in the twentieth century. The insistent emphasis on superior music certainly had a great influence in improving the musical taste of students who sang it and heard it from the days of required chapel to a later time when chapel attendance was no longer obligatory. The music for the regular chapel services and for other programs was meticulously prepared and beautifully performed. Under Mr. Geer's direction the annual program of Christmas music became a tradition at Vassar College and attracted large audiences. To a casual acquaintance Mr. Geer may have seemed to be rather reserved and formal but h was certainly far from that when he conducted performances of the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta, "Trial by Jury" on Founder's Day. To those who were intimately associated with him he was a kind and understanding friend and excellent teacher. His perceptions were keen and he possessed a quick sense of humor. He was frank and outspoken, and even those who disagreed with him on policies he favored or with his methods of procedure, never doubted for a moment the sincerity of his convictions. E. HAROLD GEEK (Continued) Socially the Gear home on Raymond Avenue was always a friendly place to visit. The choir parties which Mr. and Mrs. Geer gave each year for choir members and faculty guests and the memorial Geer family Christmas cards, which Mr. Geer designed, will long be remembered. We extend to Mrs. Gear and to his surviving sons and daughter the sympathy of the faculty in their loss and express to them the appreciation of the faculty for professor Geer's long and distinguished service to Vassar College. Donald M. Pearson Barbara Swain John M. Peirce XIV - 375-376
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Title: Fiske, Christabel Forsyth, 1869-1956 -- Memorial Minute:
Creator: Lockwood, Helen Drusilla, Griffin, Charles, Swain, Barbara
Description
Date: [After 1956]
Text: CHRISTABEL FORSYTH FISKE 1869 - 1956 Every one of us who speaks of Christabel Forsyth Fiske, begins his narrative with, "I shQJ.never forget." She was one of Vassar's great women. Her gallant figure crossed the campus as if under full sail, its course held true by her intense love of learning and her direct sense of life. She wrote a nuber of studies on Old English and German Medieval literatures, English modifications of Teutonic racial concepts, 16th century and romantic...
Show moreCHRISTABEL FORSYTH FISKE 1869 - 1956 Every one of us who speaks of Christabel Forsyth Fiske, begins his narrative with, "I shQJ.never forget." She was one of Vassar's great women. Her gallant figure crossed the campus as if under full sail, its course held true by her intense love of learning and her direct sense of life. She wrote a nuber of studies on Old English and German Medieval literatures, English modifications of Teutonic racial concepts, 16th century and romantic literature. She was cited by scholars for her knowledge of Milton. She was learned in languages and belonged to organiza- tions devoted to their study: the American Dialect Society, the American Folk Lore Society, the Scan- dinavian Society, the Modern Language Association. Two of hr works give the key to her quality. In her essay,_§Qmel%1Realism in Medieval German Literature in Vassar E9 geval §tu§}es of I§2§ sEe says of Her findings, I I This thread of homespun is but a slender one... Or to change the metaphor - the plain, quaint little figure which in true medieval fashion has gradually become for me the personification of this intimate, homely phase of the German mind, has been very inconspicuous, lost con- tinually among the mystical and romantic per~ sonages thronging fantastically or brilliantly the pages I have read. Such as it is, however, it is more in evidence, I think, than in most other medieval European literatures, and therefore not nly intrinsically interesting, but also from the comparative point of view, at least suggestively significant. In her last book, E ic Su estions in the Ima er of the Waverl Novels, puEIIsEed in I§ED, she searcEed out the Heroic element in Sir Walter Scott because, she says, ... it had been neglected in criticism in favor of the romantic... In the case of a man of Scott's caliber, the impact of him on the average intelligent mind should result in a moderately well-rounded.. conception of him as a great English writer. CHRISTABEL FORSYTH FISKE (Continued) To have this "moderately well—r0unded conception" required merely that one be aware of the relation- ships of one person and all society, nature, the traditions of lanuage and literature, the range from the folk to the aristocrats, from the romantic to the heroic. This search for fullness and balance made her a superb editor. To her Vassar owes the publication of Vassar Medieval Studies and the Vassar Journal of Under- graduate Studies, the most cﬁaracteristic and original w »ness 0 our achievement in the liberal arts that has ever been published. Beyond writiq; her own piece for the Vassar Medieval Studies, sheedited the whole volume. 