UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON ARCHIVES
ORAL HISTORY PROJECT

Interview #319
TROST, BARRY M.

TROST, Barry M. (1941- )
Professor of Chemistry
At UW: 1965-1988

Interviewed: 1985, 1986 (4 sessions)	
Interviewer: Laura Smail
Length: 6 hours 4 minutes

In four sessions with Laura Smail, November 1985-February 1986, Barry Trost shares memories and thoughts of his career and time at UW-Madison. Background and early education; Experience in chemistry; Graduate school at MIT; Reasons for coming to UW; Techniques and instruments of synthetic chemistry; Chemistry Department; Project to produce organic metals; Other research projects; Issues in chemistry research; Patents and role of WARF; Importance of federal grants; Impact of Legislature and governors on decline of UW; Theoretical Chemistry Institute; Drawbacks of unionization in higher education. Interview conducted for inclusion in the UW-Madison Oral History Program.

Tape 1/Side 1
First session, November 26, 1985

00:00:08	Interviewer’s introduction.

00:01:02	Background.  Father's occupation, parents' education.  BT  assumed would go to college. 

00:05:48	Philadelphia school system. 

00:06:45	High school.  Interest in science, languages.

00:10:15	Beginnings of work habits; enjoying work. 

00:13:11	Idea of career in chemistry began high school.  Excitement generated by chemistry teacher. 

00:15:55	Ready enter Drexel Institute of Technology.  Last minute awarded scholarship at University of Pennsylvania.  High school accelerated program; family finances.  Not aware importance choice of college.  But knew what wanted to do. 

00:26:16	University of Pennsylvania.  Went through in three years. "Young man in hurry".  Discusses.  Reasons chose B.S. degree program.  Meant able study languages, French literature.

00:29:53	End of side.

Tape 1/Side 2

00:29:55	Regret at not reinforcing knowledge French, German.  Able take advanced history courses.  (Q. re own students' range; B.A. degree less flexible.)  BT likes immerse in subjects rather than sampling many.  Academic record. 

00:36:10	Organic chemistry teacher, Allan Day, outstanding.  Importance making student aware of things still unknown. 

00:39:10	Book in 1940s on mechanisms of reactions.  Ahead of times.  Organic chemists relied on memory; book exploring underlying principles.  Organized course that way; not done at major centers of chemistry until 1950s and '60s.  An inept textbook brought out in 1960s; contrast to Day's.  Has not been recognized; didn't have stature.

00:46:49	Not a research chemist.  Penn not prominent in science.  UW far, far better.  Undergraduate teaching adequate.

00:50:35	Summer job at drug company.  Working with academic chemist, Joseph Weinstock; introduced to synthetic chemistry related biologically active molecules.  Influenced later work.  Speed of change in what's of interest in a field.  Motivation is excitement discovery.

00:57:20	End of side.

Tape 2/Side 1

00:57:40	Glad when practical application, but not a goal.  Act of learning. 

01:00:28	Choices for graduate school.  Factor of distance from home.  Planned go Columbia.  New faculty member from M.I.T. advised apply Harvard, M.I.T.  Accepted both.  Reasons choice M.I.T.  Reaction to Harvard interview. 

01:10:13	Closeness of family; even M.I.T. seemed far to parents.  (BT's phobia, then, against flying; reasons.)  NSF pre-doctoral fellowship.

01:15:40	Aim to finish early--three years.  Robert Woodward.  Ability to use talents.  M.I.T. system allowed own pace.    Requirements.  Compares to UW system.  Question of minimum.  Even fewer now at M.I.T.; higher quality students.  Tradition self-learning.  Major exam.  Self-help groups; literature groups.  Importance of.  Critical activity--interactions among students, learning from fellow students.  Debating scientific points in lab, in hall.  An advantage of large lab.  Scientific interaction critical to discovery.  How BT fosters in own group now.  Importance of good students for interaction to work. 

01:27:38	End of side. 

