Posted on Mar 1, 1995

Died: Daniel Robbins, the May I. Baker Professor of Visual Arts, died January 14. He was sixty-two.

Robbins, a distinguished art historian, devoted much of his career to the theoretical and philosophical origins of Cubism. He wrote extensively on the work of Albert Gleizes, Jacques Villon, Joachim Torres-Garcia, and Jean Metzinger. He also served as curator for numerous exhibitions and museums.

A graduate of the University of Chicago, he earned his master's degree from Yale University and his Ph.D. from New York University. He joined the College in 1980, having taught at Yale, Harvard, Dartmouth, Williams, and Brown.

Robbins held positions at the Fogg Museum, the Museum of Art at the Rhode Island School of Design, and was instrumental in the formation of the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal, where he served as a trustee. He was also a trustee of the American Federation of Arts in Boston and the
Federation Albert Gleizes in Paris. He was the author of a history of the Vermont State House
in Montpelier and participated in its restoration.

In 1959 he received a Fulbright Fellowship to the Institute of Art and Archaeology at the University of Paris. Other honors included a National Endowment for the Humanities Senior Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and an American Council on Learned Societies grant.

Survivors include his wife, Eugenia Scandrett Robbins, and two daughters, Juliette and Miranda. Memorial contributions may be made to the Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center's Hematology and Oncology section in Lebanon, N.H.

Died: Harold E. Way, the Frank and Marie Louise Bailey Professor of Physics Emeritus, died January 18 in East Lansing, Mich., where he lived. He was ninety.

Born in Colchester, Ill., Mr. Way graduated from Knox College and received his master's degree from the University of Pittsburgh and his doctorate from the University of Iowa.

He was a professor of physics at Knox College from 1927 to 1948 and was acting president in 1946. He joined the Union faculty in 1948 and later served as chairman of the Physics Department and dean of the Science and Engineering Division. In 1962, while on sabbatical, he was the head of the Institute Section of the National Science Foundation in Washington, D.C.

He retired in 1966.

Survivors include his wife, Fern Robbins Way; a son, John; two daughters, Mary Ann Lauder and Jane Ellen Way; twelve grandchildren; and eleven great-grandchildren. Memorial contributions may be made to Union, Knox College, or the Congregational Summer Assembly in Frankfort, Mich.

Named: Dwight Wolf, registrar and director of academic services, has been named associate dean for academic services and planning.
Penelope Adey, associate registrar for graduate and continuing studies, is the College's new registrar. The appointments are effective July 1.
Dan Lundquist has had his title changed to vice president of admissions and financial aid.

Posted on Mar 1, 1995

1813: The central “round building”
appears in Joseph Jacques Ramee's plans for the new Union campus on Nistiquona Hill outside Schenectady.

1856: College Treasurer Jonathan Pearson, commenting on President Eliphalet Nott's attempts to raise money from alumni for the building, writes, “It is certainly singular that among the great number of sons a paltry $10,000 cannot be raised for so necessary a purpose.”

1858: Forty-five years after the first hole was dug in the middle of the campus, construction begins in earnest when President Nott places the cornerstone on July 28.

1859: Lack of funds halts construction in October.

1869: Students stage a mock burial of the trustees over their failure to continue construction.

1872: Construction resumes.

1877: Impatient alumni hold a banquet in the unfinished building during Commencement.

1879: Construction is officially completed, although the “finished” Memorial Hall has no heating system and no plumbing facilities.

1902: Andrew Carnegie pledges $40,000 to repair and restore the building; install a copper drum around the base of the dome; complete the stonework; add electric lighting, plumbing, and toilets; and install steam heat.

1903: °The library moves in.

1904: On the centennial of Nott's inauguration, the College formally names and dedicates the building in his honor.

1927: Librarian Wharton Miller reports that the Nott is full and there is no room for any more books.

1930: A new library is proposed.

1936: Renovations allow the library to expand into the basement.

1954: Architects propose turning the Nott into an administration building when a new library opens.

1961-63: Schaffer Library opens, and the Mountebanks and College Bookstore move into the Nott.

1971: The Alumni Council and Board of Trustees commission a “Historic Structure Report.”

1973: The report discusses the Nott's problems and proposes solutions to turn it into a functional building.

1987: The bookstore moves into the renovated College Center.

1991: President Roger Hull makes restoration of the Nott a priority.

1993: With contributions coming. from more than 2,000 alumni, efforts to raise $11 million for the Nott are successful and work begins.

Posted on Mar 1, 1995

Union students of the early nineteenth century studied physics with a textbook that claimed that the moon and the sun were inhabited.

That's one of the findings of Ennis Pilcher, professor emeritus of physics, in his recently-published Early Science and the First Century of Physics at Union
College, 1795-1895.

Pilcher retired in 1986 and soon began a detailed study of how science education evolved at the College.

At the College's founding, the natural philosophy course
included all science instruction except for advanced studies in astronomy. By the middle of the nineteenth century, however, the course had evolved into physics after spawning separate specializations in natural history, chemistry, and civil and electrical engineering.

By the Civil War, Union led the nation in producing graduates with a breadth of technical and scientific understanding, Pilcher writes.

Edward J. Craig, professor emeritus of electrical engineering, devotes much of his new book, Electrical Engineering at Union, 1895-1995, to people-everything from anecdotes about faculty members to lists of everyone who received a degree in electrical engineering.

Perhaps the best story concerns a former chairman of the department, Harold W. Bibber. As Craig recalls, Bibber liked to emphasize in his lectures that the ratio of the line voltage to the line-to-neutral voltage in a
three-phase power system is the square root of three.

“Evidently some students, looking for a little excitement, thought that burning the symbol on his lawn would be fun,” Craig writes. They did so one night, but Bibber recognized them in the light of the flames and they had to resod his lawn.

Posted on Mar 1, 1995

New members of the College's Board of Trustees are William J. Curtin `82, of Summit, NJ.; Wallace A Graham, of Schenectady; and Stephen R Karp, of Weston, Mass.

Curtin, who was elected to the board by alumni, is a managing director with Lehman Brothers in New York City. He received his B.A in economics and has worked in a number of volunteer capacities for the College.

Graham is vice chairman of the board of Schenectady International, a chemical manufacturer with worldwide sales. A graduate of the University of North Carolina, he was with IBM before joining Schenectady International (formerly Schenectady Chemicals, Inc.) in 1972.

Karp is the chief executive officer of New England Development, Inc., a commercial real estate developer that has built a number of shopping malls in the Boston area. He is a graduate of Boston University, and one of his two children is a current Union student.

Posted on Mar 1, 1995

The College began its third century by establishing a new honor for alumni the Eliphalet Nott Medal.

The medal will be awarded to alumni who have achieved outstanding success in their professional fields. It is named after Union's great nineteenth-century president, Eliphalet Nott, who served the College from 1804 to 1866, the longest tenure of any American college president.

President Roger Hull, who had the idea for the honor, presented medals to six alumni during the Founders Day convocation on February 25. Recipients were:

Baruch S. (Barry) Blumberg '46, Fox Chase Distinguished Scientist at the Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia and winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine in 1976;

Robert I. Chartoff '55, president of Chartoff Productions, a film production company in Santa Monica, Calif.,
and producer of such films as the Rocky series, The Right Stuff, Raging Bull, and others;

A. Lee Fritschler '59, president of Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pa., and former chairman of the U.S. Postal Rate Commission;

Michael J. Fuchs '67, chairman and chief executive officer of Home Box Office;

Robert A. Laudise '52, adjunct research director for chemistry at AT&T Bell Laboratories;

Kathleen M. White '72, editor-in-chief of Redbook magazine and the former editor of McCall's, Working Woman, Child, and Mademoiselle magazines.