'tE¥hin th6‘quiet, exaet words of her preface one can see her in action. She speaks of many an illuminating talk with various colleagues whose work while primarily in classical or in modern fields, is in certain aspects of it closely connected with the period here dealt with... They have cooperated with us; and we have thus a book somewhat widely representative of outlook upon the Middle Ages. The departments represented in the book were English, French, German, Folk Lore, History, Greek, Latin, Mathematics, Art, Music. For fourteen years, 1926-l9hO, as she read the papers of Vassar's students submitted for the Vassar Journal d h t er of Under raduate Stu ies, er sure judgmen nev flagged. Every meeting of the Committee of the Journal brought out the flashing sharpness of her critical faculties, and she could always put into a few words the gist of the virtues or weaknesses of an essay. She was always a teacher too while she was editing. She took infinite pains with the students who wrote these essays, especially when she felt the student had capacity to do distinguished work. She was more interested in helping them to develop their gifts than in passing judgment on their work. She insisted on the highest possible standards of writing and research, involving not only scholarship but also sensitive imagination. From 1903-l9hO generations of students came to life in her courses on the history of English literature, her seminar on Milton, her seminar on Language. Her classes CHRISTABEL FORSYTH FISKE (Continued) were rich in scholarship, profound and illumined. Even students whose background was barren and whose idea of a college was dim, caught the light on the past and discovered that Old and Middle English told them about life. "She taught me to write a critical paper," says one of her students thirty years later. ‘So gently too. But I've never forgotten. She so quietly showed me that I needn't say ever thin but I must select. She showed me how to select tﬁe essentials."Patiently, without invading the personal dignity of her students she taught them to write by singling out each one's exact difficulty or possibility. "I know exactly who you are," she said to a freshman who in her paper a few days before had tried to tell the elevated feeling about coming to college that had suddenly dawned on her the sumer before. "Your face belongs to this paper." But when the faces were not alight because the students had not read the books, much less thought about them, she was known to slam her book don: on the desk, announce "I don't think I want to see you today," and walk out of the room. The effect on their work was electric. She was a friend and a presence on the campus. She knew who was devoted and who lived on the surface. When she trusted people, her greeting always invited them to enter a world of justice and truth in which she herself dWG 0 "When did you get the meaning of academic integrity?" she would ask a colleague for she was troubled about her students’ slow recognition of plagiarism. "My brain is seething," she would say. "Do you know the difference between Plato and Neo-Platonism?" Or if she had a great tyranny of today on her mind or the sufferings of the war or the injustices of the Great Depression or the bitter fruit of prejudice, she would seize one who, she knew, cared too and with her eyes severe and flashing, would say, "Will you explain clearly to me in a paragraph what is the meaning of this and what is to be done about it?" Only by chance did one know that behind the darting questions and the seething mind was also the long, generous private list of contributions to many pioneering agencies struggling to right wrongs. It worked the other way too. As you saw her coming out of the library daily, you would ask her about what in CHRISTABEL FORSYTH FISKE (Continued) Scott's imagery she had found today, and there would come clear, sparkling discourse about the workings of his poetical imagination and perhaps his whole plan for the aforestation of Scotland. She was always ready to share the freshness of experience._But like all original and poetic spirits amidst the worldly ones, she was a wayfarer.... Nevertheless the fact that she was going somewhere wonderful inspired the whole college. Her memory today renews our faith in the course. Helen Drusilla Lockwood Charles Griffin Barbara Swain XIV - 127-129
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Title: Russell, Doris Aurelia, 1902-1962 -- Memorial Minute:
Creator: Mercer, Caroline G., Swain, Barbara, Venable, Vernon
Description
Date: [After 1962]
Text: DORIS AURELIA RUSSELL 1902 - 1962 Doris Aurelia Russell joined the Vassar Faculty in September 1940 as an instructor in English. She died on April 24, 1962, Professor of English and Chairman of the English Department. In the twenty-two years of her connection with the college she was recognized as a superb teacher, a tactful administrator, and as a scholar whose scholarship informed all her thinking and whose personal warmth suffused all her scholarship. She was born in New York in 1902, and...
