UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON ARCHIVES
ORAL HISTORY PROJECT

Interview #253
BAUMANN, CARL A.

BAUMANN, Carl A. (1906- )
Undergraduate and Graduate Student; Professor of Biochemistry
At UW: 1925-1974

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

[See Index for Key Words]

First Interview Session (February 10, 1982)

Tape 1/Side 1
00:00:01
LS:   	February 10, 1983.  We are interviewing in the Red Gym.  I'm Laura Smail.  I just would like to say to begin with that I asked you for this interview because it seemed to me that it would be a good idea to have a series of interviews on the biochemistry department and related departments and institutes because of its stature in the University.  Also, as you know, the University history is being brought up to date so all of these interviews have a more immediate prospect of being used than they might otherwise have, which is nice.  I'd like you to begin with to talk about--say just where you came from.  When you were born, to begin with, and something about your parents and why you went into science.
CB:  	I was born in Milwaukee and went to the public high schools.  My father was an engineer.  My mother was a language teacher.  Before she was married and after she was widowed she taught English to foreigners.  This was immediately after World War I.  My contact with the University began in 1925 when I enrolled as a freshman in the chemistry course at the Extension Division of the University in Milwaukee.
LS:    	Could you tell me why you enrolled in chemistry--why you got interested in science?
CB:  	It would make it--some people know exactly what they want to do and others do not.  And I was one of those who did not know exactly what I wanted but it seemed to me that chemistry had a great many possibilities.  My contact with it in high school was pleasant and reasonably successful and it seemed that chemistry offered the possibility of branching out, possibly into medicine, possibly into industrial work.  So there was no firm commitment but the doors were left open for future development.  The Extension Division at that time was a very small operation.  Milwaukee, at that time, had two larger institutions.  One was Marquette University and the other was the State Teachers College, which through evolution has become the major part of UW-M.  I wasn't interested then in becoming a grade school teacher and it seemed that Madison was the appropriate place to take chemistry so the Extension in Milwaukee offered the possibility to stay at home.  I worked the whole time I was a student so that--
LS:    	So you say you enrolled in chemistry.  Did you take other courses in Extension?
CB:  	Yes.  The courses were--well, let me describe the place first.  It was organized after World War I mainly as a night school.  There wasn't anything like the GI bill after World War II, but there was some effort to encourage veterans to--for more training.  And while in 1925 there were maybe 100 freshmen enrolled in the day school and maybe 25 sophomores.  
LS:    	I see.  It was really very small then.
CB:  	It was very small.  And one of the students there, Jake Baucher, ended up on the law faculty and he and I had identical courses of study.  So people whose interests--that diverse, were forced to take pretty much the same course of study.
LS:    	Were you friends?
CB:  	Oh yes.  What we took was English, French, math, and chemistry.  So it was pretty much like it would be here and the teachers were somewhat older.  They were not of the stature of the top professors here but on the whole the course of study was pretty good.
LS:    	You thought it was.  You felt you were getting--
CB:  	Oh yes.  When I came to Madison I didn't feel deprived.  There was some inconvenience because some of the sophomore courses in chemistry were not available down there and so I arrived in Madison with more electives and not so many credits in required courses.  But that worked out all right.  
00:05:45
LS:    	You know, I've been reading the Cardinals in the 1930s and I come across articles about Extension.  So presumably the Cardinal was read in Milwaukee by students.
CB:  	Oh yes.  Extension Division developed--when I was there all they had was two floors in an office building.  And the labs were anything but well equipped to the point that one time when we were making chlorine the ventilation system couldn't handle it and people had to--they complained in the rest of the building.  One wasn't so touchy about contamination in those days as one is now.  
LS:    	They were still alive that was about it.
CB:  	Yes.
00:06:40
LS:    	Did you have an esprit de corps among the students at all?
CB:  	Yes and no.  There was almost no social activity.  The people who went there were people who were interested in their education because there was no glamour about the place at all.  And students lived at home.  But, of course, because the group was small why everybody knew everybody else.  The--oh for instance, the teacher in economics apparently did very well in the stock market.  This was before 1929.
LS:    	I see.  Yes.
00:07:33
CB:  	I came to Madison in '27 as a junior and took--
LS:    	You had expected to all along?
CB:  	I had expected to all along.  And took the required courses.  I lived in the dormitories at that time which were a much smaller operation than they are now.
LS:    	Where did you live in the dorm?  What dorm?
CB:  	Adams Hall one year and Tripp Hall the other.  Those were brand new dorms at that time.  Along the lake shore.
LS:    	The Experimental College was going on.
CB:  	The Experimental College was going on and the--we were in the other half of Adams Hall.  The first ??? of the Experimental College was half of Adams Hall.
LS:    	I'd love to hear what you have to say about that.
CB:  	Well there was considerable friction between the two groups.  I think in retrospect the strangest thing about the Experimental College was that it wasn't an experiment.  It was intended to bring a group of typical students together and have them live with tutors and focus on what was it--I guess Greek civilization the first year?  And--
LS:    	Yes that's right.  And American the second.
CB:  	Yes or industrial revolution.  I don't really remember.  But they didn't have to go to classes.  And the group was anything but typical.  The sort of students that would be attracted to that kind of a program would be, well, oddballs I suppose.  Some of them were extremely talented, but well they got into trouble.
LS:    	Did you get--I mean you say there was friction.  How did it manifest itself?
CB:  	Well I suppose part of it was prejudice.  Some of them had long hair and they were accused of not bathing.
LS:    	Even then.
CB:  	And some of the others sort of, well they almost got into fights and there were--
LS:    	You mean with you?  With you people?
CB:  	There were some of the regular students, I think, that objected to the experimental ones.
LS:    	Where would you encounter each other?
CB:  	Well the dormitory is a quadrangle and the dining rooms were--
LS:    	So you were all in the same dining rooms?
CB:  	We were all in the same, oh yes.  
LS:    	But they at different tables?
CB: 	Yes.  
LS:	Were you--each dormitory had its own table or?
CB:	Each dormitory had its own table.  Each unit in--there must have been something like eight units in a quadrangle.  What do they call them?  They called them houses.  Yes.  We were—
00:11:00
LS:    So you'd overhead their talk and laugher at the table.
CB:	Oh yes.  Not that there was anything particularly formal.  Well the present generation of students would certainly think that this was outrageously formal because we had to wear jackets at meal time.
LS: 	Oh did you?  It's hard to imagine.
CB:	And the experimental students didn't, weren't held to this.
