The Steacie Building: 1965 – 70
The opening of the Steacie Building involved John Polanyi as a guest, Leo Marion gave an address that bears some thought: he suggested that instead of talking about “the new Steacie Building” we should look forward to referring to “the old Steacie building where important research had been done”. It was a long time coming, but perhaps that time has now arrived. A. A. Noyes and Léo Marion were given honourary Doctor of Science degrees.
The Faculty
Jim Holmes hired Carl Amberg, C.L.Chakrabarti, Peeter Kruus, Bob Wightman and J.A. (Nol) Koningstein in 1965. In 1966 came Stan Tsai, and in 1967 came Ron Shigeishi.
Then, in 1967, came Cooper H. Langford (III), from the University of Amherst, Mass. He was very bright, very broadly informed and very ambitious. He was widely admired by some and much disliked by many others, especially by Mike Parris.
Then, in 1969, came Don Wigfield and Remigio Barradas.
The Staff
Department Chairman: Jim Holmes was Chairman from early days until about 1970.
Departmental Administrators. Pete Stanley was hired by Jim Holmes. He was a former military man, and tried to run the Department like a Regiment. This was not popular. He was later replaced by Bob Jones, who was much more subtle and very efficient.
Lab Technicians The labs at that time were run by John Birchall, Ed Zabarauskas, Lothar Klimpel, Fred Crossan, Ian Babcock, Pierre Juneau. Dick Talbot came in 1967 as coordinator of the first year labs.
Secretaries Gail Park was the Office Manager in 1966. Eleanor Egan came as Jim Holmes’ secretary. There were several other Secretaries and Stenographers: … Forsyth and Dineke deWit. Linda Morneau (Guay); Arlene Lauber who joined the Department for short periods.
Electronics The Electronics was ably run by Peter Bertels, with assistance frequently from other technicians, some of whose names have been lost: Ray Tyson was one of the best.
Stores: Karl Diedrich, who was hired in 1961, remained the main storekeeper. A number of assistants were with Karl: Alan McCarville, Sally Court, and later others.
Glass Blowers: Henry Christie came with the Department from the Tory Building. He was probably quite good, but was meticulous and very slow. It helped also that in the research labs many of the graduate and even undergrad students became quite competent glass blowers. Especially those in my lab became quite competent at designing and making vacuum systems.
Others: John Putnaerglis operated in the mechanical shop for a short few years..
The Computer: Soon after we first got into the Steacie Building, the University’s Computer needed a home. It was established in Room 409 (now Tony O’Neill’s Instrument Room) This was the old IBM 1620 which nearly filled the room. The Computer Staff had the next room as their office. Not long after that, Cooper Langford somehow acquired a PDP8 which was to introduce computing to all research labs. Floppy disks cost $70 and were very precious. It was well after 1970 that the Computer Centre was moved to Robertson Hall and punched tape could be read over the telephone. Claude Bordeleau was one of the early users in this Department. By that time there were more computers in the Department, following Mary Moore’s introduction of the Dy-4 considerably later.
Courses
Many new courses were created at this time: Cooper Langford had a custom of setting up good ideas and then leaving the task to someone else. He set up team teaching in Chem 100, which apparently was not a great success. He set up a Resource Centre (Room 411) which was largely empty and little used, but required constant Faculty staffing.
Notable Students
Prominent students at this time included Sue Abrams, Lyall Berndt, Joe Bossart, Nick Cartwright, Frank Cedar, Bill Court, Bob Cresswell, Peter Flavelle, Fred Gowland, Doug Heggart, George Holland, Larry Hunter, Norm Hunter, Russ King, Dave McNicoll, Keith Phinney, Lorne Rachlis, John Stevenson, Graham Walker, Bill Wilson, and more.
Dave Vasudev was my graduate student, then Albert Yang, Wing Hing Wong, Dick McGregor, Jim Argo and many others. Harry Krehm was an early PhD student with ApSimon. Joe Bossart, Bill Court, Bob Cresswell, Doug Heggart, George Holland, Norm Hunter, Russ King, Bill Wilson became M.Sc. students.
Research
Research in the Department got a big boost in the new building – initially with Apsimon’s organic group and my radiochemistry, and then with the new Faculty members. ApS attracted a number of good students and some good Post Docs. Alain Frouchier was an early visitor from Montpellier. Danuta Rozwadowska from Poland . Dillip Dixit was ApSimon’s first student with Badripersaud coming from Guyana shortly after.