Show moreDORIS AURELIA RUSSELL 1902 - 1962 Doris Aurelia Russell joined the Vassar Faculty in September 1940 as an instructor in English. She died on April 24, 1962, Professor of English and Chairman of the English Department. In the twenty-two years of her connection with the college she was recognized as a superb teacher, a tactful administrator, and as a scholar whose scholarship informed all her thinking and whose personal warmth suffused all her scholarship. She was born in New York in 1902, and received her education at Ashley Hall in Charleston, South Carolina, Smith College, Bryn Mawr College and Columbia University. After graduating from Smith she taught in Denver and, from 1930 to 1933, at the Peking American School and the National Tsing Hua University. She came to Vassar from the Shipley School in Bryn Mawr, where she had been sought out by the English Department in its quest for the kind of teacher whose concern was equally with the matters to be taught and with the minds and interests of those who were to learn. She continued her contact with the school- world by representing Vassar for a number-of years on the School and College Conference on English and by serving as Assistant Dean from 1952 to 1955. In her tribute to Miss Helen Young, the brilliant teacher with whom she had worked at the Shipley School, Doris Russell wrote of Miss Young's "deep respect for her students as individuals... She had a very keen awareness of their lives outside the class- room and of the realities for which they were being prepared. She knew that their hours in English classes were brief and numbered, but also that if they were rightly spent they could last for a life time. There was not a moment to be wasted and the needs of all kinds of temperaments and abilities were given serious attention." This awareness Doris herself had in the highest degree. It won her the devotion of students of all kinds and spurred them to varied excellence. She regarded each student, however, capricious or undedicated, as a significant individual, but she saw beyond the persons to the historical moment and constantly called them to realize the quality of that moment. "Certainly one of the purposes of your kind of educa- tion is to intensify your awareness of the physical and social structure which surrounds and shapes your individual lives," she said in her 1958 Convocation Address. Her sense of the reciprocal character of "individual" and "society" showed also in her scholarship. She was deeply inter- ested in the theatre - perhaps the most "social" of the arts. She wrote her doctor's dissertation on John Dryden, satirist ‘ /1 ¢ DORIS AURELIA RUSSELL (Continued) and playwirght. When she went to England in 1956-57 with a plan to study the friendships of John Donne, that plan came to focus on the question of literary patronage and the Countess of Bedford - that is, on the means by which society sponsored literature and on the role of a wealthy woman in that sponsoring. Friendship came naturally to Doris Russell, and persisted through life. She had friends in every group that she lived and worked with including the China group with whom she shared the exciting youthful years in Peking, the English group whom she knew during her periods of research in Cambridge, her colleagues in the administration of the Woodrow Wilson Foundation for which she served as regional comittee member from l957. Her hospitality was gracious and abundant; she lived among lovely things and she invited all her friends to enjoy them with her. A colleague of ten years ago wrote after her death: "I knew she cared deeply about her studies and her students and Vassar - yet there was another world she seemed to bring with her too - of households and 'family' and feminine fulfillments. I prized this much." She fully and constantly recognized the tragedies of existence- she carried exceptional burdens in her personal life - but she faced them with a superb energy and instinctive optimism that gave her the power to live valiantly and gaily from day to day. Such courage and such buoyancy did not come merely from "character": her intellect played widely and wittily over the field of literature, not superficially, not pedanti- cally. She could not let her subject alone; she wanted nothing more than she wanted her "job" - which was, to mediate between the great works of writing and the minds of college students. To her, the work of art, however, abstract, was still plainly about how people experienced life. She made Edmund Spenser vital to her classes because she understood The Faerie Queene as a serious analysis of the Nature of Things, as a real story of the many aspects of love and of the involvement of real people in real politics. In the last two years of her life she served as Chairman of the Intra-Mural Events Comittee for the Vassar Centennial and as Chairman of the English Department, and she taught her courses with renewed freshness; her intellect, her affections, her social involve- ment were unquenchable. Her friend, I. A. Richards, wrote recently to a close friend at Vassar: "Yes, we often find ourselves thinking of Doris. It is a most sustaining thing to do." Caroline G. Mercer XVI ' 65'66 Barbara Swain Vernon Venable
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Title: Peirce, John William, 1894-1960 -- Memorial Minute:
Creator: Pearson, Homer, Campbell, Mildred, Swain, Barbara
Description
Date: [After 1960]
Text: ,1 Jcszt 1": Lllrff Psi \ :‘. Q2 Z-1 Q P1 5"‘ CD \ WP? i 1960 $1 *~; :=* O PO *9‘ C3323 4 ('1 LT’ *1! ' ‘I’ ‘<1 Q (1) -w _rce was appointed to the Vassar Kusic Department in ~ Professor George Coleman Sow vtosc initials turn on * shove Skinner Hell. For 32 years, until his écsth on ipril 23, 1960, John Tcirce taught the art of sinqing, the art of understanding song, and the art of group singing. He took pert, with deliberation and with devotion, in the life of the...