LS:   	Oh I see.  So that made a big difference.
CB:  	Yes.
LS:    	And they wore, what, just shirts and sweaters?
CB:  	Almost anything.  And generally sloppy.  No, some of them have done very well and the head of the Experimental College, Dr. Mickelson, had two sons and one of them became quite well known as a scientist.  So it wasn't all just literature or history.
00:12:15
LS:    	So you felt that they were keeping themselves separate and did they seem snobbish?
CB:  	No.  If there were snobbishness I'd almost say it was on the part of the group that sort of resented having somebody around that was too different.
LS:    	Oh I see.  So you looked down on them a bit?
CB:  	There was a little bit of that.  Oh yes.  I think that was part of it.
LS:    	So you didn't think of them as privileged and getting this special treatment and education.
CB:  	Not that they were getting a better education but, again, this is the undergraduates reaction that they didn't have to go to classes, didn't have to go to laboratories.  They had an easy life.
LS:   	But that would--that's the sort of thing that one might tend to envy I should think.  Not envy maybe, but--
CB:  	As far as--By the way, if you get Harry Shuck here ask him about the Experimental College.  He was one of the house fellows not involved in the Experimental College.  He was part of the background or the--he was one of those that was trying to uphold standards.
LS:    	Oh that would be interesting.  Thank you.  I'll do that.  Well that's pretty much aside from your own career so go on with your—
00:13:57
You came here in 1927.  How did you finance yourself?
CB:	I had saved--I had worked for a year after high school.
LS:	Doing what?
CB: 	I worked in a newspaper office as a--in the advertising department.  Glorified office boy.  And I held that same job while I went to the Extension.  I believe I was at the desk.  The desk that was open for people to leave advertising.  That was open until 9:00 at night and I was there from 5:00-9:00.  So that was not a very glamorous or demanding job.  And I worked during the summer time and well that carried me through three semesters.  Now in the fall of '28, when I was a first semester senior, recruiters were coming around looking for chemists and I was actually offered a job at DuPont.
LS:    	Really.  So you must have done well.
CB:  	Which I accepted.  But, of course, it was contingent on after my graduation.  And then at the end of the second semester I was looking for the possibility of some work around here and the--Dr. Malloch, who was in charge of placing students in jobs in chemistry, said there was an opening in agricultural chemistry.  It was actually Peterson who was looking for somebody and when I got to him his job was taken but he said, "Oh there's a better one with Professor Steenbock."  And he took me to Steenbock and what Steenbock had was the equivalent of a full-time assistantship under which I was able to take six credits of coursework during the final semester and I had to postpone my graduation until the end of summer school.  And so I worked for Steenbock as a senior determining calcium on a project on the toxicity of vitamin D.  One of his graduate students was getting ready for his thesis on the toxicity of vitamin D and one of the evidences of toxicity is that calcium settles in the soft tissues.  So I had a tremendous number of kidneys and livers and blood vessels of rats that had received too much vitamin D.  My job was strictly routine.  A chemical determination.  But I was part of a research project at that time.  And then about the middle of the semester Professor Hart, the chairman of the department, offered me an assistantship to continue as a graduate student.  So I resigned my job at DuPont which I had never begun and continued graduate work with Professor Steenbock.
00:18:06
LS:	Now how did your pay compare at DuPont and--
CB:	Oh, you see this was--I think my memory is correct on this.  I think I was offered $l50 a month.
LS:    	At DuPont?
CB:  	At DuPont.  And a full time job in the Ag School, this was a very choice job, paid $120.  And it was supposed to be increased by $10 each month each year.  By the middle of 1930 the Depression was here so there was no raise.  By '31 there was a 5% decrease.  And decreases subsequently.  So when I finished my Ph.D. I was getting less than what I was getting when I first arrived.  But that wasn't really as bad as it sounded because prices had come down, unlike the present situation.  And most of my associates were on half time appointments so mine was actually better than the general.  I really felt no pain.
LS:    	Goodness I have a great many directions to go in now. 
00:19:45
 I guess to begin with, when you--when did you start thinking about doing graduate work in chemistry.  You clearly hadn't intended to--
CB:  	I clearly hadn't intended to when I--that's right.  But being part of a research program, I knew that I liked what was going on.  And my personal contact with Professor Steenbock was very favorable and I might confess that I didn't appreciate who he was when I interviewed him for the job.  I was not awed and when I heard later who and what he was, why I was almost panic stricken and when he--when I once, just in the course of a conversation said I would like to know a little more about what this is all about, he gave me some reprints.  And they were full of works which I had never, which meant nothing to me.  Antirichitic principle, for example.  A chemist doesn't know anything about that sort of thing.
LS:    	Yes it hadn't been your field at all.
CB:  	It hadn't been at all, no.  So as a graduate student I actually had to go back and take biology.  Nowadays we insist that biochem majors have biology before they graduate.  They have to have biology and chemistry.  And not very much biochemistry.  We emphasize the background courses and still consider biochemistry as essentially a graduate discipline.
LS:    	I see.
CB:  	So the requirements for a degree in biochemistry, when I retired a few years ago, were something like 30 credits of chemistry and I don't know how many of biology and only 8 credits of biochemistry.  But this was one very major course and then the other--and a seminar and one other course.  But these people were really well prepared for it.  And when I took biochemistry the bio part of the biochemistry wasn't nearly as complicated as it is today and a background in chemistry was adequate.  
00:22:30
The only point was that Steenbock's program and Hart's program all involved animals and much of the work was compiling diets and feeding the animals and then determining how well the animals grew or failed to grow, depending on the--
LS:  	You were working as a research assistant?
CB:  	Yes.
00:22:55
LS:    	Could you describe your interview with Steenbock?  Do you remember it?
CB:  	Oh yes, very well.
LS:    	It would be nice to know how a young man--you were a senior.  You were just an undergraduate--
CB:  	I was a senior.  And I was taken down into the animal room and Professor Peterson introduced me and Peterson said that Milosch (sp?) had recommended me.  Steenbock sometimes had a rather strange way of approaching people.  And he said, "Are you any good?"  What does a kid say to that?
LS:    	Good.