Tape 2/Side 2

01:27:40	Choosing professor to work with.  Wanted interesting work, project could do quickly.  Importance of decision.  Laid foundation for major area synthetic chemistry.  Students in group not best, but able interact students in other groups.  Graduate House place where students got acquainted.  And literature group.  Intermixing important.  Happens at Columbia, UW also; not at Harvard.  Good for faculty, too; see each other.  Sets example for students. 

01:35:00	Man BT worked with good at explaining large bodies information, systematize; not personable. 

01:36:38	End of session.

Second session, December 5, 1985

Tape 2/Side 2 (continued)

00:00:20	His research at MIT.  The influence of experience at Smith, Kline, and French.  Work in synthesis.  BT felt was the major challenge in chemistry.  Making new materials.

00:02:10	Current major thrust was in area of mechanism.  BT wanted make major contribution, but do it in short period of time.  Not enough that it just be fun.  Must have impact.

00:06:00	His professor described work as "meat and potatoes" of science.  Now considered classical.  Important synthetic strategy.  The Columbia group got more credit.  Enolate chemistry.  Most important reaction in terms of number of teams used.  Effort was to understand and control.  Increased number of applications.

00:11:05	When BT came here, wanted start completely new program.  Not carry on House's work.

00:12:48	Talks about this with graduate students.  The tradition of name reactions in chemistry.  Recognition of a person's impact.

00:15:56	Synthetic chemistry very broad, e.g. electronics, natural products chemistry.  When BT a grad student little interest in natural products; now of high interest; methods-chemical reactions a third area of interest.  Graduate School work was in that area.

00:19:49	His major professor got his work published right away.  Important to BT's career.

00:20:20	End of side.

Tape 3/Side 1

00:20 30	Important to get published to get ahead of Columbia.  Competition in science is healthy.  Provides motivation.

00:23:27	When came to Madison, still immature.  Finished early.  No postdoc work.  Could have made mistake in choosing research program.  People often do.  Was lucky in coming to Madison.  Wouldn't have had the particular opportunity elsewhere.

00:29:10	Reasons for choice of academic career.  Wanted freedom to choose own program.  MIT faculty jointly concerned with right jobs for graduate students.  Harvard's failure to give tenure to assistant professors.  Example.  Yale not strong in sciences.  UW not attractive because so far away.  But came for interview, received offer.

00:36:48	Attraction of UW: reputation of program, including colleagues, good graduate students, resource base and facilities.

00:37:48	At that time, still hard get jobs.  BT didn't have office when first came.  Synthetic chemistry didn't use elaborate equipment then.  Only glassware and chemicals.  Infrared spectroscopy developed in 1940s, but while available to new people, not in own lab.  NMR spectroscopy started to be used in chemistry in 1950s, but department resisted (check).  You used the NMR spectroscope only after had done the reaction, isolated the substance.  Now you get the NMR spectrum while you're doing the reaction.  Means can make materials couldn't make before.

00:43:50	Not used that way then because thought too expensive.  A few were using NMR that way then.  Jack Roberts at Cal Tech.  Changes in equipment.  Resulting changes in size of sample.  Other equipment have to have now.  None of it thought necessary in 1965.

00:49:50	UW had first rate resources.  Paul Bender responsible for foresight in re new equipment.

00:50:54	End of side.

Tape 3/Side 2

00:51:01	Created prototype for chemistry departments in many places.  Department-wide acquisition.  Had technicians who could operate equipment.  Acquainted faculty with what new equipment could do.  Bender chauvinistic.  Not cooperative with people outside department.

00:56:14	Importance of WARF.  BT able come in June due WARF.

00:56:45	Started research in summer.  Got three graduate students.  BT combined own interest in synthetic chemistry with vague interest in the theoretical and mechanistic chemistry.  Developing organic materials for electric conduction.  The practice here of having graduate students propose an area of research and defend to faculty committee.  BT proposal.  Goal to produce organic metals.  Had proposed at MIT, and one of first students worked on.  (2) developing new reactions, (3) check.  Two in synthesis, one in methodology.