Show more,1 Jcszt 1": Lllrff Psi \ :‘. Q2 Z-1 Q P1 5"‘ CD \ WP? i 1960 $1 *~; :=* O PO *9‘ C3323 4 ('1 LT’ *1! ' ‘I’ ‘<1 Q (1) -w _rce was appointed to the Vassar Kusic Department in ~ Professor George Coleman Sow vtosc initials turn on * shove Skinner Hell. For 32 years, until his écsth on ipril 23, 1960, John Tcirce taught the art of sinqing, the art of understanding song, and the art of group singing. He took pert, with deliberation and with devotion, in the life of the college and the community, His kindlinoss and his in- tegrity, the open hospitality of his home, came to be community assets, depended on and taken for granted. His work produced substantial results, opening professicssl careers in music to e score of young women, providing private resources of éeliqhh for hundreds of others. Two unpretentious books, The ﬁrt of ’ frggren ﬁekipg, l9§l, its grt cg gipfigg, 1956, record some of tie seistisies behind his still cs‘s teécber of voice, sod tie wide koowledqe of tie literature of song, tie taste that renged discriminstingly from folk song to lieder, from opera to con- temporary cantata. Ttc devotion cf sevorel thousand Glee Club mewbcrs beers witness to his personal success as a choral director. ’~ V % ‘Q U) \£) <3 -fl" (IQ *0 1»-II C) E-’° $1 I3 He was born in test Eosbury, ﬁasssckusetts. Qﬂe re- ceived his early m ~l education through private instruction in and moor Boston, perticulerly in voice work with Stephen Sumner Townsend, a tcecter well known in 1910, end later in work on cretorio under Fmll Yollonheuor, the director of the Boston Handel and Haydn Society. The accounts of his early years ere full of ectivities connected with church music, es quartet member, soloist or musical oircctor in Unitarian, Baptist, Universelist, Presbyterian or Confregctionel churches in eastern Yasseckusctts. The roster of his recitels§begins - in 19lh,’with an appearance st tke Second Gongreéetionel Church in test Heebury, and includes e debut recital at Steincrt Hell in Boston, later recitals in larger Boston hells, appearances with the Boston Symphony, the Boston Chorel_¥usic Society, and many concerts ttroughout Hes England and Tove Sootia.§ In these years he was e member of the_friendly circle of Boston musicians which included such well known artists snd\tcschers es Arthur Foote, Charles Loeffler and Thomas thitney‘Suretto; 3 L V‘ . :1 ‘ ' \ ; : In 192h he was appointed by Ernest Bloch es heed of tﬁc voice . ¢ department st the Cleveland Institute of Music, where to remained for ttrce years. In 1927 he wont to Europe for e year of con- centrated study, of phonetics, tkoory, conducting and voice, working for many months in Peris with the greet French tenor Edmond Clement, and leter in London with Sir GoorQe,§enschel. He came to Vassar upon his return from Paris, and soon began to take pert in the musical life of the Hueson Valley as he . _ \ . . 1 1 ; ; 1 l 1 F , \ I I '\ 1 ~" -- \ ‘:2 _*' ,' ‘\\ /i. .' “ I ~ 93 JOHN WILL . (Continued) i I-1 {Zr c "Y1 I111 F-1 fl.) Q .11 bod token part in that of the Horrimac as s younger man. Us become director of music st tho First Presbyterian Church in Poughkcopsio; for eleven years ho supervised c public school music festival hold at the college; he served as president of the Dutctess County Husicsl Association from l9c2-l9h9. Ho took port with gusto in faculty productions of Gilbert and Sullivan, Trial by Jury and Qﬁomfripccss Ida. During vsrious sumnors he~3i¥€Et5€“EForal sees; tsG§Et"€5i§o and Advanced Choral Conducting at the University of Vermont, and once, in 1933, st the University of Ksshington. He spent l936~37 in iunich, again working concentrstedly on phonetics, voice, opera end, this time, on German style. In 19h? he suffered s severe tccrt attack. Thoresftor, his activities were restricted to winters of work and summers of rest, but the ton years which to was granted to live were yosrs of con~ tinuco growth sci fresh achievement in musical understanding, and in self realization. John Peirce was s “er Englsndcr ingrsin.* As the oldost son of a widely known village ooctor in s region where the town moot- ing soc the church arc still living institutions, ho cams natur- slly by his sense of personal responsibility, his conccrn with inoivicusls, with tieir toelthy qrorth and tkoir participation in satisfying social cotivity. ?ecorstions of students will reocnbcr tis patient pcrsistccco in soekinq for tteir iniividual quality of vocal csprossivouoss, in guiding ttom ttrougﬁ”tE3*' literature of music towards tte dcvelopmeut of tioir own taste. Generations of Gloo Club members will recall tho pissstre of discovering the existenoo of lontoverdi, Rsmosu, Gluck and Ecydn, through singing in tho choral productions of Orfoo, or Iohioenio in Tsuris of Castor and Pollux or The Creﬁtfoﬁ — : _.A,__’ _A_,,_.-... ii _ 3 -_,_..,_i. _, -.,- ,-._ ,, _._._,_,,,,_.,- ____,,_ E€SitiEu§?§s5§s5ts“cs;¢c"Lc”U§scsi65c”s€th his G153 in the bolief that to boar a small modest port in a lcrio beautiful work was good for mind soc body. Join Peirce was not on ottentuctod csttcte; hi§*Tomilisr slouch and the hunch of his shouldor romccﬁcd tkoco wio know, that in his youth he was a semi~profoscioosl pitckor, that his passion for bssoboll and. his devotion to t Boston Rod Sex kept him by the radio for hours during tte _ zyirc season. ‘Tennis, too, woo so ovocsticn, at which to raised sis trroc sons, one by one, to boot him. He was happy to bo sociable. lit? unaffected cordislity he and ﬁrs. Peirco opened ttoir doors, put their house st otters‘ disposal, offered simple moat and drink, comfort and leushtcr. The grcstcst contribution of his tcoching is probably to have soot out into the comsunity scores of woman able to be lcscers and shorors in musical enterprises in tteir towns and cities; his greatest contribution to Poughkeepsie is pertsps the range of his local friendships. ¢ -0 U :2‘ F-4 O " ."~v -O His Glee Club work was his greatest pleasure. He particularly on§oyed the preparation of Xonsclssokn's Eliish, for this year's final concert; to tad sun? it in Boston, in his early yccrs of I ‘F s Q ix‘-av A QM; ,, .- . . _. _. ~__._ .__.._..-._...... __.__ /-" k“. _z* . .£ \ I 1 \. 4 .~ _.......... .. 4\ *~ \ \ ; 9;» JOFH TILLIA? PEIZCB (Ccn€lnued) ' _ I concertizing; he heard, t¥cu§h Lo did not dire tho fine production of it in Berton, four da?s before h; ueath. The perfornance of it at Vassar on Kay" wkich was to havé been in his honor upon his retirement, ~~_ belhis appropriate §<~,ﬂ;\_~1 r\_~v-.1 1: 1 .,1k»-.1L..L 1.; Q. S‘ JomJ\' .15 P4 -J’ C3 C1‘ § I Pearson H, dred Campbell Barbara Swain l I"-*4 , ¥-"I .29 O l-' Q v 4 XV - 2143 - 21111
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Title: Carter, Edna, 1872-1963 -- Memorial Minute:
Creator: Lockwood, Helen, Swain, Barbara, Healea, Monica
Description
Date: [After 1963]
Text: /2» EDNA CARTER 1872 - 1963 Edna Carter came to Vassar College as a freshman in 1890. She retired as professor of physics in 1941. For twenty years after- ward she kept in touch with members of the faculty and continued to know many of the graduating seniors in physics. There were thus seventy years in which she had close contact with the college and she found it good. Miss Carter's career in physics spanned the discovery of X-rays, of the electron, and of radioactivity; the introduction...
Show more/2» EDNA CARTER 1872 - 1963 Edna Carter came to Vassar College as a freshman in 1890. She retired as professor of physics in 1941. For twenty years after- ward she kept in touch with members of the faculty and continued to know many of the graduating seniors in physics. There were thus seventy years in which she had close contact with the college and she found it good. Miss Carter's career in physics spanned the discovery of X-rays, of the electron, and of radioactivity; the introduction of quantum theory and its application to atomic structure, of relativity and of quantum mechanics; the invention of radio and the subsequent development of radar and lasers; the growth of nuclear physics and the discovery of many new particles; the discovery of fission and fusion; Hubble's idea of the expanding universe. She had a gift for understanding the essense of these new discoveries and ideas, so that physics courses changed continuously through the decades to include what was new, so that students at all levels were aware of the almost explosive opening up of new knowledge and of Miss Carter's excitement about it. She also always found some way for every in- coming member of the department to teach what he thought important in the melee of new physics. Miss Carter's own research in physics began with a study of the energy of X-rays in Wﬂrzburg, Germany, for which she received her Ph.D in 1906. From her results the wave length of X-rays could be deduced, on the assumption that they had a wave nature. The definitive proof of this assumption came in 1912 with von Laue's work. In l9ll Miss Carter received the Sarah Berliner Research Fellowship of the American Association of University Women, then the largest fellowship offered to women. She returned to Wﬂrzburg to work on vacuum sparks and renewed her friendships with German physicists. In later years, when her family settled in California, she carried on her research at the physics laboratory of Mount Wilson Observatory in Pasadena. There she continued her work on the spectra of sparks, becoming in the process a spectroscopist and astronomer. Her work was published in various journals in Germany and in this country and she was named a Fellow of the American Physical Society. Edna Carter was born in High Cliff, Wisconsin, on January 29, 1872 of pioneering parents from New Hampshire. The youngest of nine children, her playground was the small village on Lake Winnebago, the countryside, the lake shore, and her father's boat, the Benjamin Franklin Carter, carrying freight and passengers to Oshkosh, Apple- ton and Fond du Lac. Her childhood delight in exploring any kind /3 EDNA CARTER (Continued) of situation remained throughout her life one of her dominant characteristics. As a student at Vassar her first interest was in biology, taught by Marcella O'Grady who introduced the subject here. In her junior year she took physics with Mr. Cooley and in her senior year a newly introduced second course in physics. These were the courses that indicated the direction her life would take. After graduation she returned to Wisconsin to attend a state normal school in Oshkosh, an outstanding school where young teachers fresh from John Dewey's classroom found themselves forced to sharpen their wits in discussion with some of the most renowned teachers in Wisconsin. The next year she became assistant principal in a nearby high school. In her own words, "There I taught a great variety of subjects and sometimes burned the midnight oil literally in a lamp which smoked badly if I forgot to adjust it. My most vivid remembrance of that year concerns an argument with a