Interview with Elizabeth Hirschfelder

Elizabeth Hirschfelder (#465) Transcript

BT: This is Barry Teicher of the Oral History Project. Today is October 16, 1995. I am in the home of Mrs. Betty Hirschfelder on Sheboygan Avenue, and we're going to talk about her career here at the university, and the career of her late husband, Joseph Hirschfelder. Mrs. Hirschfelder, perhaps you could begin by briefly describing your early childhood and your early days of schooling.

EH: There really isn't anything very interesting to record. I grew up in Providence, Rhode Island where my mother's family had lived since it was founded by Roger Williams. I just stayed in Providence all through my schooling, and had not decided where to go to college until there was a financial crisis in 1918. That meant I wasn't going to college anywhere except right at home. But that was 00:01:00very convenient, because we lived on Brown's Street and that mostly goes through the Brown campus, and the Women's College was very close by.

So I went to the Women's College in Brown University, which is now called Pembroke College. Then I stayed there for an additional year to get a Masters degree. At that point, there were three of us women in that class who majored in mathematics, and they were successful in getting teaching jobs for all three of us in colleges. We didn't have to go and teach in high school. None of us had had any courses in education, and probably might have had trouble getting in.

BT: Were there any professors at Brown in mathematics who influenced you?

EH: Oh yes. Two in particular. One was Roland Dwight Richardson, who became the 00:02:00dean of the graduate school there, and was also very influential in math and mathematical society. Then Professor Archibald was a bachelor very much interested music. But his first love, of course, was mathematics. And he was very pleased when any of the students were interested in music. So he would buy up a selection of seats at the Boston Symphony concerts given in Providence and then turned them over to his students. I had one.

BT: That's great. So the three of you went off to do some college teaching. Where did you end up going?

EH: I ended up getting a position at the University of Texas.

BT: How did that come about?

EH: I think what happened is that the man who-- one of the young men in the department-- got another offer and left without much of any-- And I wrote to 00:03:00Richardson and said, we need somebody to come in right away because there are classes that are starting in two months or something. So he said to me, would you be willing to go to Texas to teach? And I said, why not? Never having been anyway near Texas. So I went.

It turned out to be a very educational year, because in the first place, I was so used to New England, which was compared to Texas, was a very moderate and old-fashioned sort of a place. Then we also still had an awful lot of segregation in Austin at that time. The buses had two entrances-- one at the front for whites and one in the back for Negros, and so on, which made me a 00:04:00little unhappy. Of course, now they have probably fully as many Negros on all the athletic teams at Texas as they do on anything.

BT: You're probably right. What about the university, was there discrimination there too?

EH: There was not as much, no. I think I was the only young person, white-- they were all white-- the only young female in the department. There was one woman who was in there for quite awhile, and she had been an assistant professor. So as I know, that was the only one they had before.

BT: What courses were you assigned to teach, do you remember?

EH: Oh, elementary.

BT: Basic courses.

EH: Basic. First year calculus. It seems to me, it was a long time ago, seems to 00:05:00me I had some students from agriculture and I had to learn all about what size silos you had. Because those were practical problems.

BT: I suspect that was probably true. As a woman, were you discriminated against in any way, either by the faculty or--

EH: No. I was very lucky. They had small faculty women's club. One of the people who lived there was the secretary of the president of the university. She sort of took me under her wing and saw that I got everything that was coming to me. So I really enjoyed that year, because I didn't know a soul when I went there.

Then, you see, during that year they had this recruiting thing for the new Texas 00:06:00Technological college, which was to open the next year at Lobbock.

BT: Lubbock. That's in western Texas, right?

EH: Yup, just south of Amarillo.

So I didn't expect to be kept on at Texas. It was pretty clear that they needed somebody right away, that was fine, and I probably could have stayed for another year, maybe two more, but not permanently.

So I decided to apply for that job out in west Texas and I got it. That also was an interesting experience.

BT: I'll bet it was. Tell me in what ways it was interesting.

EH: Well, the place was picked because it was in an area where they grew quite a lot of cotton on the fields there, which is not exactly drought, but some of it 00:07:00was partly drought stricken.

This antibiotic I'm taking is making my mouth dry.

BT: Hold on a sec. Okay. So you were in Lubbock and--

EH: Yes. I went there in the fall of 1925.

BT: What was Lubbock like in 1925?

EH: Well, it was a small mid-western town. It had no restaurants or anything of that kind. And so somebody opened up a breakfast and lunch place. If you wanted 00:08:00a decent meal you drove to Slaton, which was on the Sante Fe where they had-- in those days the Sante Fe train to stopped and people got off for meals. They had a restaurant in Slaton, because it was on the Sante Fe. So that was the big event. Every once in a while you'd drive down to Slaton and have a decent meal.

BT: Where did you live in Lubbock?

EH: Well, they had a woman librarian, and she had a two bedroom house, which she had bought, and I got to live in one of the bedrooms. So I was very well taken care of. I was very lucky.

BT: Very convenient.

BT: So you said that you were one of three in the class of Brown to pursue a course in mathematics. How likely was it for a women to pursue a course, and 00:09:00teaching on a higher education, like in a field like mathematics.

EH: Well, I think in a good many places it wasn't as good as it was at Brown on account of those two Canadian professors who felt very strongly that women should be given a chance. Particularly, Richardson was very instrumental in various aspects of the American Mathematical Society. I don't think they ever had three again. It was unusual. One of the others, you see, got a position at the University of Oklahoma. So we were relatively close together.

BT: Your professors at Brown, did they advocate education for women, or was it just something that they did by practice? Did they actually talk about getting--

EH: No, I never heard them talk about it. One of them actually fell in love with 00:10:00my best friend who was also-- But it didn't click. But that had nothing to do with the fact that-- and he went to teach in a small women's college in one of the Carolinas-- I've forgotten which one. But the other one of the three got a job at the University of Oklahoma just about the same time that the one at Texas opened up.

BT: How long did she stay in Oklahoma? Do you remember?

EH: I think she was only there two or three years and then she moved to Elmira College in New York State and stayed there for years.

BT: As a teacher.

EH: Uh-huh.

BT: What courses did you teach at the Texas Technical College? Was it basically the introductory courses?

EH: Oh, well you see this was-- they had a few advanced students, but mostly these were all freshman. This was a new college just starting, and I think it's 00:11:00probably-- I'm not too clear about that now-- but I think it's probably true that most departments didn't have a full complement of people until about the third year, because they didn't have any students that would be qualified to go there.

BT: Were they pretty good students at the Technical school?

EH: Not very good ones. There might have been a few good ones, but the ones that could went somewhere that was established.

BT: What about the class size and things like that? Were they a pretty good size?

EH: They were a pretty good size.

BT: How was that experience of Texas Technical? Did you enjoy it as much as you did the one in Austin, your teaching position in Austin?

EH: Well, I think I had the highest number of hours to teach. And you didn't have any possibility of getting any student assistants or anything of that kind, 00:12:00so you spend a lot of time grading papers and doing all that sort of thing. No, on the whole I enjoyed it.

BT: Do you remember what your pay was for those years?

EH: I think it was around $2,000 a year.

BT: It's hard to conceive of today, but was that considered a very good--

I think I'm right because I think that at Texas where I was an instructor, full-time instructor, just starting to teach, I got $1,800, and that high compared with the friend of mine who went to the small college and women's college. I think she got $1,600. So I felt very well paid because I had to pay 00:13:00to get to Texas. But professors didn't go up for a long time.

I remember very well one of the chief men on the list here-- I can't think of his name now-- anyhow, he had been here for years-- oh, Skinner, the first one up here at the top. I remember him saying once these people are complaining about getting $2,500 for the year. He said, I was 50 years old before the salaries here got to be $50.

BT: Oh my. So you were at Texas Technical College for how many years?

EH: Altogether I was there for-- I came here in the fall of '28-- three years--

BT: You mentioned in our discussion a few weeks ago that--

EH: --and then I went back again after I got my degree. I went back for a year.

BT: You mentioned that you had attended a summer session at Brown.

EH: That was in between.

BT: Could you talk about that and what happened there?

EH: I don't know how they hadn't had it-- Brown never had anything like that before. But they had a graduate summer session in mathematics. It turned out that I think there was three, and you could take two courses, because it was very concentrated.