01:02:29	Herbert Roeller's work in zoology.  Trying isolate juvenile hormone.  Talked to Paul Bender.  Bender sent to BT.  BT one of few faculty who could personally operate NMR spectrometer.  Had most sophisticated available.  Using HA100.  Describes the problem.

01:06:30	Herbert Roeller, Carl Dahm.  Their talents.  How the three worked together.  The pioneer work was in getting spectrum of so small a sample.  And NMR spectrum so finely tuned.  Took a month to do the first synthesis.  Carl Dahm and BT both worked on synthesizing, trying different routes.  Important goal to define some unknown points of structure.  Describes the procedure.  The excitement.  Worked at it almost 24 hours a day.

01:18:40	The impact of the work in chemistry and in industry.

01:20:01	Roeller to Texas A&M.

01:20:25		End of side.

Tape 4/Side 1

01:20:28	A team effort.  Roeller initiated it.  His contribution was the conceptual one.  Science is not separate empires.

01:24:16	Juvenile hormone lead to question how insect synthesized juvenile hormone.  Where did extra carbon atoms come from?  Could it be done in the lab?  Esoteric.  Chemistry of transition metals.  Got a postdoc to work on it.  What the work led to.  The importance of keeping up with the literature, especially in inorganic chemistry, relative to organo-metallic chemistry that led him to suggest the approach to take.  His work and work of E. J. Correy at Harvard were most significant in terms of setting stage for organic chemistry that this is a practical way of designing reactions for organic synthesis.

01:37:58	Current state of use of transition metals for catalysis, and designing transition metals for carrying out selective organic reactions. 

01:41:12	End of session.

Third session, December 13, 1985

	Question re approach to research and research problems.  How new problems arise.  The example of the work on transition chemistry.

	Discusses sulphur ylids research.  A crucial experiment leading to discovery of cyclobutenones.  How it happened. 

	End of side.

Tape 4/Side 2

00:00:01	Continuing account. 

00:02:01	How BT works with students.

00:09:34	Another example of the discovery of a new direction.

00:14:30	A technical description of work in last couple of years on TMM palladium chemistry.  Cycloadditions.  The Diasalter reaction.  Designing a new reaction.  TMM chemistry trimethalline methane.  Fleeting existence.

00:25:50	Other work being done in this area.  What the competition consists in.

00:28:25	End of side.

Tape 5/Side 1

00:28:28	More on the work being done at the Max Planck Institute. Constructive type of competition. The interchange.

00:29:50	The momentum in his lab's program.  Postdocs work on more speculative projects.  Still in general areas of transition metals, of sulphur chemistry, of silicon chemistry. 

00:31:21	Keeps in mind kinds of problems that are of contemporary importance.  Examples. 

00:32:36	The factor of uncertain outcome, people getting different results from apparently same experiment.  Effort to find reason.  Can't know purity of ingredients.  Even minute impurities can alter chemistry.  Common practice another variable.  No one a robot.  So irreproducibility not uncommon.  An example of a student whose personality affected how she did experiments.   Adding a to b and b to a can have different results.  

00:41:46	Question re moving into new areas.  Comments.  An example of a failed effort.

00:42:30	Uneasiness in current chemistry re need to be involved in research involving molecular biology.  BT's reference to catalysts as "the chemists' enzyme".  Criticisms of this analogy. Defense of it.  BT's interest in field of chemistry, challenges in the field.  Role of language in science.  BT takes leeway with language.  Accused of inventing words.  Doesn't invent; does use existing words in the language.  Reasons.  Need to avoid jargon.

00:57:36	End of side.

Tape 5/Side 2

00:57:40	Continuing discussion of introduction of new words.  Nobel Prize winner who developed language for stereochemistry.  Has to be done while science is progressing.  Some of BT's terms have been widely adopted. 

01:00:30	Selectivity and synthesis the common thread in BT's work.