minister. His sermon in 'Education Week‘ was a shock to all my ideas about science imbibed from Professor O'Grady's teaching, so I wrote an article for the local paper. This drew a bitter personal attack and bad consequences ultimately for my antagonist. Fortunately for me Dr. Cooley at this point asked me to return to Vassar as assistant in physics." Following two years at Vassar she went to The University of Chicago where she studied with two great American physicists, Michelson and Millikan. She then returned to Oshkosh for five years where she taught in the normal school, an experience she always recalled as one of the most satisfying of her life, be- cause of the caliber and strength of purpose of teachers and students. In the meantime Marcella O'Grady had married a distinguished German biologist, Theodor Boveri, in Wﬁrzburg. They urged Miss Carter to join them in Germany to study for her Ph.D. in physics. This she did in 1904, going by way of England to a meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science where she met Lord Kelvin, Lord Rayleigh, Sir Oliver Lodge, and other distinguished physicists. In Wﬁrzburg she worked in the laboratory with an international group including Russians, a Finn, and a Norwegian, as well as several Germans. Here Rbntgen had discovered X—rays and although he had been called to Munich she came to know him well. For her work she used the same /4 EDNA CARTER (Continued) induction coil with which he had discovered the X-rays. It was later sent to the Deutches Museum. The director of her thesis was Wien who, like Rbntgen, was a Nobel prize winner in physics. She later spoke of these days of the great Germany, of discussions in the laboratory, weekly colloquia followed by nachcolloquia and nachnach colloquia which extended far into the night, walking and skiing expeditions, a trip on a raft of logs on the river Main, visits to Professors‘ homes. The talk was always of physics. These were the days of "Akademische Freiheit," with its implication of privileges of academic detachment from political involvement, so much cherished by professors at that time for it left them free to devote them- selves to their work. They were later to regret their lack of knowledge of how they were governed. She also spoke of being the only woman in the laboratory and how naturally the men accepted her as one of the group. In her two years in Germany Miss Carter not only laid the foundation for her own work, but she lived in close contact with the best minds in physics. When she went to Germany in l9ll she became friends with the von Laue's. It was at this time that he found proof of the nature of X-rays and she received from him as a Christmas card a picture of the X-ray diffraction pattern which could be explained only by a wave theory. In later years she exchanged visits here and in German with Wien, the von Laue's, and others, until their deaths. In 1906 Miss Carter came to Vassar to stay permanently. Her work during sumers and leaves of absence in Pasadena from about 1914 yielded rewards for the college beyond the direct enrich- ment of her teaching. The men with whom she worked and talked, Hale, Hubble, Babcock, King, and Millikan who had left Chicago to go to The California Institute of Technology became friends of the college. Interesting speakers were glad to come here. Important equipment, otherwise difficult to get, became avail- able for the laboratory. One example of the latter is the Hale spectrohelioscope, originally mounted in a shaft built for it in the Sanders laboratory of physics. In a search for better seeing it was later moved to the observatory. It has recently been returned to its original place in the laboratory for use by students of physics and astronomy. As a young teacher at Vassar College in the years just after her return in 1906 Miss Carter opened a world of physics to the students, and ways of inquiry that were a revelation to them, and they quoted her to their friends so that her presence was felt among them far beyond her classroom and was cherished by them even after they had been graduated fifty years. As chair- /.5’ EDNA CARTER (Continued) man of the department in 1919-1939 she organized its courses, sought its staff, and designed the functional Henry Sanders Laboratory of Physics. Her quiet brilliance was recognized and trusted by her colleagues who persistently through years elected her to important comittees. When she first came to live in Lathrop, another specially able member of the faculty comented to one of her freshmen how "wonderful to have some one come to live here who is so thought- ful." In the years when Kendrick was a community, she was a center of its habitual discussion of principles and goals in education, the advancement of learning and the state of the world; of its generous, loyal give and take among friends; of its fearlessness and delight in sharing its daily tasks. She was relentless toward any compromising debasement of college standards, incorruptible in her integrity, but tireless and generous in helping people who cared about learning, or who had some need, whether undergraduates, gifted young scholars, col- leagues, refugees from European tyrranies, or naval officers turning to teaching. Her clear eyes would twinkle and a luminous or amused smile would come over her face as she would cut through pretense or circumlocution and come out with sharply perceived facts needed in the situation and likely to be glossed over by less direct and