So I had one course with Mark Ingraham, who was there, and another course with a Russian émigré named Vasiliev. At the end of the summer it turned out that Mark was moving to Wisconsin. He'd been an assistant professor at Brown, he was 00:15:00being promoted. So he came to Brown, to Wisconsin at that time, along with Rudolph Langer, who was also at Brown at the time. They moved here at the same time.

BT: I didn't know that.

EH: But I didn't have a course with him then-- I had some later on.

But Mark Ingraham came-- oh, he must have come to Wisconsin in the year, probably '29, '30. No, before that, '27, '28 probably. So I became his first PhD student to see here.

BT: When you took a course from him, that summer session course from him at Brown, could you describe him as a teacher?

EH: Oh, I think he was an excellent teacher. Some people didn't think so. They didn't think his lectures where polished and so on. But that's not what you want 00:16:00in a teacher. You want somebody who will inspire you and make you think and so on. And Mark was very good at that-- much better than Langer in some ways. Langer gave polished speeches. I took other courses with him later. And you were so busy taking down these nice phrases and notes, that you didn't really stop to think about things.

But Mark Ingraham was the sort of person who would he's be putting something up on the blackboard and all of a sudden he'd stop, and you could almost see his brain going round, he said, wait a minute. And then he'd go back and say if we put this here and that there, and you could see research going on right in front of you.

So he was a very good teacher. Maybe not so good for elementary classes, I don't know.

BT: But for people who wanted to be challenged.

EH: Yes. He was an excellent teacher.

BT: So let's get the sequencing right. You took that summer session at Brown and then you went back to Texas, Texas College, for a year. And how did you end up at Wisconsin?

EH: Then you see, Ingraham wrote to me and said that there was a fellowship that was open, and would I like to apply for it, because he would like to have me come and do some graduate work with him.

So I decided that was a good thing to do. So I applied and I got the fellowship and came here.

BT: So you came here. What year was that?

EH: That was in 1928.

BT: And you studied for how many years here then?

EH: Two years. And got my degree in 1930.

BT: What was your field of specialty?

EH: Well, it was abstract algebra, actually. That's what Ingraham called it. And actually, I never used it very much. I did a little work in that afterwards. But you see then, I had fallen in love with this man in the math department. So 00:18:00after I got my degree I went back to Texas, to Texas Tech, see, I was on leave, went back and taught for a year. And then I came back to Wisconsin and was married.

BT: And again, the year on that was?

EH: That was '31.

BT: And when you came back and you got married, did you teach here in Madison?

EH: Well, you see, what Madison, what the university here at that time, had a great many students who applied and got into the university and then they lasted about half a year or maybe a whole year. The first semester had a lot of freshman. And they had to be taught, although most of them were going to be flunked out by the end of the semester. But they always needed extra people to teach in the first semester. So the first two years that I taught here, I taught 00:19:00freshman in the math department in those first semesters.

BT: Did a lot of them flunk out?

EH: About the same as-- I mean everybody had some in each class that flunked.

BT: Now you were here in '31, so were here right as the Depression was really starting to roll along. Do you remember anything about how the Depression affected the university?

EH: I remember one thing-- we were talking about it the other day. I've forgotten. I've forgotten who I was talking it with. The Regents decided that the budget was cut so much on account of the Depression that they were going to have to cut down on the postdocs and graduate students and things like that. 00:20:00Particularly on the postdocs who were part-time assistant teaching.

And somebody, and I don't know who did it, got the idea that if they just appealed to the faculty, they would be willing to take a price cut so that this extra money could be used for these graduate students, who would otherwise be out of a job. Nobody seemed to think any other university ever did this. But we did. Everybody that was on the staff took maybe a 10% cut or so. I've forgotten what the cut was. But it worked.

BT: Yes, that's called salary waivers I believe. And did you take a cut as well?

EH: Well, I wasn't on the regular thing. I think I didn't teach for maybe one year, but then got back in again. And then, of course, when the war came along-- well, and I filled in for Mark Ingraham one year. He did recruiting for the 00:21:00American Mathematical Society, and so I took over a couple of his more advanced courses that year. So I did up and down.

BT: So you filled in where you were needed?

EH: Uh-huh.

BT: Interesting. What about the Depression itself? Do you remember students having to drop out because of the lack of funds?

EH: Oh yes. Because they had to drop out and see if they could get jobs to keep themselves and maybe contribute to their families. There were not a lot of government helps, as there were in the second world war.

BT: So students were still pretty much on their own at that point, trying to get by.

EH: And in recent depressions, there have been all kinds of things that took care of people, or other jobs.

BT: They didn't have those-- well, that's when they were developing a lot of the safety nets, I guess you could say.

EH: Right.

BT: World War II came. Do you remember Pearl Harbor? Do you remember that very clearly?

EH: Yeah, I remember because it was announced on the radio. On a Sunday afternoon we were listening to some philharmonic I guess, and all of a sudden Pearl Harbor had been bombed. And as it happened, we had a guest staying with us who said well, I'm sorry, I have to go. He was going to stay at least a couple of days, maybe a week, I've forgotten. Anyhow, he said that means I have to go back to New York right away.

BT: Were you surprised when Pearl Harbor happened?

EH: Oh yes.

BT: How did the university handle-- how did that change the university?

EH: Of course, as far as the university was concerned, and as far as the math department, too, Pearl Harbor was-- the war had been on in Europe for a long time. They had formed national research-- let's see, what did they call it? NRS 00:23:00I guess, National Research Society. People in various places who were working, if it became necessary for the United States to go into the war, what they would do, you see. And so I even went off to New York periodically during that period before Pearl Harbor. And then the minute Pearl Harbor and the United States was involved, then he just packed up and went to New York or Washington, one or the other.

BT: On a full-time basis?

EH: Oh yes.

BT: To continue the work he had been doing?

EH: Well, to continue the research that he'd been doing, and to work on other kinds of research. So at that time, I know I went down and applied-- you see, they had waves and walks and so, for women. And I went down and they said, well if you can teach mathematics you stay where you are. Then they put in all these 00:24:00training programs. They had the V-12s for the Navy, and they had an Army group, and there was also a special group on trainees for meteorologists-- all three of them at the same time.

BT: The army was the ASTP, wasn't it?

EH: ASTP, uh-huh.

BT: In terms of your teaching in math, you worked with these groups, I assume.

EH: Well then I started teaching them probably mostly calculus and differential equations.

BT: And these were the-- all groups?

EH: They were all V-12s. So I was connected.

BT: And the V-12s were engineers.

EH: They were all engineers. And some of them-- I saw one, Stewart's wife the other day at the University League, and she said I'll have to tell Warren that I saw you, because he was one of my students. Now he's-- I don't know if he's 00:25:00become emeritus this year or not. But his wife is one. She was an alderman, you know.

BT: Yes. Oh yes, I recognize the name. Had he been a student, when, during the war?

EH: I had him both as a V-12. Then, you see, I had quite a number of these people when they came back after the war to finish up their degrees or get graduate work. So that's how I got to know-- I think that's what happened with Warren.

BT: Now these V-12 people, they rotated in and rotated out, didn't they?

EH: Uh-huh.

BT: So how long were the semesters or courses?

EH: They used to say that during the war, and I think it was pretty close to being true, there were only two days they didn't have classes. One was Christmas and the other was the fourth of July. But we did have very-- and you taught a much heavier schedule, because people were just not right around.

BT: Sounds very intense.

EH: Uh-huh, it was.

BT: All these new students, what were facilities like? Where did you teach? Where did you have your classes?

EH: Oh, they were all at North Hall.

BT: Oh, they were all still-- they didn't go off campus yet. That was probably after the war, I assume, where they really got--

EH: Well, you see, the North Hall, which is the oldest building on the campus was the math building until Van Vleck was built. I've forgotten what year that was. Anyhow, I never was in Van Vleck. All my offices and teaching-- well, not all my teaching, but all my offices and that sort of thing were in North Hall.

BT: So the war continued. When the war ended-- well, the war ended with the dropping of A bomb. Let's talk about that for a minute. Do you remember what you were doing when that happened?

EH: I remember thinking well that shows where some of these people that had 00:27:00disappeared had gone, because there was that Box 1663 in Santa Fe, which was the address for anybody at Los Alamos.