01:01:20	Q. re loss of students to more glamorous fields.  Yes, is happening.  Had been growing for a long time.  Link to low funding for chemistry.  Discusses changes in funding of sciences. The effect of building large centers.  Chemistry hasn't had adequate base of funding given economic importance to country.  In late 1950s, 1960s funding was plentiful.  In 1970s funding declined.  Chemistry relatively underfunded in 1950s; still is, but now hurts more.  Retards progress.  Funding based to an extent on where students go, and in turn affects where students go.  Now computer science, molecular biology, biotechnology the publicized fields.  LS quotes from article re chemistry's reputation for being commercialized.  BT: society has a right to benefit from sciences.  The cost of producing a usable end product, tested for safety.  BT not on this end of things, but does talk to chemical companies, knows their concerns.

01:15:52	Chemical companies have taken over most of the research leading to specific products.  In biotechnology, few commercial companies as yet, so more of that is done in universities.

01:17:45	End of session.

Tape 6/Side 1

Fourth session, February 6, 1986

00:00:30	Question re patents.  Research not directly motivated by commercial prospects, but university should benefit from patents.  WARF role as official patenting agency of the University.  Patents for chemical processes (BT's field) are very difficult to write, WARF cautious about process patents, and patents in general.  Faculty role.

00:13:05	Importance of federal grants.  Federal agencies support general programs rather than specific contract research.  

00:17:30	Resources of department for research: instrumentation, training of students.  Mainly funded by federal agencies rather than department.  UW has been very successful in getting federal grants for instrumentation.  

00:20:02	Instrumentation centralized in the department.  Departmental instrumentation center originated by Paul Bender, present director is Tom Fehrar [sp].  

00:23:52	Off campus major facilities not as common as in physics because requirements not that expensive.  Physics demands large facilities.

00:24:48	Question re changing directions of his career.  Question of whether to leave Madison.  Approached by many other Universities.  Offer from Berkeley in 1980 was tempting, declined reluctantly because of personal costs of moving to San Francisco.  Comments on declining excellence of UW.  State legislature governance over University has been increasing.

00:30:15	End of side.

Tape 6/Side 2

00:30:24	This behavior by the state detrimental to University, undermines role of board of regents.  BT would not be reluctant to leave today.  

00:32:50	Question: role of family in decision to move.  Wife raised in Madison.

00:35:21	Bitterness toward state legislature's attitude toward the University: lack of trust in the faculty and no appreciation of their value. Lack of openness to learn. Governors and administration since Lucey have been just as bad.  

00:39:55	Role of president of system in separating Madison from the rest of the system. 

00:41:35	BT will accept an offer elsewhere within the next two years.  Ambitions of faculty curbed by these trends, less qualified individuals promoted.  Can't recruit good people.  

00:50:02	Question re getting involved in University Committee to combat some of these problems.  His abilities as an administrator.  Example of combatting new regulations under Edwin Young and Cyrena Pondrom re appointment of postdocs.  Postdocs treated as regular employees when they are really just students.  BT formed "principle investigator committee" to discuss the problem with Young and Pondrom, who were very stubborn on the issue.  Pondrom very power hungry.

01:00:29	End of side.

Tape 7/Side 1

01:00:45	Greatest asset of UW is atmosphere of high quality faculty in many related fields: pharmacy, zoology, microbiology.  Other strengths of the Madison campus.  

01:06:35	BT interacts with Pharmacy faculty more so than theoretical chemists.  Split of theoretical chemistry from the rest of department, academically and organizationally.  More physically oriented.  Hirschfelder ran theoretical chemistry institute as his child, thwarted its growth and removed it from the department.  Hirschfelder very callous to organic chemists.  BT attempted to integrate the institute into the department.  

01:19:56	TAA and question of University labor unions.  To characterize TAs as employees is insufficient.  Their professional capacity is only a small aspect.  They are above all students, cannot be student and adversary at the same time.  Unionization not compatible with university: unions protect the average, in contradiction with pursuit of excellence.  

01:27:15	Operation of faculty unions in Scandinavia.  Students unionized, negotiate over syllabi.  

01:30:56	End of interview.

END