UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON ARCHIVES
ORAL HISTORY PROJECT

Interview #613
PETERSON, WILLIAM H.

PETERSON, William H. (1880-1960)
Graduate student; Professor of Agricultural chemistry (later Biochemistry)
At UW: 1910-1913; 1914; 1915-1951

Interviewed: c. 1959	
Interviewer: Harriet Bunn
Length: 20 minutes

E.B. Fred; Fred and WP's research on converting pentose sugars into acetic acid; Work with commercial solvents; WP's service on the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation fellowship committee; funding.

Interview Session: Tape 1

Tape 1/Side 1

00:00:07	Harriet Bunn introduces William H. Peterson. WP became acquainted with E.B. Fred soon after Fred came to Wisconsin as an assistant professor of agricultural bacteriology in September 1913.

00:01:50	WP had completed his PhD at Wisconsin three months before Fred’s arrival.  He had contacts with Fred apart from through the university; he and his wife lived very close to the Freds and they shared a garden.  Later, WP and his wife lived with Fred for a brief period while their house was being finished.

00:03:00	On one occasion, the Freds hosted a dinner party.  After dinner, E.B. Fred invited the men into the kitchen to wash the dishes while the women talked in the living room, saying “If the wife prepares the meal, the husband should help with the dishes.”

00:03:23	WP and Fred began to conduct research together in 1918, during the First World War.  Fred had been assigned a project by the Bureau of Aircraft Production to produce acetic acid from pentose sugars.  Acetic acid could be converted into acetone and other products needed by the aircraft industry.  Fred and Audrey Davenport began searching for bacteria that would convert pentose sugars to acetic acid.  WP’s role as a chemist was to analyze the acids they produced to test whether they were acetic acid. After the war ended, WP transferred to Fred’s project.

00:04:49	From the pentose work came WP and Fred’s first joint paper, entitled “Acid Fermentation of Xylose.”  The pentose fermentation project proved so promising that they continued working on questions connected to it for twenty years.  This fermentation work led WP into his work on vitamins and antibiotics.

00:05:55	Most of their work was conducted in the bacteriology building by faculty members who were officially connected only to the biochemistry department.  WP talks about some of the professors, research assistants and post-doctorates who worked with WP and Fred.

00:08:52	WP claims his recipe for success is to find half a dozen of the smartest assistants he can, and then to try to keep up with them.  He explains how he managed to keep them at the university when they were receiving higher-paying offers from other institutions.  In Fred’s laboratory, his assistants had many good times.  Fred used to say that he liked to find workers who wanted to work an eight-day week.  Although some argued that Fred was a slave-driver, WP recalls his “slaves” as happy and devoted.

00:10:56	In 1922, Commercial Solvents Company in Terre Haute, Indiana was encountering difficulty with their fermentation process for the production of acetone and butynol.  Fred, E.G. Hastings and WP became consults to the company, and Fred became their research director.  They were able to demonstrate that the company’s problems were caused by contamination from lactic acid bacteria and by a phage infection.  Fred later organized a team that traveled to Puerto Rico to assist a manufacturing plant troubled by a similar phage infection.  These contacts with commercial solvents resulted in the establishment of one of the first industrial fellowships at the university.

00:13:18	WP served as chairman of the WARF fellowship committee.  His responsibility was to canvass the country for Dean Charles Slichter’s “young men of exceptional talent and originality.”  Fred referred to the WARF fellows as his “blue ribbon horses.”  Serving on the committee was one of WP’s most rewarding experiences at the university.

00:14:00	Funding for his work came from a variety of sources, including Dean Slichter, the Commercial Solvents Corporation, the College of Agriculture, the National Kraut Packers Association, Wisconsin Alumni Association, and the Herman Frasch Foundation.  He recalls packing as much as one hundred barrels of kraut in some years.

00:17:27	Another major source of funding was the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation.

00:18:30	WP comments on Fred’s personality.

00:19:35	End of interview
				
END

n.b.: This tape includes clips of interviews, not necessarily oral histories, with several other people from UW-Madison over a period of several decades. 

00:19:43	Harriet Bunn details her conversation with Dr. Noble Clark of the School of Agriculture. 

00:31:03	Bunn’s recording ends mid-sentence. End of tape.