well—centered people. Patiently she would explain principles of physics to an inquiring colleague at the breakfast table as well as to her classes, and she would draw out the best about their interests from a teacher of English, or Latin, or Theatre, or Geography, assuming the arts and the sciences to be at home with each other. In her own leisure she painted with oils and joined other members of the faculty in Professor Chatterton's special class for them. She had a way of noticing and remembering their talents. After her retirement from Vassar she organized a department of physics at Albertus Magnus College in New Haven, Connecticut, where she served two years as professor of physics. Following this she did war work on rockets at The California Institute of Technology. She finally retired at 73. We have been glad that she lived among us for years after her retirement, her mind clear, her belief steady in the greatness of the college and in the need of it still in educating women at high levels. Helen Lockwood Barbara Swain Monica Healea, Chairman 1:-Lvl 101+-106
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Title: Treadwell, Aaron Louis, 1866-1947 -- Memorial Minute:
Creator: Gleason, Josephine M., Swain, Barbara, Kempton, Rudolf T.
Description
Date: [After 1947]
Text: AARON LOUIS TREADWELL ( 1866 - 19h? In Professor Emeritus Aaron Louis Treadwell Vassar College honors an eminent zoologist and a beloved teacher and friend. Mr. Treadwell was a member of the second generation of American zoologists that succeeded Agassiz. His brilliant research on the embryology of the worm Podarke started him.on the way to becoming the world's authority on the polychaete annelids. Investigators sent him their specimens from many parts of the globe for study and...
Show moreAARON LOUIS TREADWELL ( 1866 - 19h? In Professor Emeritus Aaron Louis Treadwell Vassar College honors an eminent zoologist and a beloved teacher and friend. Mr. Treadwell was a member of the second generation of American zoologists that succeeded Agassiz. His brilliant research on the embryology of the worm Podarke started him.on the way to becoming the world's authority on the polychaete annelids. Investigators sent him their specimens from many parts of the globe for study and identification. For more than two decades the American Museum of Natural History sub- mitted for his description and classification material collected on its expeditions. For the Carnegie In- stitution he carried his studies to the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico, to Samoa and Fiji. He worked at the Marine Biological Laboratory and at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. The honorary degree of doctor of science, which Wesleyan University conferred upon him in 1938, stood for a solid contribution to scientific knowledge. For thirty-seven years, frcm 1900 until his retirement in 1937, Mr. Treadwell was Giraud Professor of Biology, later Zoology, at Vassar. For the same period he was curator of Vassar's Museum of Natural History. He be- longed to the company of great teachers who built the traditions of our college. President MacCracken wrote: "To Professor Treadwell more than to any other person in the field of science is due the sound position taken by the departments of science at Vassar College." With the soundness went initiative. Mr. Treadwell intro- duced the study of evolution before college adminis- trators liked to acknowledge its place in the curriculum. He and Miss Washburn taught their joint course in Animal Behavior before the faculty had deliberated on Related Studies. He sent his students out, with nets and bot- tles, to their field work on the campus. His depart- ment offered the first course in anthropology on the campus. His own teaching was witty and winning: it beguiled a long line of students into taking a scien- tific attitude toward annelids and other living creatures. He helped a good number of them to careers in his own prefession. Because Vassar's zoologist was also a Con- necticut farmer he could tell alumnae how to make butter and when to dig parsnips. ‘r ! 1 1 I i 1 i ( i / a ) 16 AARON LOUIS TREADHELL (continued) For some years after his retirement-Mr. Treadwell spent part of each winter near the campus. He was as sociable as ever. He continued to gladden our eyes with his debonair elegance, to enliven our minds with his talk, to satisfy our hearts with the goodness beneath his urbanity. He always enjoyed going back to the Connecticut farm, near the place of his birth and his boyhood, where he had first known his wife. There they had spent many summers with their children, and it was there that he died, on July 17, l9h?, in the eighty-first year of his 1'lf6o Josephine M. Gleason Barbara Swain Rudolf T. Kempton XII - 181,
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Title: Peebles, Rose Jefferies, 1870-1952 -- Memorial Minute:
Creator: Lockwood, Helen, Sague, Mary, Swain, Barbara
Description
Date: [After 1952]
Text: ROSE JEFFRIES PEEBLES 1870 - 1952 Rose Jeffries Peebles came to Vassar College in 1909 as Instructor in English. She had graduated from Mississippi State College for Women, and had taught there as well as in preparatory school and in junior colleges in Arkansas and Kentucky. At that time she was completing her doctorate at Bryn Mawr. Twenty—nine years later, in 1938, she retired from the college as Professor of English and, for the five preceding years, Chairman of the Department. Her field...