Remi Barradas had many good students and post docs. Remi had come with some very good PDFs from Toronto. David Shoesmith was one who came later. There was an excellent woman from Argentina. His students were George onaldson, Brian McDonnell, Keith Belinko. Later came Jack Porter, who went on to be a Professor in California (at Berkeley), Ted van der Noot, now at the University of London, Keith Belinko (National Research Council) and others. Remi tended to select a student in first year and nurture him (not her?) through to the PhD. He did this notably with Belinko, Porter and van der Noot, all of whom continued to be distinguished scientists.
Nol Koningstein had begun to set up what became a world-class laser spectroscopy lab. He brought in many good visitors, including Michail Bulanin from Russia, Gerhard Schaack from Germany, Ole Mortensen from Denmark and, later, Piotr Myslinski from Poland and Larry Haley from Johns Hopkins. Most notable was Peter Grünberg, who came in 1969 and stayed for three years. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in 2007.
Peter Grunberg, John Hoff, Connie Kane-McGuire, Jackie Prudhomme, David Boal
Chakrabarti brought up many very good students from his undergraduate program – Robert Guy and Ralph Sturgeon being among the first.
Radiochemistry flourished well, with the arrival of Chaks Srinivasan, W.H. Wong, Albert Yang and a number of others. Ineke deJong became the main technician and effectively ran the lab. Hot atom chemistry became the main focus of the group, and we became one of the foremost labs in the world (although ‘the world’ was a very small place!).
Bob Wightman had Elaine Isabelle as his assistant, and Daryl Lake as M.Sc. student.
Cooper Langford worked on flash photolysis and stopped-flow kinetics, with Cathy Allen, Alan Underdown and others. He attempted to start a “Metals Ions Group”, with Chak, Parris, perhaps Koningstein and myself. This didn’t amount to much, largely because there was no cohesion among the intended members.
During this time, Don Wigfield was starting up his work on organic reduction reactions. In this period he had such students as Fred Gowland, Sherry Perkins and Dave Phelps.
C.S. (Stan) Tsai was very active in setting up his work in enzyme kinetics. At the same time he won a Teaching award.
Peeter Kruus started his excellent work on the structure of liquids, before moving into ultrasonic chemistry
Major Equipment:
In April 1967 a new computer (GE415) came in to room 409. (It could do Fortran IV) It was designed to replace the 1620 which went to Engineering.
In 1967 the Department got a Xerox 914 Duplicator – the latest technology. In 1968 we got a Programmable Olivetti Calculator. Only after Mary Moore came, much later, did we get into computers. She helped us get a DY4, with Wordstar-1 as the word processor.
In 1971, the University purchased our first NMR spectrometer:
Varian XL-100
Notable Eventse
Karl and the Faculty Club: When the Faculty Club was upgraded and acquired a liquor license, it was Karl Diedrich who was asked to become the bar tender. Thus, on Friday afternoons Karl was not in the Chemistry Department. Initially the alcohol supply was housed in my basement until Friday mornings and was returned to the basement late Friday nights. Later the supply was housed in the Solvent Storage Room. This was quite illegal, but worked well for several years until later when a locked bar was constructed in the Faculty Club.
Karl as Bartender
Gordon Couse, John Ruptash, Jim Wernham. Lester Pearson far right
For several years, especially in the Tory Building, Jim Holmes’ COTC operated a Happy Hour to which all comers were welcome. Eventually this disappeared and was no longer so necessary when the Faculty Club started.
Racing bicycles around the fourth floor corridor became popular for while, but one Saturday evening Joe Bossart slipped, crashed into a window and severely cut his arm. Fortunately, he was able to get to the emergency phone to call for help. The use of his arm was impaired for several years
The Chemistry is pHun show became popular, and was given several times at each Open House, as well as once or twice each year to the First Year classes. Karl usually set up the materials and often acted as on-stage assistant.
Community Outreach
Several members of the Department were active in the Chemical Institute. Jim Holmes was a major influence in EOSEC (Eastern Ontario Science Education Committee). In about 1967, a new curriculum was put in by the Provincial Ministry, using the Chemical Bond approach. Many of the teachers found this strange. Following a meeting with Leo McCarthy, Chairman of the Ottawa School Board, we put on a year-long series of upgrading courses for nearly all of the local high school teachers. Nearly all the Chemistry teachers in Ottawa came to us on Wednesday afternoons. I gave that series, which consisted of a lecture, a lab and a discussion period. This helped to establish a good rapport with the teachers that lasted for many years.
Members of the Faculty in that period were: