UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON ARCHIVES
ORAL HISTORY PROJECT

Interview #269
BURRIS, ROBERT H.

BURRIS, Robert H. (1914- )
Graduate Student, Bacteriology; Professor of Biochemistry
At UW: 1936-1984

Interviewed: 1983		
Series: Life Sciences
Interviewer: Laura Smail
Length: 3.5 hours
Transcript: 96 pages

Background; Work under Perry Wilson; Research funding during Depression; Faculty in departments of Bacteriology and Biochemistry as teachers and researchers; Fellow graduate students; Discovery of niacin; Research on penicillin; Appointment to Biochemistry Department; Year at Columbia; Medical School issues; Introduction of radioactive isotopes at UW; Acquisition of mass spectrometer; Research funding; Research on potato chips; NAS Board; Enzyme Institute; Har Gobind Khorana; Chairmen of Biochemistry Department; Origins of Nutritional Sciences Department; Molecular Biology Laboratory.

Tape 1/Side 1

00:00:07	RB discusses Harry Steenbock's generosity, which benefitted University and city.

00:01:31	RB's background.  Father a printer in Brookings, RB worked for him.  Took all available science courses at high school.  Read books on science.  Wanted to go into chemistry.  Comments on his teachers.  His parents both from pioneer families.  Brother is in radio work. 

00:05:20	Courses in college.  Little research done at South Dakota State.  Friendship with Van Potter; VP's disappointment with Mathews' physical chemistry course at UW.

00:07:26	Experiment Station's lab did do research.

00:11:45	Potter at UW suggested bringing RB here for summer to help Wayne Umbreit, summer 1935.  Perry Wilson's lab.  Wilson invited him to come to UW after getting his degree.  Came to UW in 1936 to begin graduate work.  Majored in bacteriology, minored in biochemistry.

00:14:57	Shortage of jobs during Depression.  RB lived on $660 his first year.

00:16:07	Three WPA men in Wilson's lab and others on campus grounds.

00:16:29	Wilson had Frasch grant for $10,000 a year, others envied him.  Difficulty of 	getting research funds then.

00:18:03	Wilson an active person, nice to work with, excellent scientist.  His lab most productive in department.  Good students attracted to lab.

00:19:04	Lab was in King Hall.  Greenhouses nearby.  Better equipped than other labs.

00:20:54	E.B. Fred wasn't very active person by then in research.  Ira Baldwin also moving into administration.  Peterson's lab split.  Johnson worked in bacteriology.  Biochemistry very crowded.

00:22:16	Fred as a teacher rambled, but an interesting person so it was an interesting course.  RB thinks he might have taken final year Fred offered it.  He had been an innovative scientist.  Highly respected.

00:24:41	Ira Baldwin's bacterial physiology was outstanding course in department. Baldwin was well organized, excellent lecturer, well-run lab.  Elizabeth McCoy--RB's praise of her--a fabulous bacteriologist.  But wasn't prominent.  No one surpassed her knowledge of bacteriology.  Modest person.  Had a lot of students.  Active in department and on campus and in community.  Her fields--industrial, food, lakes, bacteriology.  Not a member of prestigious societies.

00:28:53	Marvin Johnson in same position.  Greatest man biochemistry department ever had.  No exceptions.  Steenbock and Johnson not very friendly.

00:30:45	End of side.

Tape 1/Side 2

00:30:48	Johnson knew fundamentals.  Good in electronics, could make devices.

00:31:47	His teaching approach--to devise ingenious experiments to illustrate a simple point.  Modern lab has students pushing buttons, they don't learn process.

00:33:54	RB took over Tottingham's courses when he died suddenly in 1944.  Burris's course in isotopes.  Only such course on campus so it had more students than he could handle.

00:36:42	Biochemistry 510 course.  Link was best, took it seriously.  Worked hard on his lectures.  Elvehjem good, no flair.  Steenbock uninspired and uninspiring; Tottingham next worst.  Not a good lecturer.  Peterson more dynamic than Tottingham and Steenbock; bumbling but enthusiastic.  Link never got back into swing after bouts with TB, was defensive.   Later, E. Snell gave all lectures.  Now again, course is given by four to six staff members.

00:43:27	People forget how little was known then about photosynthesis, etc.

00:45:44	Marvin Johnson and Ragnar Rollefson grew up together.  Kept in touch with physics.  Up on bacteriology and biochemistry.  Threw his ideas out freely.  Didn't want credit.  Could be brusque, so some people didn't like him.  Was very much junior member of Fred-Peterson team.  Liked to be at bench.  People went to talk to him because he always had ideas.

00:49:39	Link was not an idea man.  Well organized lab, students well-disciplined, but not an idea man like Johnson.

00:50:39	David Perlman a student of his.  His students in every pharmaceutical industry working on penicillin at a time when companies talking to each other.  American Chemical Society, Fermentation Division has a Marvin Johnson award.

00:54:46	Discusses fellow graduate students.  Howard Schneider, Wayne Wooley.  Work on niacin--Wooley, Elvehjem, Madden, Strong.  Wooley's knowledge of literature in field.

01:01:22	End of tape. 

Tape 2/Side 1

00:00:07	E. Snell.

00:01:18	Discusses discovery of niacin.  Campbell's role.

00:06:37	History of work on penicillin and UW's role in it.  Ken Raper knows most about it.

00:18:41	Henry Kiffler, now president of Arizona University was a graduate student.  RB supervised him during war.  A refugee.

00:21:33	RB at Columbia in 1940-41.  Then taught here.  Had a teaching exemption.  Worked with Wayne Umbreit.

00:25:42	How RB got hired in biochemistry.  Influence of Van Potter who spoke to Elvehjem.  RB didn't want always to be in Perry Wilson's shadow, so he was glad to move over to biochemistry.  July 1, 1944.

00:29:16	Both departments distinguished then.  Now biochemistry has moved ahead.

00:31:23	End of side. 

Tape 2/Side 2

00:31:28	His year at Columbia.  NRC fellowship.  His project.  Harold Urey and others.  Use of spectrometer here.  Wahlin in physics made one.  Use of N15 as tracer.

00:44:35	Talking about background of biochemistry and bacteriology.  Link brought back from Europe microbalances, combustion chains, special glassware.  

00:48:46	His lab became a model--beautifully maintained.  More on Link's personality.

00:52:41	Dicumarol story.

01:00:48	Elvehjem well organized and continued to turn out good work.  Didn't always have good students.  As chairman had to take leftovers.

01:02:35	End of tape. 

Tape 3/Side 1

00:00:07	More on Elvehjem.  Medical School issue destroyed him.  Anthony Curreri.  Well-known on campus and in legislature.  Medical School was never great.

00:06:02	System for assigning graduate students to lab in biochemistry--then and now.

00:08:36	Question about Elvehjem and Nobel Prize. David Keilin, at Cambridge.  His work.  Should have gotten Nobel Prize.  Warburg's opposition to him.

00:10:23	Main development in 1940's was introduction of radioactive isotopes and stable isotopes.  RB worked with them in summer, 1946 at Argonne Lab.  Introduced them here.  Atomic energy Commission released them in August of 1946 for sale.  Carbon 14 most popular.  Steenbock and Lardy both used them.  Mass spectrometers.  First one here in 1949.  Brittingham interested in a company that produced them.  Cost was $14,000, now $16,000.  In 1949, one still operates.  Spectrophotometric methods very primitive then.  Spectrophotometry--other major development.  Question re funding.  In 1944, RB was given $200 to run his lab for a year.  When he started working with nitrogen 15 he got it from Harold Urey.  C14 was costly $360 for a millicurie.  Office of Naval Research an early source of grants.  Also had surplus equipment.

00:21:42	Story of Red Dot Potato Chips.  WARF not interested in patenting RB's solution for preventing too much oil absorption.  Now a $100,000,000 a year market.

00:25:52	RB was on first National Science Foundation Board.  People on panel.  An example of difference in level of funding.

00:29:20	End of side. 

Tape 3/Side 2

00:29:21	On Enzyme Institute.  Van Potter and Conrad Elvehjem made it go.  Things on campus that Potter started.  His reasons for bringing Green here.  Green very innovative.  Things he's worked on.  Lardy has made fewer mistakes.  Has trained many graduate students.  Other directors.

00:40:43	Green never recovered from George Webster's faking data.  Webster's wife 	worked in RB's lab.  Tried to repeat some of Webster's work, but couldn't.

00:42:50	Over years, Green has contributed a lot of ideas.

00:43:05	Enzyme Institute is prestigious.  RB worked with Lardy and Beinert, not with 	Green.  But they used to talk about issues.  An example.

00:49:36	Gobind Khorana.  Solid scientist, great person, modest.

00:52:46	RB's women graduate students all got married before they got to Ph.D.

00:53:35	RB's chairmanship.  Job's perks (1958-70).  Not an era of great expansion.  Link and Steenbock always considered RB their junior.  An example.

00:58:48	End of tape. 

Tape 4/Side 1

00:00:01	How nutritional sciences department got going.  Digression re home economics.  Its strength was in its link to agriculture.  Lost that when they separated.

00:02:47	Molecular Biology.  1961.  RB chaired committee.  Discussion centered around an institute that would help to keep Halvorson and Ernst Freese here.  Both had offers.  Departments objected.  RB supported it.  Had to find site.  Zoology had rejected site in Ag school.  But people realized Ag school was logical place.  RB persuaded people to give up their parking lot.  Describes set up.

00:12:11	Halvorson very popular.  Freese less prominent--trained as physicist.  Halvorson stayed during formation.

00:13:21	Question re Lardy's comment about Alberty.  Has been shift and tugging over years towards molecular biology.  Alberty was well-informed about what was going on on campus.  Willing to admit that he doesn't know everything.  An example involving art department.  Bock an excellent dean also.

00:17:54	Question regarding important discoveries.  Elvehjem's.  Discusses applied vs. pure science.  Disinterest of pure science in plants.  Biochemistry reputation built on nutrition, fat, and water soluble vitamins.  Khorana's synthesizing a gene outstanding contribution.  Skoog's cytokinins.  Temin's work, Lederberg.  RB one who suggested he use velvet for replica plating.  Dicumarol and Warfarin.  Jim Crow, Sewell Wright, Helmut Beinert.

00:26:23	Some personal questions to RB.  Doesn't go to University Club or belong to dining club.  Canoes, gardens, does photography.  University Club too far away. Eats lunch in office.  His journal club with Winston Bull, bacteriology and biochemistry.  Friday a.m. research conference with students.  Goes to department meetings which have outside speakers.  In fall, a series called contemporary biochemistry.  Philip Cohen and RB originated idea.  Speakers talk on a central theme for entire semester--subjects from genetics, bacteriology, physical chemistry.  Has been going on for sixteen years.  Committee would change each year, one hundred to one hundred and fifty people would come.

00:31:33	End of interview.

END