BT: Did you know any of the Wisconsin people who had disappeared there?

EH: Oh yes.

BT: Tell me about them.

EH: Well, Hugh Richardson, in the physics department-- he's now emeritus-- was there. And Julian Mack also from the physics department were the two that I knew the most. And I don't even know, I hadn't seen Richards in quite a while. I think he's still around. Julian Mack is not, but I did see his widow just this week.

BT: Did Mrs. Mack go with him to Los Alamos?

EH: Yes, she did. And they went with their Irish setter. Because I remember Joe remarking that when he got to the gate there was so much commotion with the Irish setter, that the guards didn't properly interrogate to see whether he belonged there or not. They were there before Joe was.

BT: Did you know Stanislaw Ulam?

EH: Oh yes. He was here in the department for a couple of years. First when he came he was a bachelor, and then he married this French gal, Francois. The second year he was here she was quite a part of the picture.

BT: Now seriously, where did you think these people had gone? I mean some of these were friends of yours and colleagues of yours and they just disappeared. What was your take on that?

EH: Well, you were just told they could not be reached, except if you wanted to 00:29:00write a letter, you could write a letter and it probably would be censored, but it was going to Box 1663 in Sante Fe.

BT: What did you think? Did you have any ideas about this?

EH: Not too much.

BT: Or did you just assume it was some secret project that wasn't any of your business?

EH: Well you see, the thing is it that they had had this National Research Council thing, the NDRC that had been meeting in groups, which were pretty secret because what they were trying to do was to anticipate what things the Germans might come up, you see. They would find some pieces of information somewhere. In fact, I can remember Joe saying something about somebody in Europe 00:30:00had captured some German piece of equipment, and somehow managed to smuggle it out into Portugal and sell it. But that sort of thing made you feel as though a lot of things, well, if you asked you probably wouldn't find out, unless you were nasty about it, and then you might get in real trouble.

BT: Joe Hirschfelder went to Los Alamos, too. Can you tell me about that?

EH: Well, you see, after some of the physicists left, it was quite a group that went, not only to Los Alamos, but also-- well like Ray went to-- he didn't go Los Alamos at all. Although they took his machine down there. But he went to MIT, with the group there. And the physics department got way down. And 00:31:00particularly, they didn't have anybody left in chemical physics, or theoretical physics.

So what Joe did was to take over these courses, you see, that these men had-- so that he taught. And then all of a sudden they called him in and said we need you now, too. So he had already put in an application to join the Air Force. And they had turned him down as too old to get pilot training. So he took courses out at Morey's airport, and got a plane and learned how to do all kinds of things during this period when he was still here.

Well then it turned out that he probably, at least he bought uniforms and 00:32:00everything, he was expecting to be in the Air Force, but not as a pilot. When General Groves got in touch with him and said we don't want you to go into the Air Force, we want you to go somewhere else. And he outlined a little bit of what they were doing. But he didn't tell Joe exactly where he was going or anything-- that was not supposed to be-- where'd he go. So he decided to go.

BT: So when they asked you, you kind of had the option-- you could turn it down if you wanted to.

EH: I think that's as I understood it. Well I know that as far as Joe was concerned, he was not supposed to tell this man in the Air Force why all of a sudden he was withdrawing his application. He just was told to say I changed my mind.

BT: Did Joe have any comments to make about General Groves?

EH: Oh, he thought he was a very interesting person. He didn't agree with him in a lot of ways.

BT: In terms of what, in terms of his--

EH: But he seemed to think that on the whole he did a very good job. He had a hard time in many ways because you get a bunch of scientists together and all of them are individuals who want to do things differently, and who complain. So he had trouble. But he got along better though with Oppenheimer, and that was important.

BT: Before we get to Oppenheimer, the thing with Groves fascinates me because he was, of course, the military man, and Oppenheimer was the scientist. So I could see how Oppenheimer would understand the quirks of the scientists pretty well, but I could see how it might just drive someone like General Groves up the wall.

EH: Well it did.

BT: Can you remember any particular--

EH: You see, I wasn't there then.

BT: Or do you remember hearing about--

EH: But you see, we were not married until long after that.

BT: That's true. I'm getting ahead of myself here.

EH: Yup, you see. Now I know about things like that. I knew Joe very well, but I wasn't married to him. As a matter of fact, I was still married to Ivan until the end of the war. So a lot of things that happened in Los Alamos I heard second hand. I was not there.

I've been reading a couple of books from people who were there during the war and--

BT: Were at Los Alamos?

EH: Uh-huh. Well, there's one book of Laura Fermi's that tells-- that's interesting because they came to this country before the war and then they were there during the war.

BT: It sounded a lot-- I was in Los Alamos this past summer looking at some of 00:35:00the social history. It sounded like it was, in a lot of ways, like a Badger Village place. It was almost a dormitory setting where they put all these people and they had an incredible job to do.

EH: Uh-huh. No, they did. They put up these dormitories and then they built like an apartment building with small apartments. Several in the building. And I know that Joe was unmarried and he was very lucky in that he said his mother would like very much to come to live with him. And they let him have a two bedroom apartment.

BT: Really?

EH: And she wasn't there an awful lot of the time either. She was quite a striking person, and she somehow managed to come and go as she felt like it.

BT: Boy, I didn't know that was possible.

EH: It wasn't for most people. So he had this apartment, not the first year I 00:36:00think, but I think after the first year he was there. In the next apartment was one of the Indians from San Ildefonso Pueblo who was-- there were quite a group of them that were working as mechanics and so on around the laboratory buildings. Po[povi Da] was a very unusual one. His mother was Maria the potter of San Ildefonso. So then his wife was with him, and they had a baby.

So when we went back there-- well I went with Joe-- see we were married in '53, and I went back in the summer with him, and we went down to Po's shop-- at San Ildefonso he'd opened his own shop in the Pueblo. And then he died, but his son 00:37:00became a very much, even better potter than his grandmother.

So in 1966-- no, later than that-- 1983 there was a symposium that Joe arranged in Los Alamos. We stopped by San Ildefonso and talked to Po's wife who was running the shop after her husband had died. We had hoped to see the grandson, the little boy, Maria's little boy. And he'd had a stroke or something and we 00:38:00didn't see him.

BT: Well, since we're on the subject of Los Alamos, let's jump way ahead for a moment and talk about that symposium. I recently received copies of tapes of the major speakers, and you showed me a few weeks a book that has come out on reminiscences of--

EH: Oh, well that was different. Those reminiscences, those were lectures that were given in Santa Barbara.

BT: OK. Then we will hold it off. I'm getting a little mixed up with my chronologies here.

EH: No, the symposium, it was a symposium organized by Joe and Professor Wyatt from somewhere-- I've got the book. And people from all around that came for a week of lectures and things like that. And because that time we didn't stay up 00:39:00at Los Alamos because by that time Joe had had a heart attack and they thought it was not good for him to be so high. So we slept down at White Rock, which is down at the base and drove back and forth for days.

So that was in 1983. Yeah, that's ten years ago, wasn't it? Yup.

BT: So after World War II, you divorced your husband, Ivan, is that correct?

EH: Yes. What happened-- well, we were separated a lot during those war years, and President Dexter was leaving the university here and going to California. And he suggested to Ivan that maybe he'd like to move to California, too. And I 00:40:00was very much in favor of that, and very much in favor of my not going to California with him. And so we agreed that all right, we'd been separated a good part of the time during the war, so we'd keep on, we'd get divorced and be separate.

BT: So he went to UCLA with--

EH: So he went to see UCLA at the same time as Dexter did.

BT: Let's talk a little bit about the presidents of the university during the years that you were there earlier. Did you know Glen Frank and Mary Frank?

EH: I met them, that's all.

BT: What was his reputation like?

EH: A lot of the faculty thought he was arrogant and not sympathetic, particularly, to their views. And that he just wasn't completely unanimous. Some people really liked him very much. I, of course, if you're a lonely teaching 00:41:00assistant, you don't get to meet people like that.

So I think I met them at some receptions and things of that kind.

BT: What about the very formidable and very well-known dean of L&S, George Clarke Sellery, did you know him at all?

EH: I never knew him very much. I mean I might have to go over to the office for something, but I probably would see him for two minutes or something. No, the dean that I used to know was Slichter, who was a dean of the graduate school. He was a wonderful person.

BT: What can you tell me about him in particular, anything?

EH: No. I remember particularly his wife. And they lived-- let's see what's the 00:42:00street that goes down to the lake, just beyond the alumni--

BT: Oh, Francis?

EH: Francis Street. Uh-huh. They had a house down there. She was a very charming person and a very good hostess and so on. I saw quite a lot of her.

BT: What about the first lady of President Dykstra. That's Lillian Dykstra, did you know her at all?

EH: I didn't know her well, no.

BT: President Dykstra, had you ever--

EH: You'd go out to the president's house and go down a receiving line-- that sort of thing.

BT: What was the general feeling about him? Can you recall?

EH: My feeling is that there probably were some people that were very sad to 00:43:00have him go, and there were some people that were very glad to have him go. But it didn't seem to make very much difference.

BT: While we're on the subjects of presidents, let's talk about President Fred who succeeded Dykstra.

EH: Oh yes. Well now President Fred was different. In the first place, he didn't want to live in the president's house. He was already living in that house next to the gardens down--

BT: Dean of Ag, yeah.

EH: And of course, he was-- was he dean?

BT: Yes.

EH: And so he wanted to keep on living there and he did. So during those years when I was teaching after the war, and maybe during-- no, it was after the war. After I didn't have a house out in Sherwood-- I used to park my car, I had parking privilege up on the way to the Elizabeth Waters Hall and there were 00:44:00parking spaces along there, and if you had an office in North Hall, that was a place you could maybe get a permit to park your car. And I had 7:45 classes, and very frequently I'd park my car, and who would be coming along but E.B. Fred. So we'd walk together over to Bascom, then I would keep on going to North Hall and he'd go on and into Bascom. So I saw quite a lot of E.B. Fred.

Then, of course, I knew his wife in the University League, which is the women's thing. But it was really amazing how well I got to know E.B. Fred just from mornings before 7:45.

BT: Getting back to your chronology here. So you taught in the late '40s here, continued teaching in the mathematics department.

Well, you see, that after the war there were so many veterans that came back 00:45:00that the university just expanded. And particularly, there were a lot of people who came back in engineering and in mathematics. So they needed people very much. And so after Ivan turned in his resignation and so on, there was a question of well, were they going to keep me on because I was going to be wanting a job somewhere. So they decided that it would be very nice if I stayed on.

BT: Were you an instructor or an assistant professor? What was your rank through this?

EH: I've forgotten when-- I was an instructor for a long time. And then I've forgotten when I got to be an assistant professor. I think it was during the war, but it might have been just right after the war.

BT: What kind of students were the veterans?

EH: Most of them were wonderful. They were there because they felt they'd lost 00:46:00out on the time that they were all overseas or in the Army or Navy or something, and most of them tried very hard, and some of them were excellent students. I mean it was a shame that they had to stop and go to war before they got-- But no, they were really--

BT: Again, what about the facilities-- we just mentioned this before. After the war there was a lot less space on campus.

EH: They had built of those little--

BT: Quonset huts.

EH: Quonset huts around to various places. I was teaching mostly sophomore engineers during that time, and they had lecture periods two days a week and quiz sections two days a week. So our lecture sections were in Bascom. So I 00:47:00would go up and give a lecture up there, and then come back down to North Hall and have maybe one or two quiz sections and so on. That's the way they took care of these huge numbers who came.

So, of course, those people-- well, the good ones were very good. Some other ones that were rusty, they had a hard time getting started back again. But on they whole they were so anxious to do it, because jobs came up in various industries and things that some of them could have taken. And they decided to come back.

Well, now were you involved in any--no, of course, you're too young.

BT: I was just getting born about this time. I'm the first wave of the baby boomers in 1946.

BT: Again, you were a woman in the mathematics department, and in that roster I 00:48:00gave you, I looked it over and I didn't see many other women listed.

EH: Well now there's Florence Allen-- you probably noticed her name.

BT: Yes, I did notice. Well tell me about her.

EH: Well, when I first came here she was an instructor at the-- I think she, now, let's see. She got to be an assistant professor in 1944 to '46 it says. She was an instructor, as you can see, all the way across here, the line.

BT: That's starting in at least 1925.

EH: Well, I think they promoted her to assistant professor just before she retired. Anyhow, when I was coming here that was in the '30s, and she was the instructor and she did a lot of counseling students. She was very nice about having people come into her office and talk to her and so on. I had a desk in her office the first year that I was here. She was very nice to me, too, because 00:49:00it was all very new to me during that. She was only other woman in the department.

BT: Did you experience any kind of discrimination at Wisconsin because of the fact that you were a woman?

EH: No. Mostly the department was very happy to have a woman who would maybe take over some of the duties, the social sort of duties in the department. So that's when I began to do, in addition to-- But you see, then I was living alone, so I didn't mind so much. No, they were very nice to me.

BT: Now there were two department chairs in the mathematics department during your tenure there. The first was Mark Ingraham, and we talked a little bit about 00:50:00him. And the second was Rudolph Langer who came with Mark Ingraham. could you talk about each of them as departmental chairs, how effective were they?

EH: Well I think that-- on the whole I don't know when Mark-- it says he was an--

BT: He became chair in '31, '32.

EH: Yes. But he was a full professor, apparently, started on the '27, '28. And you see that was just when he came-- No. '25, '26 was when he came. And he was an assistant professor. I don't know what happened in this year--

BT: He'd been gone for a year.

EH: Maybe that was one of the years when he did something because he was very prominent in the National Math Society. So maybe he did that there, too. And then he became the--

BT: A full professor.

EH: And then we see here's another place over here. I know about this one. Because by that time he was going to be recruiting for the math society, getting some more money for various funds and things. I had to take over one or two of his classes. And then you notice he'd been chairman the two before. And Langer filled in while he was gone, and then he was chairman again until he became a dean.

BT: And then Langer took the post for several years.

EH: So that from 1928, '29 through 1940, '42, there was just one or the other of them.

BT: How were they as chairs? Were they pretty effective, do you remember?

EH: Yes. And then he was [? McDuffy. ?] See, he became-- now who was in between? There's a break in there that I don't--

BT: That may have been on the other page. We're looking at a roster, I'll have a copy of this in Mrs. Hirschfelder's file.

EH: Now here's a chairman over here.

BT: That's later on.

EH: I remember that he came after that.

BT: And so the three chairs there were Ingraham, Langer, and MacDuffee. Tell me a little bit about Langer I don't know much about him.

EH: Well, Langer was a Harvard product. One of his brothers is a very well-known historian. I think he was a little older than Rudolph. And who stayed on at Harvard, he was there for years. He was very much interested in music and in art of various kinds. After he got his doctorate's degree, he spent one or two years on a postdoc fellowship in Europe and picked up some few things that he could 00:53:00afford to buy at that time.

And their house, when he died, it was to be taken to pieces, was just full of all kinds of paintings, sculpture, everything of the kind, most of which is now at the-- not the Elvehjem, but at the Madison Art Center, because he was head of that. For several years he was the chairman of the board. And they didn't have any children. So every year he would go-- well, not every year, but some years he took a trip by automobile with his wife, down to Mexico. He got very much interested in Mexican art. And, of course, he was very much interested in mathematics, too. But those were his interests.

Oh, and yes, he was interested in gardening, too. They had a garden in their 00:54:00house, which is out-- well it's in part of Nakoma.

BT: I sent you a roster of the math department. Are there any other people on here that you'd like to comment on?

EH: Well, you know, E. B. Van Vleck, who is the one for whom the building is named. He was here-- he's on here, you see. He was a chairman '25, '26, '27, '28. And then he retired. Then his son, Hasbrouck Van Vleck, a physicist, got the Nobel Prize. He's not on here.

BT: He taught here at the UW?

EH: I was thinking that he had taught here but he's not on there.

BT: Perhaps he taught in a different department?

EH: He was a physicist, of course.

BT: He's probably on the physics roster then. I have a copy of that. I'm sure that's what it was.

EH: E. B. Van Vleck was very much the dominating person until the end of his chairmanship there. And then he was heading on towards 70. And he became very much interested in his later years in Japanese art. And one of the things that the Elvehjem was happy about is they have a big collection of Heroshige that he had gotten together, and some of it Van gave them, and some I think they got through Van's wife, Abigail, after she died.

EH: And then Warren Weaver was here. And then he left it says in '31, '32. I thought he was here a year or two after that.

BT: Well there may be a mistake on the roster, too.

EH: Then he became the head of the Rockefeller Foundation.

BT: What kind of a person and mathematician was he?

EH: Applied mathematician. And a very good administrator. Well, you see, he was the chairman for three years after Van Vleck stopped-- Warren Weaver was the chairman for three years.

BT: How did it come about that he went to the Rockefeller Foundation? That he jumped from chairman of the math department at UW to head of the Rockefeller Foundation?

EH: They heard he was a good administrator.

BT: I guess so.

EH: See, remember, that was--he came in just before--

BT: Just after Van Vleck and before Ingraham as chair.

EH: And when he was here, he and Herman March-- those names come right together here. The big teachers in the applied math group, which was at that time a very well-known group in the country. That Wisconsin for applied math was very good. That's how it happened that Ivan Sokolnikoff came here because that was place to come to get your doctorate's degree.

And he worked with both, Warren Weaver and Herman March. He got his degree, actually, with March. But the book which we put out later was really as a result of the course which he taught and then I inherited to teach it, from lectures and things that both Warren Weaver and Herman March had started. It was supposed 00:58:00to be for engineers and physicists who wanted more mathematics after their elementary.

And Warren Weaver was a very good friend of Ingraham's. They got along fine together. So it was no surprise than when Warren left, Ingraham took over the department, found he had to keep the same people.

BT: That's a very distinguished group of people there, all there at the same time.

EH: And there were various other people who have been-- Arnold Dresden was a very well-known mathematician, but he left here in 1926, '27. He was never here 00:59:00when I was here. He'd already gone.

BT: Where'd he go, do you know?

EH: I think it was the University of Pennsylvania, but I'm not sure. I remember meeting him at a Christmas meeting in New York. He and a professor from the University of Minnesota that I had met before we're going to the opera on one of the nights during this meeting. So I don't remember how they happened to ask two or three of us gals to go too, but we did go. And I always remember how wonderful that was.

And that's the most contact I've ever had with Arnold Dresden. He wasn't at Wisconsin when I was there.

BT: I didn't know a thing about him. I had never heard anything about him before.

EH: Well, you know, everything is so much bigger now than they used-- The Math 01:00:00Society before the war was so much smaller than now, and there's lots of people who don't know each other particularly-- they know the name maybe, and then they meet at meetings. But the meetings tend to be this compartment is this thing, and then these people are coming in, and then maybe some other's over here.

The same thing is very true in chemistry.

BT: Yeah, size is very much a factor. Since the end of World War II that's been a real problem. Anyone else on that list that jumps out at you? I know that you knew a lot of these and we don't have to go through them all, but if there are any that--

EH: Kleene's just died about two years ago. He got the Medal of Science just the year before he died. I don't know about whether Eisenhart is still alive. I 01:01:00haven't heard from him lately.

So the first one on this list that I know is still alive is Kenneth Arnold because I got a Christmas card from them last year. Then there's Robert Specht who is number 28. He was an applied mathematician. He went from here-- he was here for not too many years-- and then he went to Rand and was there until he retired. I hear from him every Christmas.

Now let's see, did Laurence Young die this year?

BT: I don't know.

EH: I'm not sure. And John Miller I think John Miller is still alive. He was one of those who taught the education.

I was going to say, he was the education person. He was fairly big in the field 01:02:00of education. Was he the associate dean or something like that? That sounds familiar.

Incidentally I was wondering, they had a big P which was professor. What was a little p? Was that part-time professor?

BT: It could have been a typo. This was before they had computers. My partner and I worked on these. I'll bet a little p is simply a typographical error.

EH: Well now there are some places where there's a whole succession of big Ps and then there'll be a little p.

BT: I'll bet that was just us. When you do these things, after a while you get a little dizzy.

EH: I think you might.

BT: That's all that was.

BT: Well we'll go to the Chemistry department in a few moments here--But I want to finish up on your career here first. You said that you were a member of University League.

EH: Yes, well that is supposed to be all the wives. Now I think they'd like to 01:03:00have other people too. At that time you were just supposed to join the University League if your husband was on the faculty.

BT: What kind of activities did they engage in?

EH: This is the University League handbook. It lists addresses and so on. But in the first part, it tells about the grants that they've made and the scholarships that they do. They have volunteers who go mostly the University of Wisconsin Hospital to help, and some University of Wisconsin libraries have some of the 01:04:00University League people helping out as volunteers. Then some people at the Elvehjem. Then this Madison Friends of International Students was started about 1950 when we began to have a lot of foreign students.

So I was one of those who was very much interested. Well we had quite a few in the chemistry department because Joe had a number of foreign students come. So I worked quite closely with them. Well of course I started working with them before Joe and I were married.

Well one of the things when the students come, new foreign students are invited 01:05:00to a picnic, which used to be at the old-- the university now has a farm--let's see if it tells in here. No, it doesn't.

BT: The old farm?

EH: No. What? Hilldale?

BT: Hill, the Hill farm.

EH: The Hill farm. Well part of that, you see, was part of the university. There was a picnic ground. We had our picnics for the foreign students there. Then the university bought that, or was given that land. You know the income from that, most of those stores and things don't own the land. They lease it. The money from that goes to the university. It's used for research. At that time, the Hill farm moved to Arlington. So then they began having the picnic out there, and 01:06:00they still have it now.

BT: Oh, I didn't realize that.

EH: Then we also tried to see that everybody, these new students, had some kind of a sponsoring person here who they could tend to if they had problems and so on, and who see that they got invited to Thanksgiving dinner, and Christmas dinner, and so on.

So it's really sponsoring student contacts through women, either women on the faculty or wives. I think that now they've removed the thing about women. It seems to me that there's now in this thing something about-- It doesn't say anything about it.

BT: No it's just the facts--

EH: They say it was started in 1979 when it was incorporated. The University League was founded in 1901. Now in 1979, when it incorporated so that we could have tax-free gifts and so on. I knew that Baldwin and I worked with one of the law professors to get that through. That was about the last thing I did in the University League because we began to have so many people in the department, that I didn't have any time for that.

BT: Who was the law professor that you worked with? Do you recall?

EH: He's not now. His name was [Spuhr?]

BT: Now you said-- we talked about this the other day-- you said that you were-- and I'm being facetious when I say this-- that it was arranged for you to be fired from the university.

EH: Oh, but I wasn't.

BT: Of course not. Could you tell me how that transpired?

EH: Well after we were married--

BT: This is you and Joe Hirschfelder?

EH: Yes. Joe was very anxious that I should be free to do things when he did a lot of traveling giving lectures and so on. In fact he had in mind the fact that he had piled up quite a collection of places that they wanted him to come. So he went to Mark Ingraham and said how about firing Betty? And Mark said, if you want to get her to stop teaching, it's up to you to go and fire her.

So I did stop. We were married in 1954, and in 1957 we went on this six month trip. We started as Joe gave lectures in Hawaii, and then on to Japan, and 01:09:00India, and on to Europe. So this was quite a trip.

BT: This was all arranged beforehand? He had given lectures on chemistry? What were the lectures on mostly? Do you recall?

EH: I think most of the people that were interested were physicists. Because Joe had a joint degree. He has a degree in both physics and chemistry from Princeton. He never did chemical experiments or any of that kind. His chemistry was mostly theoretical in the sense that he used mathematical equations a lot. He had a good mathematical background too.

So that was a very exciting year and as a result of that, the years that 01:10:00followed that in '57, we had so many of those people here at various times, partly because Joe got a NASA grant which enabled him to have more visitors then he'd been able to get on the university's scale. Also right after the war they built a little laboratory for him. Do you know where the dairy building is? When Joe came to Madison--

BT: Let's go back in Joe's career just a little bit. First of all, he got trained in physics and chemistry at Princeton.

EH: He got his bachelor's degree at Yale. His father was a professor in the medical school at Minnesota. He started going to University of Minnesota. His oldest sister finished at Bryn Mawr and went to Yale as a graduate student. So 01:11:00while they were there one summer, he said why don't you come to Yale? It would be very nice. By that time he was a little disgusted with the chemistry department at Minnesota, or the physics. I'm not sure which.

Anyhow he thought well, Yale is a very good place if I can get in. So he transferred as a junior to Yale. The courses were good, but he wasn't very happy because going in the middle of the year was not a good idea. Anyhow he finished up and got a degree. Then he went to Princeton and he loved it there. He worked with Eugene Wigner and Henry Eyring.

This was just at the time you see when all these refugees from Europe were coming over, and a lot of them were connected with Princeton. The Institute for 01:12:00Advanced Studies was set up at that time. So he had the opportunity of knowing a whole bunch of these people. He said he could remember so much sitting beside Einstein and having him sort of mutter back something that was being said in the lecture. He'd try to find out what it was he said.

BT: So how did he end up at Wisconsin?

EH: Well you see, after he got his degree, then it was a question about getting a job. Farrington Daniels was the chairman of the department here at that time. So there was at post doc fellowship or something or other available. After all they had pretty good collection of people here at that time. So he came, as I 01:13:00understand it, he had a one year appointment with the promise of we'll see what happens after that. So that was when he came here in 1938?

BT: Something like that.

EH: Oh, I'm on the wrong month.

BT: Yeah, '37, '38.

EH: Yeah '37, '38.

BT: So he wasn't here for very long before he went off to Los Alamos?

EH: No. So he went on leave. He was still on the books, and that was true I think of most of the people at Los Alamos.

BT: I suspect, yeah.

EH: They stayed on the books at their universities, and a lot of them went right back when the war was over to those same things. So you see he stayed at Los Alamos for about three years. Well he had been back here for part of a year 01:14:00anyhow when they had the Bikini tests. Because he went out for that, and he on leave again. So during this period he was partly in and out.

BT: Now I just recalled, we were talking about Los Alamos earlier, and we talked about General Groves. We were going to get back to Oppenheimer and we never did. Let's talk about him for a moment.

EH: Well I never knew Oppenheimer particularly. Joe, knew him, of course, very well. He said when it was a small group when they first started before all these extra buildings and so on, Oppie was just a wonderful person to have around. His office door was open. You could come in and sit on his desk and ask him questions about why was he recommending that you do this thing. Then when it got to be a lot more people, they had to have more committees who took this, that, and the other thing. Oppie wasn't interested in that sort of thing.

BT: I can understand that. So he didn't enjoy it as much once it grew in size.

EH: I guess the only time I met Oppenheimer, he and his wife had a place down on St. John Island in the Virgin Islands. We went to Florida for some courses that a Swede named Löwdin on the beach out on Sanibel Island. There was a motel that became the headquarters for this thing every year.

So we would go there, and we would spend Christmas Vacation down in the Virgin Islands or somewhere like that then come back and go up to Gainesville where the 01:16:00University of Florida was. He would give some lectures there for a month or so. Then we would come back to Madison. This had got to a regular thing that happened mostly during the '60s, part of the '60s.

BT: That's very nice.

EH: During that period, you see, one of the years we went to Caneel Bay which is the Rockefeller Resort on St. John Island. The Oppenheimer's had a cottage up in the hills above Caneel Bay. So we knew interest, Joe did with them, and I got to meet both of them then at that time. But by that time you see, she was being accused of being a communist, and her husband, or her brother, somebody in the family was a communist. There was a lot of controversy about Oppie was too kind 01:17:00to the communists and so on.

BT: One of the things that happened after the dropping of the atomic bomb and the Manhattan Project, of course everybody at the end of the war as we were preparing to invade Japan and everything, they were very happy that the war ended. It ended rather quickly. But history hasn't been quite as kind to that period as one might imagine. There has been a lot of second guessing and second thoughts about the whole Manhattan Project. Did Joe ever express any concern about his role in the process? Did any of the others do that to you knowledge?

EH: When they first got him there, they had a project-- and I didn't know much of anything about that-- but anyhow they had a project in which he was supposed 01:18:00to be the expert in this particular field. They worked several months on this thing. Then as he said afterwards, that problem at Los Alamos was after you got these specialists to come in to help with a certain phase of this problem, when that phase was finished, what did you know with these people? They knew too much about everything that was going on for them to be released and go. So they sort of fiddled into other places and the set up.

So Joe did various things after he finished his particular thing. He really enjoyed Los Alamos as a place to live, very much. He did a lot of skiing, hiking, all that sort of thing.

BT: Did he ever express regret that the bomb had been developed?

EH: Oh yes. He expressed regrets that the bomb had ever got used. He realized 01:19:00perfectly well that as long as the Germans were trying to build a bomb, we had to build a bomb. It was lucky, and he was very happy that we got there first.

BT: I should said so.

EH: So he was happy from that point of view. But if it could have been arranged so that it never had to be dropped on a place with a lot of people, he had many others would have been much happier. Yeah.

BT: Tell me about the Theoretical Chemistry Institute, TCI.

EH: Well you see when Joe came back from Los Alamos the Navy built a little 01:20:00building, which is next to the dairy building out on the campus, just across from where the old greenhouses used to be.

BT: It's still there, isn't it? The old Navy building?

EH: Yep. So he and Chuck Curtiss, who is still here, and Charles Boyd-- I see his name on here-- started teaching classes and doing research in that buildling. As a matter of fact, Chuck had started work with Joe before the war, and gone to Washington with him, and then stayed in Washington working when Joe went to Los Alamos.

So he hadn't finished doing his thesis for this doctor's degree. So he finished doing his thesis. I was noticing in here that he doesn't appear on here not until 1950, '52 when was an assistant professor. Well he was a part of the 01:21:00Theoretical Chemistry Institute.

BT: Yeah he might not have been a faculty member. The roster does not include that unfortunately.

EH: Because then for two years it says he was an assistant professor and then he became an associate professor. Of course then he was a promoted to professor. He still has his same office and goes there practically every day. Charles Boyd, who was the third one in that original thing, he was more interested in the laboratory work and applications of some of the theories. He was there '50, '52, '52, '54. Then I forgot where he went.

Before that they had quite a lot of some chemical and physical machinery. After that then concentrated on computing, and they had computers. Back when they used these little handle computers, and then the kind that you could use electricity. He had a core of girls, most of them were math majors, who wanted something to do. They'd come over and work there. MacDuffee's daughter was one of them.

BT: Now there were three of your husband's students who, rather uniquely, got their training at UW and stayed at UW, did not go out anywhere else for seasoning or for anything like that. You've already mentioned one Charles Curtiss wasn't Bob Bird another one.

EH: Bob Bird was also--now, let's see. Well because Bob Bird actually is not on either one.

BT: I may be on this one. Yeah. He must be listed in a different one.

EH: Well you see when he came back here as a member of the faculty, he can back as a chemical engineering professor. So this is why he's not on here.

BT: So he's not on that. What can you tell me about him?

EH: Oh, a very interesting person. You'd like him. His father was something in the Bureau of Standards. Joe's mother and I used to go and visit his mother. They lived in one of the suburbs of Washington. He started out as a chemical engineer at Maryland, I think, and they he went off in the war. You know, I'm 01:24:00not sure if he came immediately then. I guess so. He came to Madison to do is doctor's work with Joe. That's the most he was actually in a chemistry department. All the rest of the time he was in chemical engineering.

He has just become emeritus just this last year. He's very fond of canoeing and that sort of thing, and he's been off on two canoe trips this year I know. I tried to get him the other day about something, and he keeps in very good touch with Chuck Curtiss. They are still writing papers together. One was finished up about two or three weeks ago and accepted. So then bob decided to go off on another trip.

EH: Now the third person in that group of people who are students and remained at the university is Phillip Certain.

EH: Well of course Phil is much younger.

BT: Yes, right. Phil, a couple of years ago, appointed Dean of L&S, which is a very distinguished appointment. What can you tell me about Phil Certain?

EH: Well Phil became sort of like Joe's son. When Joe was very ill in Santa Barbara, I called Phil and said I don't know how we're going to Joe back to Madison. He said I think I can do something about arranging a private plane if you're interested in that. So through the medical school he made some arrangements. Then he actually came down and helped me pack Joe's things up and came back on that plane with me.

BT: Oh really?

EH: Well he and his wife and I had dinner together last night. We get together 01:26:00frequently. I know all three of their children very well. He's a very nice person. As a matter of fact, yesterday we all the way up at Black Hawk and then Phil said, I don't have anything I have to do this afternoon. Would you like to drive out in the country. So he drove all around.

BT: That's wonderful. That's wonderful, a nice day to do it on too. We're having a nice fall after a lousy summer.

EH: Well we've had intermittent spells. It was cold yesterday morning. But by the middle of the afternoon it was wonderful.

BT: It was a 40 degree temperature change. Wisconsin has very strange weather. I've lived here all my life and I can't quite figure it out.

BT: I sent a roster of the chemistry department, which you have right in front of you. Are there any people on there whose names jump out at you that you would like to say some words about.

EH: Well Bob Alberty who was assistant professor, associate, and full professor 01:27:00back in the '50s. Then he left to go to was it MIT? Anyhow he's now emeritus.

Paul Bender is still living here, and he's an emeritus professor here. I see them very frequently. She also has a Ph.D. in chemistry. The chemistry department here didn't have any women for a long, long time. She be. had her degree when they first came here. But there wasn't any offering of her getting your job. So she started working with the meteorology department on radiocarbon dating. She actually kept going there until the time that Paul retired. He 01:28:00retired early. I see them quite frequently.

Not so frequently I see John Ferry. Let's see, where did I see him? He was at something recently. Oh, we had the Hirschfelder Prize, and we had a banquet at Black Hawk. There were quite a number of people of course from chemistry and so on, and other departments, and the Ferrys were there.

BT: Yeah I met John Ferry for the first time a few weeks ago.

EH: Well now have you interviewed him?

BT: He was interviewed by my predecessor.

EH: He was? Well you see he was chairman of the department for a while.

BT: Yes

EH: It doesn't show on here because it was later than that.

BT: Who did he follow?

EH: I'm just trying to remember. Did he follow Farrington Daniels?

BT: I think he may have followed Farrington Daniels.

EH: It was after Farrington. Now the question is was it immediately?

BT: John Matthews and then Farrington Daniels. I don't know. It's not on here. Matthews was chairman forever. Did you know him?

EH: I knew him somewhat, I didn't know him well. Of course Joe knew him very well. You see when you look down, now there was Homer Adkins who was a professor all the way through until about 1950. He was Joe's idol. Joe thought he was just 01:30:00a perfect chemistry professor.

BT: Why is that? What did he like about him?

EH: He liked his attitude toward things. As a matter of fact, when Joe was told he could be named professor. Who did he want to be named for? He wanted to be named for Homer Adkins. So he was Homer Adkins' professor.

BT: Oh I didn't realize that.

EH: I never knew him too well. I knew him somewhat of course, but not very well. As you seen, he retired about 1950. We weren't even married until 1954. Now I'm looking down the list, I think Aaron is not emeritus yet, but he probably will be shortly.

BT: And I probably what?

EH: You probably already interviewed Aaron Ihde.

BT: Oh yes, Aaron Ihde been interviewed. As a matter of fact, I talked to Aaron a couple times in the last month or so. He's become the unofficial-- the official now, I guess, historian of the chemistry department. His large volume on the history of the chemistry department was published about two or three years ago.

EH: Is there a second? There was on that was published just exactly the year that Joe died, and that was five years ago.

BT: Maybe that was it.

EH: That's probably it.

BT: Sometimes those years just fly.

EH: Ed Larsen is still here. I don't think he's emeritus yet. And Meloche he was one from the chemistry physics group who was on the board for athletic 01:32:00committee, or whatever they call it.

BT: The athletic board.

EH: He was not in the physical chemistry group. He was more in the organic group. And after he died, his wife was very prominent. She had been at the university in charge of the office where they help students get jobs, and that sort of thing. She did that for quite a number of years.

BT: Placement, yeah.

EH: Placement bureau. She helped. Well she just was the sort of person that everybody came to and asked her to do things. She just died two years ago? I 01:33:00guess so. Irv Shain came and gave one of the talks at her funeral, I know. She had sponsored him from the time he first came.

Shain, of course, he's emeritus now. But he still goes around the campus quite a lot. Some of the time Milli stays here.

BT: That's Mrs. Shain Did Joe know Irv Shain very well?

EH: Oh yes, and liked him very much. Then there's John Willard who came within a year of the same time that Joe started here. They were both still in the chemistry department. They retired within a year of the same time. They were not 01:34:00together during the war. Joe went to Washington first, and then to Los Alamos, and John worked most of the time in Chicago the electrochemical--.

BT: Now he became a dean.

EH: He was Dean of the Graduate School for a while.

BT: A lot of deans coming out of the chemistry department. I don't understand that.

EH: Well I think some of them were very good at that. But John found that it took too much time. He liked to do a certain amount of administration, but it took time from his research, and he was very much interested in what he was doing. So he didn't last very long there.

BT: What about Joe? Was he ever interested in administration?

EH: Oh no. Every time that sort of thing came up, he said I'm no good at that sort of thing. Actually he ran his own little group. He was an administrator of sorts certainly at the TCI.

EH: But he liked to be where he could have just a little bit of administration to do, but not a lot of it, and he didn't like to be on a lot of committees.

BT: Well I can understand that.

EH: So he was very lucky that he didn't have to.

BT: During the years you were married, did he receive other offers from other institutions?

EH: Oh yes, he had a number of offers.

BT: Did he ever come close to saying yes, to your knowledge?

EH: I don't think he really thought seriously, no.

BT: So is it safe to say then, that he was happy with his situation here?

EH: Oh, yes. Well you see, he got a grant from NASA that was to sponsor, it was to be a certain amount that he could use for research, inviting people to come and do research, and so on. It was also a grant of a certain amount for computer 01:36:00installation or where they'd use it in connection.

So what happened was that when they built the chemistry building over on Johnson Street, the first unit that was built was just a six-story unit. That was what's now called the Mathews building I think.

BT: Well there's the Farrington Daniels building.

EH: Well then the big building.

BT: The big building is the Daniels, yeah.

EH: Isn't that the Mathews Daniels building? Well at least it was originally called that. Well anyhow, this little six-story building, Joe had an office up on sixth floor. I guess all the professors were there. But they didn't have space for all these graduate students. So they had a rooming house across the 01:37:00street, which they turned into an office space for graduate students. They had the secretary over there, and graduate students and post docs were mostly across the street.

BT: Oh that's very nice.

EH: Then when they started to build the second part of the chemistry building, Joe had this NASA grant. They supplied the money for his floor, that building, which was the eighth floor and part of the facilities for the computer stuff on the ninth floor. They gave him something like, it doesn't sound like much now, but it was something like $300,000 for future use with the computing set-up. But this was a very nice arrangement.

BT: That's a very nice arrangement.

EH: So when the second part of the chemistry building was built, then he moved over there in the eighth floor and I stayed there. Well that's where they are now.

BT: Yeah the Institute still is going, isn't it?

EH: Oh yes. You see, they set up this Hirschfelder professorship. So Jim Skinner, who has that, is quite young. He has the old office that Joe had. He takes charge of this business of the lectures and the Hirschfelder prize. So we get together fairly often. I don't know exactly, but he's somewhere in his early 40s and a very smart young man.

BT: He sounds like someone I might want to talk to.

BT: When did the Hirschfelder prize come into effect? Can you tell me a little bit about that?

EH: It actually came into effect after Joe died. Because he had talked about the 01:39:00fact that he would like to set up some kind of a memorandum grant that would sponsor lectures and things in honor of his father and his grandfather, whom we felt were both worthy to be mentioned. Since we didn't have any children, the Hirschfelder name, that was it.

So he was working on that when he died. So I felt that this was really up to me to keep on doing something with that. I talked with various people who said, well for you to set up some kind of a memorial thing in honor of something of Joe's father and grandfather would be very peculiar. We wouldn't particularly like the idea. But we'd be very glad if you set up the thing in honor of Joe.

So that's how it happened to be. Since neither his father not his grandfather was a chemist, you see they were both physicians, his father, however, had been very much interested-- he was professor of pharmacology at Minnesota-- he was very much interested in lots of phases of biochemistry. He became quite proficient in some of the things there, when he was older, before he died.

When I finally decided what we were going to do, I said well I want this prize to be for chemistry or related subjects. So they have a committee that picks. I don't have anything to do with it. There's a committee that picks out whoever's going to get it. Then it was specified that whoever gets the prize will give three lectures or a symposium. They just had the thing, you know. This is 01:41:00Michael Fisher who got it this year, it turns out also got the first Onsager physics award this year. He already had the Wolf Prize. I didn't know that before. I found that out after he came.

BT: So he has three different awards simultaneously.

Then he had a fourth one. So it turned out that this is his year. He is originally from England. So he has kept his British citizenship. I said to him, how come in this little resume that they had, you're listed as a foreign associate of the National Academy? Aren't you an American citizen? He said, no. He said I'll tell you how it happened. My wife comes from Spain. When we 01:42:00married, she moved to England. She became a British citizen. So then when I was going to move here, she said well let's just wait a while. So he said, we're still waiting.

So he's still a British citizen. He's now at the University of Maryland. Although he was quite a long time at Cornell.

BT: We've been going to quite a while here, and I don't want to wear you out too much more. But I do want to ask you one more question if I could. This has to do with Dr. Hirschfelder's relationship with the University of California at Santa Barbara. Could you just talk about how that developed over the years?

EH: Well you see, Joe did not like cold weather as he got older.

BT: Smart man.

EH: Well see when he was going skiing and iceboating and things like that in the 01:43:00wintertime, it was one thing. But after he had a series of bad colds and that sort of thing, he decided that he would do what Norris Hall -- did you have a thing on Norris Hall?

Now Norris Hall was one of the top professors. He was a member of the National Academy too. He must have retired in 1956 or something, he isn't over the hill. Well anyhow, he had a nice arrangement whereby he could be gone for a month or two in the winter. Joe said, but if he can do that, I'll bet I can get the chemistry department let me do that too. So he started making arrangements to go to Florida and be at the University of Florida with this Swedish professor who was running a thing at Florida. We'd spend Christmas vacation down in the Virgin Islands or someplace like that. Then we'd go back to Gainesville and spend a 01:44:00month and he'd give lectures there. Then we'd come back here.

Well at that time the second semester didn't begin until sometime-- there was quite a long Christmas vacation that lasted over. Then there was about a three-week session with final exams and so on, before the next semester began. Well it was very easy to get that time free. So that meant that we could count on any time after the first semester class stopped before Christmas, and go off for a couple of months. So that's what we did.

We spent some time in various places in the Virgin Islands for Christmas. Then we'd go up to Gainesville and he'd give some lectures at the University of Florida. I guess there was one year when we spent a year at the University of 01:45:00Georgia. But then some of the people at the University of California at Santa Barbara said well, how would you like to come out and give some lectures out here? You could give, say, a couple of weeks. When people at Caltech heard about it, they thought it would be nice if he came down there and give a couple of weeks there.

So we were all set to go there for a six weeks' period one winter and forget about Florida. Then he had a heart attack. The doctor said, it's fine for you to go off to California for a while in the winter, but not to go from one place to another. So Santa Barbara said well we'd be delighted to have you come and spend the whole six weeks here. In particular, the man was one of the chief people in the physics department was Herb Broida, for whom the physics building there is 01:46:00now named. There were one or two people in the chemistry department who were very much interested in physical chemistry.

So we went for that six weeks' period. They liked it, and Joe liked it. So then they said, how about coming and spending more time. So as soon as he became emeritus-- I think it was two or three years after that-- he went just for a short term. But then he began to go longer. We'd go in October and come back in April, because he didn't have any classes here. So that's how that started.

So they made a regular. He was called an adjunct professor. He got paid by them instead of being paid by here, when he was there. But after he became emeritus, 01:47:00I think he gave some lectures after that, and they just said well you're getting retirement from Wisconsin. We're not going to pay you retirement here too.

So the last few years after he was retired here, he gave a few lectures there, but not many. But before that he would teach a part of the course. So it worked rather nicely. They were so pleased.

The University of California in Santa Barbara, they're right now celebrating their 50th anniversary, and making quite a big thing of the thing. They have just this year been elected to the group of first-class universities from the point of view of research. They and Emory were the two that were elected the 01:48:00first time that anybody's been elected to the group for five years, I think. So they're happy about that.

They have a new chancellor who was born in China, and who's apparently just doing a wonderful job. He's been there a year, and they had a big inauguration for him last month. So it's an interesting sort of thing.

Those lectures that you mentioned in that reminiscences, those were given in Santa Barbara. Joe did all the arranging because he knew the people, of course, and he did all the introductions for them when they came and gave these lectures.

BT: This was about Los Alamos?

EH: About Los Alamos.

BT: By the way, anyone listening to this, I have audio tapes of all of those 01:49:00lectures housed in the oral history project, including a tape by Dr. Hirschfelder himself. So if anyone would like to listen to those.

EH: I didn't realize that that's where they would be.

BT: Yep. Everything that's taped ends up with me. So I was given that from the collection.

EH: This is one of my things that I had thought about the other day. I was trying to think of various things. I thought, you know there was some tapes that Joe had made, and I wonder where they are.

BT: Well they're very well taken care of in my project office. Don't worry about it.

EH: Good.

BT: So I've been meaning to listen to them myself. But I just haven't had the chance yet.

BT: I've covered all the ground I wanted to cover. Do you have any comments? Anything you'd like to say before we wrap this up? Any general reflections on your years here at the UW?

EH: Well people every once in a while, particularly the ones in California, say why don't you just close up the place in Wisconsin and move to Santa Barbara 01:50:00where they have good climate, you have some friends? I say, I have a few friends here, but home is in Madison. Yep. So I don't know. I have a condominium in Santa Barbara, or in Goleta, which is a suburb of Santa Barbara. And I have a car out there.

So I'll go out there a week from Friday, and I'll come back at the end of March.

BT: Oh boy. Does that sound nice. I think on that note, I will turn the--

EH: Actually I have two very good friends. I have a condominium in a cluster of buildings. They're all either one of two stories high, which is a retirement community. I have a one-story one which actually has a pull down ladder with a 01:51:00little loft up above it, and two patios one on each side. The car is over here in a carport.

I have an end apartment, and the one in the middle-- this is a three-unit apartment-- is a lady who's husband died very shortly after Joe did, within two or three months of the same time. I had known her somewhat before. Joe was sick and her husband was sick, and we did things together. Well she was just six months younger than I, and we'd do all kinds of things in the daytime together. Sometimes we get together in the evening. Of course we can walk back and forth. So she's one of my very good friends.

Then there's a girl who was here as the head of Joe's computing set-up back in the days when they had hand computers. He had a whole crew. Well as a matter of 01:52:00fact, her husband was getting his doctor's degree in astronomy. So when he got his degree, she left. Then he become a professor at the University of Nebraska.

I've forgotten whether she came to Santa Barbara mostly because there is a Brooks Institute of Photography there. One of her sons wanted to go there. So she moved there. Her family came from California anyhow, in the beginning. Well she is now the registrar of the branch of Antioch University, which is in Santa Barbara. She lives five blocks from me. She'll meet me when I go on the plane. Her mother and her mother's old-time friend have an apartment in the same 01:53:00complex that she's in. It's not in my complex at all. I see them occasionally, but I see Marion. She calls up, and I call her up. She knows of course, a lot of the people here.

So those are the two people. You see the thing that happened, I sold my house last year. We had built it 40 years before. and it was full of all kinds of stuff, Stuff that we'd collected in various places, and things that I had inherited in my family, and Joe had inherited in his family, all this furniture and stuff. So I worked very hard in getting things ready to move, and ended up with moving a lot of paper that's got to be gone through eventually. I've gone 01:54:00through some of that this year. But I got that done and moved in here in September a year ago. Then last year in Santa Barbara, I mostly sat and recovered.

BT: I'll bet.

EH: So this year I intend to do more going around. The question is shall I get rid of that condominium? Because after all it is off by itself. It just sits there for seven months of the year. So I don't know. We'll see.

BT: It's a nice problem to have.

EH: But you know, some of these early mornings when it's been so cold, I've though, you know maybe Santa Barbara's a good place to

BT: And I'm going to agree to that and cut of the interview

Elizabeth "Betty" Hirschfelder (#465) Transcript

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