CB:	And I said something to the effect, "Well my grades are all right but I don't know how much that amounts to here."  And he said a few other things and that was it.  But perhaps a more critical interview was sometime later after he had given me reprints which I couldn't understand.  I told him I was afraid he was assuming more than--because I really didn't understand this.  And he sort of said, "Oh don't worry about it."  And the following fall when he started me out on vitamin A, which was one of his two major lines of work, he was--his first important single piece of work was on vitamin A.  The relation between yellow pigments and vitamin A activity.  That was his--was a very important discovery at the time.  And he was still--that had been made in 1919 and he was still continuing on that problem.  And then in the meantime he had been working with Professor Hart on calcium and phosphorus that ultimately led to vitamin D and the irradiation work.  And the key finding there was made in 1924 and the patent on that is the basis of the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation.  So I arrived in his lab five years after the key finding of vitamin D and most of his research was on vitamin D and there wasn't anybody else on vitamin A.  I was pretty much on my own on vitamin A.  
LS:    	Now this is when you started after you were graduated.
CB:	Yes.  
LS:	Had you--at what point did you decide to take graduate work?
CB:	Pretty much when Professor Hart offered me the job.  When he offered me the assistantship.
LS:	It isn't that either of them said to you you ought to go to graduate school?
CB:	I think it was almost implied.  I don't remember anybody ever saying this.  
00:26:31
I must say that as an undergraduate I was not as well aware of graduate work as many other people were.  And at the chemistry fraternity I became much more aware of what was going on.  Where there were people who were--there were in this fraternity about a third of the members were graduate students.
LS:    	Goodness.  Tell me about that.  I don't know anything about it.
CB:  	Oh.  Well there is a fraternity still in existence, it was on Lake Street at that time, which had dormitories and dining facilities and this was for chemists.  And unlike most of the fraternities on the campus, this one had a strong element of graduate students in it.  And these were people not in agricultural chemistry but in chemistry itself.  Teaching assistants mainly majoring in organic chemistry or in physical chemistry.  And, of course, the chemistry department had a great need for laboratory teaching assistants because of large freshmen classes and many laboratories and so graduate students were paid to help teach these laboratories and they themselves then were working on a research problem, usually in some other department in the chemistry building.  And organic chemistry was the largest unit and physical chemistry was very popular.  Analytical was another one.  And so this example of what could be done made me realize that that was a good thing to do.  
LS:    	How did you--did everybody automatically get into this fraternity?
CB:  	No, one was asked.  But you had to be enrolled in the chemistry department.
LS:   	 And did you get asked as a, what as an undergraduate?
CB:  	As an undergraduate, yes.  You see, I arrived as a junior so I was only there for one year.  You see most people who are members of fraternities join them in their freshman year and then they spend several years there.  I came relatively late because I was not part of the Madison scene.
LS:    	And did you--you lived there in this—your---
CB:  	I didn't live there until I was a graduate student.
LS:    	And you were allowed there as a graduate student even though you were in biochemistry?
CB: 	 Oh yes.  That was--
LS:   	 It was for both, all chemists.
CB:  	Yes.
LS:    	It must have been rather--
CB:  	There was also a department of chemical engineering in those days.  They were part of the chemistry, I don't know what you'd call it.
LS:    	Brotherhood or--
CB:  	Something like that.
LS:    	Not a sisterhood.  I don't suppose there were any girls--
CB:  	No, not in those days.  Although there were in my graduating class, undergraduate--there was one girl who was a chemist.  But it was pretty much a male operation. 
LS:	So this was an honor to be invited into this, you called it a fraternity.  Is that right?
CB:  	Yes.
LS:    	And you ate there and talked together a lot.  Were there other, do you know--did the other disciplines have these—
CB:  	These were professional, so-called professional fraternities.  In contrast to the social fraternities.
LS:    	Were there many of them?
CB:  	Not very many.  There were others.  The premedicine, for example, had one and—
00:31:12
Tape 1, Side 2
00:31:13
LS:	You were saying that it was a national--
CB:  	It is now a national fraternity with chapters in just about every state.  It was founded here at Wisconsin; Wisconsin is the so-called alpha chapter and it was Professor Matthews, the head of the department, that was instrumental in getting it started.  I suspect it was done very shortly after World War I but it may be a little older than that.
LS:    	It's recording all right, it’s just that—
00:32:03
Well I can see that you would--the Association of Graduate Students would make you think of it.  You know I would like to ask you a bit about the chemistry department in that period.  Who your best professors were, who you admired and--
CB:  	I think the ones that really rated were the people in organic chemistry.  Professor Atkins was very excellent and very imaginative and had a big research program.  Macklevain also was one of the lights.  In physical chemistry Matthews was the chairman but was not so highly regarded.  He was terrific as a chairman and in getting funds for a wing for the building, that sort of thing.  But he was more interested in, oh, photography and scientific crime detection than the latest wrinkles in physical chemistry.  And Daniels was, Harrington Daniels, was the second man there and he was the physical chemist.  And Williams was the third one.  So we had--we were exposed to over--
LS:    	Did you study with Williams?
CB:  	Williams gave some of the lectures and I took, later on, took one advanced course given by Daniels and Williams.  
LS:    	You know that I've interviewed Williams.  How was he as a teacher?
CB:  	He was very good.  At least we thought so.  Because Matthews was not so good.  He actually read out of the textbook and that was something of a scandal.  And Williams, speaking on his own subject, was very effective.
LS:    	And Daniels?
CB:  	Daniels was not a brilliant lecturer but very clear and worth listening to.  The real star personality was Louis Kalenberg.  He was still teaching the history of chemistry when I was an undergraduate.  And he was teaching chemistry to engineers and he had very original ideas and objected to some of the newer theories which the others--
LS:    	I guess that's what I've heard about.
CB:  	Yes.  And in a way it was sort of a tragedy because as a young man Kalenberg was very well regarded as a scientist.  And the theory of what was it, electrolytic dissociation was really propounded on very flimsy evidence and Kalenberg opposed it and he was correct in pointing out the deficiencies at the time but subsequent evidence proved the theory to be correct and he never accepted it.  So there was--he was actually removed as chairman during World War I.  
LS:    	But still allowed to teach.
CB:  	Still allowed to teach.  And he was one of the old-fashioned theatrical type of lecturer.  And he kept his students awake.  There was just no doubt about it.
LS:    	In chemistry that would be a feat.
CB:  	Yes.  It takes something of a performer.
LS:   	 I mean to be a dramatic--
CB:  	But in his day there was a man by the name of Snow in physics who was also a performer.  Sometimes accused of being a clown.  In history there was Carl Russell Fish and in economics, what was his name?
LS:    	Oh, Kiekhofer.
CB:  	Kiekhofer, yes.  So there was a group of that type of lecturer and performer and Kalenberg was really the last of that breed.  K.P. Link was a little bit like that.  
LS:    	Was he?
CB:  	Yes.  He was a performer.  
00:36:46
LS:    	Well I want to stay with your undergraduate work a bit.  You did take other courses presumably besides chemistry?
CB:  	Yes, oh yes.  We had to meet the--there was something called the chemistry course and this was in the College of Letters and Science and we had to meet all the requirements of the College of Letters and Science and take a good deal more chemistry.  So we had 130 credits when we graduated compared to the 120.
LS:    	Of the humanities.
CB:  	Yes.  And so I had the amount of language.  We had to take French and German as chemists and I took more German.  I took English literature, economics--
LS:   	 Did you--at that time were you enjoying your education generally or were you concentrating on being a chemist?
CB:  	Frankly I found the other courses easier.  And for instance, when I lived in the dormitory a friend of mine, an English major, was taking a course in Eugene O'Neil, of all things.  And I read all the plays that he did.  This was just entertainment.
LS:    	You liked that?
CB:  	So maybe I, I don't say I looked down on humanities, but they aren't as demanding as science is.  Now I haven't made the grade as a professional in the humanities so I shouldn't talk.  But at least at the undergraduate level I never had any problems.
00:38:50
LS:    	There were two important things going on at that period.  One was Glenn Frank's presence and one was the Union.  I'm sure there were others but they--I'd be interested how conscious you were of Frank as a president.
CB:  	Oh yes we were conscious of him.  He was quite an orator and we though he was pretty good.  Some of the professors didn't think so.  
LS:    	You knew this then or only later?
CB:  	We knew it as graduate students because the professors talked to each other and we heard what they said.  I think among some of the scientists it was, well he was a little too glib.
LS:    	I heard him called the great liberal.  I just came across that phrase the other day.
CB:  	Yes, yes.  And oh there was also, I suppose, well to a group of Midwesterners from modest backgrounds, which included most of the professors I was in contact with, somebody coming with spats--
LS:    	Of course he was a Midwesterner too.
CB:  	I know, but he had adopted the eastern way of life and this business of travelling in a special compartment when he went to Chicago where everybody else just took the coach.  It was that kind of thing I think that was frowned upon.  
LS:    	Yes.
CB:  	On the other hand, his ability to talk his way out of almost any situation was envied.  There is one of the sports columnists, Roundy, have you run into him?  He was the "grammarless journalist" and was something of a comic character.  And when he interviewed Glenn Frank this was really a circus.  
LS:    	It was published, was it?
CB:  	Oh yes, oh, of course.
00:41:34
LS:    	What about the building of the Memorial Union.  Were you involved in student affairs to that extent?
CB:  	No, we paid for the Union and we didn't--we used the Union really during the summer when other eating places weren't available.  
00:42:05
No the people in chemistry, the graduate students, used to eat their evening meal and go back to the "building" and do their studying and some experimental work.  Very often in organic chemistry in those days you had to heat something for long periods of time or reflux or something and this could go on while people were doing their studying.  We in biochemistry were expected to keep very strict hours.  We started at 8:00 and we had to be there until at least 4:30 and we were supposed to be in the laboratory except when we were away for classes.  And that was all.  And Saturday morning was a work day.  And those of us who had animals were expected to look in on them on Sunday.  So this was almost like maintaining a herd of cows.
LS:    	But it wasn't--you were working with the rats, is that right?
CB:  	Yes.  That was the favorite experimental--
LS:    	But it was the same responsibility.
CB:  	Exactly the same kind of--
LS:    	Was this due to, I gather Steenbock was a very hard disciplinarian with himself and with others.  Were the others in the department, Hart and--were they all the same?
CB:  	Hart, oh yes.  Hart was always there before 8:00.  He lived only a few blocks from the building and he used to stop in at the barn on the way to biochemistry and talk to the men who were working there because he was involved in a good deal of work that involved milk and experiments with cows as well, jointly.  He was more agricultural oriented than the others in the department.
LS:    	Yes, I want to ask you about that later.  But on this particular--and Elvehjem too and Link, were they--did they all come--I mean those are very grueling hours.
CB:  	Oh yes.  Well they didn't seem so grueling to us.  Compared to students not in--well, the chemists I really don't know about Saturdays, but I think that many of them went back on Saturdays.  And they certainly spent their evenings as well.  So this--
LS:    	The faculty too.  I mean you said--
CB:  	Not regular.  Well the faculty were there all day in their offices.  That, yes.  The idea of somebody having office hours for two hours on Tuesday and Thursday simply wasn't the way things were done.
LS:    	You could go in any time and talk to them?
CB:  	There weren't that many students.  The whole total graduate students in biochemistry, I suppose, weren't more than 25 when I started out.  That increased gradually.
LS:    	But there were also the other, the assistants.  
00:45:41
What was the relationship between the research assistants and the graduate students?
CB:  	Well the research assistants were the graduate students.
LS:    	Well Evelyn Van Donk-
CB:  	There were, yes, this was part of the Agricultural Experiment Station arrangement that I referred to the last time I was here.  That the College of Agriculture had funds which were ostensively for the Experiment Station.  But no station existed.  The station was the faculty of the College of Agriculture.  But the funds then, there were funds then for assistants who were somewhat different from University assistants.  
LS:    	How many of them were there?
CB:  	There were not very many.  I don't suppose--well Professor Steenbock had two when I arrived and Evelyn was one of them.  Hart had, I don't know whether he had one or two or whether he had some of the teaching assistants.  I really don't know how this was arranged in those days.  But there were a few people who were not degree candidates really but they were allowed to take courses and maybe it took two or three years or more to get a Master's degree.  And Evelyn was one of those.
LS:    	Of course she had a Squibb Fellowship.  She wouldn't have been one of the Experiment Station funded--
CB:  	Well maybe I was wrong.  But in that case Steenbock had only one.  There was one girl who was employed to take care of the rat room and the breeding colony.
LS:    	And not doing research actually but just cleaning--
CB:  	Not doing research, yes.  And she also took care of the animals in his course.  He had a course in vitamins where the students developed nutritional deficiencies and Blanche Riising was the one who took--who was there every day to see that the animals were taken care of properly.  After all it takes--
LS:   	 I thought you meant--I thought you were saying that the students developed vitamin deficiency.
CB:  	Oh no.  The animals.  Yes.  Each student had--one student had the deficiency of vitamin A and another one of vitamin B and maybe a mineral deficiency and so.  This was a very small group of people but everybody had some animals which were his.  Usually only a pair of animals but one got the feel of how these things were done.  Of course those of us who were working with animals on our own research problem had a chance then to work with some other deficiency.  You see I was working on vitamin A so I would have maybe had animals deficient in vitamin D or let's say phosphorus deficiency or something else, iron deficiency.  And then the student who--I'm now talking about the vitamins course.  And the student who had a given deficiency was also supposed to read up the background of this particular phenomenon.  Read the published papers on it and write a report on it so one had a little greater exposure to something other than his own research problem as a graduate student.
00:50:04
LS:    	How well as a graduate student did you get to know Hart, Elvehjem, Link?
CB:  	Link was the most approachable.  Elvehjem wasn't even there when I arrived.  Elvehjem was in Europe at that time on a Rockefeller Fellowship, post doctorate fellowship.  And he came back later.  But we had one office for graduate students and the professors would come in and talk to their own students and the rest of us knew what was being said.  And we were all in the same--Hart and Steenbock's people were in the same chemical laboratory as well so I saw Hart every day.
LS:    	Did you become friendly with him or?
CB:  	Reasonably so, yes.  And later on very friendly.  When he first approached me on an appointment I didn't--I hardly knew who he was because--two of us were in a small lab next to Steenbock's office and we were running routine analyses and we really didn't have contact with anybody else.  This was as undergraduates working in biochemistry.
LS:    	Oh I see.  But you said Link was approachable.  I mean as a graduate student did you-
CB:  	Yes he had something of the temperament of an actor and he used to speak in a very loud voice and make clever remarks and everybody heard them and there was give and take with him from the beginning.  He was younger than the others and he was fun.  And while we had--we took his carbohydrate course--he, by the way, had arrived from Europe with special equipment which he bought with his own funds and he set up micro equipment which was more advanced than anything that chemistry had.
LS:    	You mean when he started to teach there or when he went over sometime?
CB:  	When he went over as a post doctorate he came back--he already had a professorship promised him, and he bought this very special equipment and introduced it and his problems were--the problems which he assigned to students were at least as advanced as those which were going on in the organic chemistry department.  There was a period of years when I believe he could have had any graduate student that he wanted.  Students were willing to work for him.  He was very demanding in terms of chemical technique and he was much the better chemist of the group that were there when he arrived as a young professor.
LS:	I see.
CB:	After all, Hart was quite a bit older.  Steenbock's training in chemistry was also out of date.  He got his degree in 1912 but it took him eight years.  He was the first Ph.D. from the College of Agriculture.  Peterson was the other.  Peterson was the chemist interested in microorganisms and he worked with E.B. Fred.  He was actually housed in Agricultural Hall with the bacteriologists.  But some of his students were biochemistry students and he ultimately was full time in biochemistry.  W.H. Peterson.
LS:	Yes.  Tottingham?
CB:  	Tottingham was the plant chemist and he was not as successful as the others.
LS:    	Didn't stay long.
CB:  	He died rather--He was the first one of the group to die.  I don't know how old he was at the time but he died shortly after the War, I believe.  During the War.
LS:    	Yes.  Babcock was there, around, wasn't he?
CB:  	Babcock was still alive when I arrived and he was fooling with a physics problem.  Trying to produce a high vacuum and had some ideas on motion.  And my first--I was ribbed an awful lot for this because my first lab partner was Babcock.  There was a little laboratory in the basement which was not being used and when I started to work on vitamin A, I was assigned a desk down there and on the other side of the desk was this piece of apparatus which Babcock had and he used to come in every day and look at it and fool around with it a little bit.  But he must have been high in the 80s at that time and he was really an old man.
LS:    	So nobody took him seriously?
CB:  	Well he was sort of--yes and no.  His physics wasn't--well, we didn't know but I found out later that the physicists did not take this seriously.  But he used to visit the other professors and they treated him very respectfully.
LS:    	Well of course.  And you--how did he, did he talk to you?
CB:  	Not very much, no.  No, he was hard of hearing by this time and, no he didn't pay any attention to me.  He was--he had his own ideas.  I guess when he resigned his professorship many years before he didn't, wasn't too anxious to teach and he certainly didn't like administrative work.  But they just kept him on and let him do what he wanted to.
00:57:41
LS:    	Well I want to go back to what you said about Link because I didn't quite understand it.  You said that--What did you say?  Before you said he could have had any student he wanted, you said something about which implied that he could have been in the chemistry department.
CB:  	Yes.  He actually--I think he would have liked to have been a professor of organic chemistry.
LS:    	I see.
CB:  	And he did have some students later on who took their degree in organic chemistry but who did their research with him.  Homer Adkins allowed this.  And one of them ended up in the Rockefeller Institute.
LS:    	Was that -- no it wasn't.  Who was it?  I mean there's a Harry Schneider is it?
CB:	Oh no, Schneider, yes, yes.  He was one of the Steenbock people.  I can't recall.  But he was a very able scientist who knew what he wanted and he liked Link's research setup better than what was going on in organic chemistry and yet he didn't want a degree in agricultural chemistry so he was allowed--he met the course requirements, took the examinations in chemistry and his minor then was biochemistry.  Most of the people of my generation and later majored in biochemistry and took minors either in organic chemistry or physical or physiology was a very popular one.
LS:	Was there a difference in status between the chemistry department and the biochemistry department, agricultural chemistry was--
CB:	Oh yes there was, I would think so.  Yes.  And yet, well the chemistry department, particularly organic, was one of the better ones in the country.  If there had been the kind of ratings systems as there are now it would have been one of the top five I suppose.  Certainly one of the top ten.  And Wisconsin in biochemistry, particularly in agricultural chemistry, was right up there, one, two, three.
LS:    	Well that's it.  That's why I wondered why--
CB:  	But still the pure chemists were somehow oh maybe a little bit like the mathematicians are a little more intellectual than the people in physics and maybe physics rates a little higher than bacteriology.
LS:    	Well would it be like economics and ag economics?
CB:  	Maybe.  I'm not enough familiar with that--let's say with the status of these two.  But there was a great deal of joking among the younger generation about the pure chemists because--Well the comment was some of them weren't so pure.
LS:    	I see.  They were supposed to be doing not applied chemistry, is that right?
CB:  	Exactly.  Yes.
LS:    	So when Daniels did something like solar energy that was applied.
CB:  	That's right.  No his lectures were full of mathematics and reaction rates and all that sort of thing, calculus.
LS:  	More so than the biochemistry.  Well then why wasn't Link a member of the chemistry department?
CB:  	I really don't know.  His degree had been in agricultural chemistry.
LS:    	Oh it had.  So I see.
CB:  	He had done some fairly good work rather early in life.  He had isolated something which, out of onions, had something to do with disease resistance.  But it turned out to have been something of a freak.  There aren't many substances like that.  But that was his first claim to fame that attracted attention outside of Madison.
LS:    	He came to work sometimes in shorts I understand.
CB:  	Oh he wore an outlandish costume always.  Big flowing ties and long hair and people thought when they saw him on the street—
01:02:54	End of Tape 1, Side 2. 
Tape 2, Side 1
LS:	You said he always came in an outlandish costume.
CB:	Yes.  At the time when other people wore their hair short, he had very long hair.  He would wear something like a cape and loose clothing with very long flowing neckwear and he liked to poke fun of people in authority.
LS:    	Including some of the biochemists, the faculty.
CB:  	Oh yes.  His--anybody who was a dean was a target.  The chairman of the chemistry department was a target.  I'll say this much for my own colleagues.  Steenbock was quite formal.  Just the opposite personally.  And Hart was down to earth and just an all around good fellow.  And nothing at all like Link.  But they both tolerated Link's going on.  Steenbock definitely did not approve but they realized that he was capable and so his eccentricities were accepted.
LS:    	Good for them.
CB:  	So while the work hours were definite and set and observed in biochemistry, toleration of something like Link's outbursts was also a part of the scene.
LS:    	But did he also come to work at 8:00 also?
CB:  	He worked at least as much as anybody else but he would sometimes claim he was working until 3:00 in the morning.  And there was just no doubt about his output and his accomplishment.
LS:    	So he didn't keep himself to these rigid hours.
CB:  	No he did not.  But he expected his own students to put in long hours.  He was part of the same program.
LS:    	Yes.  It's the fixed time that surprising, not the amount of time.  One expects a lot of time. 
CB:  	Yes.  That was--But in a way I think that came a little bit from the agricultural background of people like Hart and Steenbock where taking care of the cows simply meant that you had to adjust your schedule to them and so this was not considered very strange.
LS:    	Yes.  Incidentally where did you people have lunch when you were graduate students?
CB:  	Well as long as I--I used to go down to Lake Street at the fraternity.
LS:    	For lunch even?
CB:  	Oh yes.  This was a long walk in the middle of the day.  Yes we were out on the Ag campus.  People ate at the Union.  There were a good many restaurants on University Avenue geared to student and hospital traffic.  And during those years lunches were amazingly cheap.
LS:    	But you didn't bring your own?
CB:  	Some people did but I think those who lived at home might have sometimes, but I never did.
00:04:00
LS:    	The other question about your graduate student life that I have is, and I think you were saying something about this the other day, was how students working on research projects and people getting patents for them.  You said there was--in fact in one of the articles I read about Steenbock there was a statement that Hart had gotten the patent for the, let's see that was the copper and iron. 
CB:  	The copper and iron, yes.
LS:    	The anemia problem.  And that Steenbock, in fact, had been involved in it.  Is that right?
CB:  	That's correct.  The key paper had four authors.  The two young men on the work were Elvehjem and Waddell.  And Waddell was Steenbock's assistant and Elvehjem was Hart's assistant.  So there were four people.  Wadell had a successful career later on.  So this was a potent foursome.  Incidentally, Evelyn Van Donk was acknowledged for technical assistance on the key paper.
LS:    	She felt she that she wasn't sufficiently recognized for the work she did.
CB:  	Well she probably did most of it.
LS:    	Yes.  She said that.  Well just that--
CB:  	Yes.  Whether that patent should have been in more names than just Hart's, I suppose is a question that might have been raised.
LS:    	It was evidently.  I mean whoever said this said Steenbock felt ill-used.
CB:  	Yes.  Well he--Steenbock could be amazingly generous and then he was sometimes upset by things that maybe he shouldn't have been.
LS:    	You mean that his generosity led to or--
CB:  	He was afraid--he was prone to think that he was not appreciated.  This was unfortunate because it made him unhappy and it led to strains between some of his associates.  
LS:    	Was it general or was it about specific things like the money to--the founding of WARF?
CB:  	Well one problem--of course this is where the WARF money becoming available just about the beginning of the Depression was a godsend to biochemistry.  The donation, WARF actually turned it--then as now, turned its money over to the Graduate School and the graduate dean and an appropriate committee administered these funds.  But of course the donor of the money could claim more than other people could.  And so Steenbock also had access to other patent money.  Exactly how this worked I don't know.  But he had funds directly from the Foundation.  After he--I know what happened later on.  He was receiving a great deal of patent money, a lot more than he needed, and was paying high taxes and he finally stopped receiving the money and had them, the Foundation people, put his cut into fund A and fund B on which he could draw directly without going through the Graduate School.  So he had patent money which had originated in his 15%, which was the division there.  And then others in biochemistry had fellowship money at their disposal from the Graduate School.  So during the '30s, during the worst of the Depression, biochemistry was beginning to buy some equipment and Steenbock himself was beginning to buy equipment which went a long way to bring biochemistry in line to where it should be.  In this Elvehjem review I've got some paragraphs on the rather sad state of the equipment in the old agricultural chemistry department.  And it was Steenbock who made the first dent and then later Elvehjem.  Once he became chairman why then a great deal of money became available through the department as such.
LS:    	You started--this was as a prelude to your saying--explaining why Steenbock felt unappreciated.
CB:  	Oh yes.  Well originally the college money going to the department was divided among the professors and then as more outside money became available why Professor Hart used to think that Steenbock's money could be used for his work and the department money could be used for something else.
LS:    	I see.
CB:  	And this was a sore point because Steenbock insisted that what he was providing was supplemental and did not release the college from obligation to support his people.  It was this.  Logical enough.  He was basically right about this but in the time of severe scarcity it is easy to see how the opposite reaction could come about.
LS:   	 The College would say well you've got money.  Why can't we use--
CB:  	Yes.  You've got more than the rest of them, see?  And Professor Hart inclined to that view.
LS:    	And how about Link?  Do you know?
CB:  	Link had a special grant from--Link had Brittingham money.  He was indebted to Glenn Frank.  And Glenn Frank had the Brittingham money at his disposal which was to go to the most promising, brilliant young professor and Link was tagged for this.  And so he had funds.
LS:    	This was before his own discovery is that right?
CB:  	Oh yes.  This was before--because his warfarin--well actually the hemolytic factor that he had isolated, dicoumarol is the chemical name.
LS:    	That's right.  That was in the '40s and early '50s..
CB:  	That was early '40s and the exploitation came in the late '40s.  
LS:    	So he was taken care of all along?
CB:  	He had special money.  He had better equipment and he had some extra funds.  
LS:    	So he didn't insist upon getting Ag money also?
CB:  	That's right.  
00:12:50
Now the other thing on Steenbock--he was really a brilliant man and his seminars--he ran seminars in which each graduate student was supposed to cover a different journal and read articles which might be of interest and report on them.  And he never knew what we were reporting on but he could comment intelligently on a wide range of subjects.  
LS:    	So he really kept up?
CB:  	This was really impressive.  This was at the beginning.  But once he became involved in patent work and he spent more and more time on affairs of the Foundation and he was in some ways ahead of his time in this sense that he wanted his invention to be used properly and did not want it to be misused.  And he took things very intently and emotionally and there were all kinds of proposals for adding vitamin D to cold creams and adding them to beer and the people who were promoting vitamin D sales in the Foundation sometimes did things that he didn't approve of.  And he made sure to go to Chicago to every meeting of the Board of Directors and so on.  And let me hasten to add that he was never in really very good health.  
LS:    	Yes one of the articles says that.  What was the matter with his health?
CB:  	Oh he was high strung and among other things he was deficient in vitamin B12 and this was discovered very much later.  But digestive disorders, the general--
LS:    	Does this mean that he'd be out sick or he just didn't feel well?
CB:  	Once in a while, yes.  But just not--I think he wore out faster than a lot of others.  And by the middle '30s he was more irritated by what was going on in the country and was less actively focused on the scientific matter in the seminar and had more difficulties with his students.  Some of his students were unhappy.
LS:    	Does this include you?
CB:  	No.  I returned from Europe to go into the--on the cancer program so I was over at physiology for a while.
LS:    	But that was--what year was that?
CB:  	That was '36. 
LS:   	 And when did you get your Ph.D.?
CB:  	I left--'33 and I stayed on an extra year with him.
LS:   	 Oh I see.  All right.
CB: 	 But there was this deterioration already evident by that time. And then when I came back I did go to his seminars still and then in 1938 he was seriously ill and on very short notice I was asked to take over his course.  That was his vitamins course.
LS:    	That's getting ahead of the story.
CB:  	That's getting ahead of the story but this is part of--but Professor Steenbock could get very angry and he would bawl people out in a way that was often resented.  
LS:    	His students?  Was this about the quality of their work or--
CB:  	Usually he was correct basically but he made more of it than was let's say par for personal relations.
LS:    	Yes.  So it wasn't that somebody got in five minutes late or--
CB:  	No, but if somebody wasn't--yes, they'd be, it might be that.
LS:    	I see.
CB:  	Of course sometimes experiments weren't done right or the time came to look at the results and something was missing that should have been there.  
LS:   	 And he wouldn't ever see human error?
CB:  	That was likely to be the cause of the problem.
00:18:15
LS:    	Did you learn whether this was--had always been characteristic of him to get that angry or was it something that grew.  I guess you said that it grew worse.
CB:  	Well you know there was a feud between him and McCollom.
LS:    	Yes you mentioned that the other day. 
CB:  	That was really the next big name in Wisconsin after Babcock.  And McCollom developed vitamin A deficiency in rat, had something he called the fat soluble vitamin, later on he had the water soluble vitamin.  And he introduced the alphabetical nomenclature used worldwide.
LS:    	Did he?
CB:  	And then he was offered the job at Johns Hopkins.  And Hart said later that he had--that McCollom and Steenbock shared the same laboratory or office and they were always fighting so Hart had to separate them.  This was sort of in a joking way.  And when McCollom got to Johns Hopkins he published a paper on vitamin D that was on work which had been done at Wisconsin and with which Steenbock was involved.  And Professor Hart wrote a letter of protest and McCollom replied that it was obvious this work had been done at Wisconsin.  It involved experiments which took nine months and the paper was sent off to press two months after he was at--so it was obvious that it had been done at Wisconsin.  But this acknowledgement should have been there and that he did not consider himself to be in error for omitting Steenbock's name because he, McCollom, had supplied the ideas and Steenbock had done what was essentially routine work.  Then Steenbock wrote a very blistering reply and McCollum's is a masterpiece in irony because he said he would put his record of accomplishment on the line as to which of the two was the productive researcher.  And within a few months after this Steenbock's paper was in press on what he had done on vitamin A and Steenbock was to follow up with the irradiation work so I, looking back on it, I would say Steenbock certainly was part of the original.  
LS:    	You would?
CB:  	Yes.  And should have been part.  But there was this resentment and willingness, readiness to fight was there for a long time.  But those are things which you maybe shouldn't make anything of.
LS:    	Oh they are in the world everywhere.
CB:  	Exactly.
LS:    	Certainly in the academic world.
CB:  	And in the academic world you have--you really need somebody who is even tempered to be a chairman.  And this was Hart, this was Elvehjem, this was Burris who followed Elvehjem.
00:22:22
LS:    	You said--you spoke of his getting increasingly involved with his patents and I'm just trying to get a sense of the time period here.  Was this when you first knew him?
CB:  	The patent was issued, let's see, the key paper in 1924.  I think the patent was granted in '27, but I'm not quite sure of this.  And before it really became commercially big took a few more years.  So while I was a graduate student he was already beginning to be more involved in the operations of the Alumni Research Foundation.  Now the other side is talking about Steenbock well losing some of his early energy and skill.  But after World War II he revived his laboratory with almost no carryover.  There was one student who had been involved in War work who knew how to handle radioactive isotopes and he brought him back and he hired a lot of assistants and went back to the vitamin D research which he had--well which had almost been a dead issue in the country as a whole for oh ten, fifteen years.  Because within the vitamins there of course are fashions just as there are in other things and in the 1930s most of the action was in the vitamin B complex and this was where Elvehjem, particularly, was in the forefront as far as Wisconsin was concerned.  Many other people were involved but--
LS: 	You said that the other day.
CB:  	But in the meantime vitamin D was a relatively inactive area.
LS:    	It was understood to be Steenbock's area.  Is that right?
CB:  	Well no.  I'm talking about the number of papers published nationally.  Nobody was doing much.  And so Steenbock, when he modernized his laboratory at the end of World War II, continued, resumed work on unfinished aspects that he had abandoned as long as twenty years previously.
LS:    	How on earth can you account for that?
CB:  	Well because there were all those other things which seemed more important.