Show moreROSE JEFFRIES PEEBLES 1870 - 1952 Rose Jeffries Peebles came to Vassar College in 1909 as Instructor in English. She had graduated from Mississippi State College for Women, and had taught there as well as in preparatory school and in junior colleges in Arkansas and Kentucky. At that time she was completing her doctorate at Bryn Mawr. Twenty—nine years later, in 1938, she retired from the college as Professor of English and, for the five preceding years, Chairman of the Department. Her field of special scholarly interest was prose fiction, medieval or modern. Her doctor's dissertation on the romance of Longinus was part of the wide-spread work of interpretation of Arthurian legend which went on in the first quarter of this century, and remains the authoritative study on its subject. Her work on the romance cycles never ceased, and occasional articles - A Note on Hamlet, 1916, The Children in the Tree, I927 - found their imy Into print. Uthers were written and never published. The real outlet for Miss Peebles' scholarship was the classroom. There her activity as scholar and teacher, through three decades, brought into existence our present courses in prose fiction and together with her wide European contacts supported the interest in comparative literary studies which her colleagues Professor Marian P. Whitney and Professor Winifred Smith were developing in their fields of German and Drama 0 Even her first years of teaching at Vassar were notable. The richness of her inquiring and fear- less mind, and the unique balance of warmth and detachment, serious grace and humor in her per- sonality brought new life to basic required courses. In 1912-13 she first offered a course in "English Metrical Romances, especially those of Germanic origin, and the development of the Arthurian legend". This course changed gradually first into "The Romance in English Literature 8 ROSE JEFFRIES PEEBLES (Continued) from its beginnings to the present time", then into "The Romance..with emphasis on its importance in the development of the novel". By 1923-2h three courses had grown from the original stock: "The English Novel from its Beginning to George Eliot", "Prose Fiction" - an advanced course, and a seminar: "Studies in English Romance". Alumnae of the mid- twenties remember with excitement the sense of independent adventure and creation which radiated frun these courses. The seminar especially represented Miss Peebles' deep con- viction of the rightness of sustained, advanced, independent work for all students, the plodding as well as the brilliant. From the belief in this kind of work throughout the college, and from the students’ response to it, came the incentive for the publication of the Vassar gournal of Undergraduate Studies; from it too came in part the plans'?or the new curriculum of 1928 with its assumption of the students‘ maturity and readiness to carry on specialized study with a background of adequate knowledge. Miss Peebles' interest in romances and novels and in her students‘ responses to them and to life was not a secondary, trained and academic matter but a primary and temperamental taste. All human activity - thoughts, feelings, doings - absorbed her. Everybody's story, anybody's story, received her sympathetic scrutiny; her patience with student-problems and story-problems alike seemed endless, in spite of the incisive criticism with which she could, when she cared to, terminate stupid or egotistic talk. But those who worked with her knew that much of her tolerance was simply one aspect of her irre- pressible zest to "explore further", no matter what the fatigue or the disagreeable results of that exploration might be. She gave no impression of physical daring or of unusual energy, but her appetite for experience, direct or vicarious, her delight in life and her power to receive it through her senses and imagination was inexhaustible. Her classroom connections with her students and colleagues were only a small part of her relations with them. She gave them hospitality with unlimited ROSE JEFFRIES PEEBIES (Continued) generosity; the house at 123 College Avenue where she and Professor Edith Fahnestock kept open house for successive college generations of Vassar students and teachers stands for an often neglected aspect of the academic life - the illustration of the intellectual life as a way-of-existence, rather than the precept alone. There was good fortune in that house, to be sure; but there was also knowledge of the world, and involvement in many kinds of non- academic work; there were people comin back with the results of their lives‘ joys and sor- rows, and there was always harty and profound laughter to set the perspective right. These friends lived so that it was plain to see how the academic life, lived with eager minds and rich sympathies, makes its followers deeply human, fruitful, and satisfied. At the end of her life, after fourteen years of retirement, Miss Peebles was able to say clearly that her life had been happy, that she had done what she wanted to do. This ripeness it has been Vassar's privilege to share in. Respectfully submitted, Helen Lockwood Mary Sague Barbara Swain XIII - 306-307
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