LS:    	You mean you think he solved them or was it--???
CB:  	No, no.  He solved what was important at the time but very often when you do a piece of research four or five new questions arise and you may proceed with one of them and the other four just are ignored.
LS:    	But what I meant was that he had solved his patent problem.
CB:  	Oh yes.  But there were law suits on infringement of the patent and he was involved in testimony and all that kind of thing.
LS:    	So it sounds to me as if he--I mean it's more than just his finishing with the patent problems.  It's as if he got a new lease on life.
CB:  	That came after World War II.
LS:    	And why?  Do you know why?
CB:  	He was well along in years.  Well he still had some of his original feel for good research problems.
LS:    	Yes.  But why should they suddenly matter ???
CB:  	Well then at the end of the War there were graduate students available in quantities.  People were clamoring for places to work.  One had a choice of good, well qualified assistants.  And he resumed an area of research in which he was about as well qualified as anyone else in the world.  But now with newer techniques which he understood up to a point but not as well as his assistants, I suspect.  And one of the students was Hector DeLuca in this era and part of this involvement.  So that's the current chairman of biochemistry.
LS:   	 It seems extraordinary to me that he should have made this comeback.
CB:  	Comeback.  Yes.  Because he almost lost interest for a couple of years.
LS:    	Yes that's what I gathered.
CB:  	For almost ten years.  
LS:    	And it's not often that people do that.  Especially in the sciences, I should think.  You'd think once you were out--
CB:  	That's right.  That was--yes this sort of second blossoming is unusual.
LS:    	But you didn't know him well and he never talked to you about why he did it.
CB:  	No.  He was not, in personal matters he was not very communicative.  He would talk about what's going on in the world but not on his own personal problems he wasn't--Well I suspect Evelyn might have had something to do with his revival but--
LS:    	Well I did wonder about that.
CB:  	But actually the revival, scientific revival, started almost immediately at the end of World War II when students came back.  During the War years there was hardly anybody around.  A few people with physical defects who were classified 4F and some who were on research problems which carried a priority and that was about it.
00:29:40
LS:    	While we're talking about Steenbock I'd like to know--I gathered from her that he was--he loved music and art and would like to go out bird watching and looking for wild flowers which are all, you know, nice things to know about the person.  Did this--did you know about this side of him?
CB:  	What we knew was that he used to like to go out on picnics and he would once in a while round up some of the students and we'd drive out to a hillside somewhere in western Dane County.  He knew a lot of little places off of a side road that were pleasant.  
LS:    	Were these fun?  Did you enjoy doing it or was it a bit of a chore?
CB:  	No they were nice.  While the students were never completely relaxed with him, but no, these were pleasant.  
LS:    	He gave Christmas parties she said.
CB:  	Oh yes.  Those were sometimes pretty elaborate affairs.  They--But certainly on a balance he was not a very socially oriented person.  He was much more oriented toward his work.
00:31:10
CB:  	That's true.  We did not get to.  I think I've been in E.B. Hart's house only once.  I never got into the Steenbock house until actually his funeral.  We did get to visit his sister one time who lived in Madison for a while.  The Petersons always used to eat out and we sometimes sat at the same table.  And Link.  No I don't--there never was a party at the Link house.  Once in a while when there was a speaker from somewhere else we--might be there for a little while if it was something that he was particularly interested in or somebody wanted to meet him and one of us was responsible for the visitor, that sort of thing.  No it wasn't a social group at all.  Now in recent years there have been many more gatherings.  For the entire department in one house or another.
LS:    	It seems--in most departments I think it's true to say that it's been the other way around.  That there was much more then.  Were you aware--I mean is that your impression at the time?  Do you remember there were other students ---
CB:  	I really didn't know too much what was going on in that respect in other departments.
00:33:13	End of First Interview Session. 

Second Interview Session (February 11, 1982)

Tape 2/Side 2
00:33:16
LS:    	This is the second session on the following day of the interview with Carl Baumann.  I'll just start out with a sort of major question as to why the life sciences developed so well at the University of Wisconsin.
CB:  	And particularly I assume in the College of Agriculture?
LS:    	Yes.
CB:  	Because this is--it's rather unusual to have as large a department as biochemistry now is within the College of Agriculture.
LS:    	Oh it is?
CB:  	And yet function and cover--yet in effect covering all, most of the areas in biochemistry as if the department were a separate discipline much of which is not connected with agriculture.  
00:34:13
The arrangement with Experiment Station money was one that contributed to the development of research at Wisconsin in agriculture.  In many states, federal money that went to Experiment Stations as such was handled here by naming the people in the College of Agriculture as members of the Wisconsin State Experiment Station.  There was no separate institution or separate building in which Experiment Station work was done.  The effect of this was that federal money contributed to the salaries of people in the College of Agriculture so that the demands, the teaching demands particularly, which were prevalent in the rest of the University were eased.  In effect a professor in agriculture was a part-time teacher and a part-time research man.  Of course these activities were combined but the faculty man in the College of Agriculture had relatively more time to spend on his research activities.
LS:    	You don't know why this happened?
CB:  	No I don't know.  Just as in other schools there were state universities.  For instance Iowa had has Iowa State and the University of Iowa.  Michigan has Michigan and Michigan State and so on.  And even in a small place like North Dakota or South Dakota there's a North Dakota University and North Dakota State.  But here it was all combined in Madison.
LS:    	Somebody was very shrewd then.
CB:  	And for many years this was a great advantage because one could, for instance, do graduate work in biochemistry and take the physiology course which the medical students took.
LS:    	That's true because ???
CB:  	And histology was available and so on.  And so we even, later on when people in our department were interested in pathology, had people who met the requirements for a minor in pathology in the Medical School along with their biochemistry.  So it was this sort of arrangement.  And chemistry here being one big unit also had greater variety to offer to people who were not in the College of Letters and Science.  
LS:    	How long did this arrangement go--
CB:  	Well it's still in effect.
LS:    	But you mean the College of Agriculture people still don't teach as much as--?
CB:  	Oh they teach, but their teaching load is not--I don't know what the load is nowadays in the College of Letters and Science, but--
LS:    	It's usually two courses.
CB: 	 No part of our--we never really knew where our salaries came from.  We knew that they came from Hatch Act funds and ??? or some other.  There were various congressional acts in the last century that provided money.  And this system just continued.  These were bookkeeping transactions in Ag Hall which didn't which didn't concern us.  They should have I suppose but—
00:38:24
LS:    	And then there was so much money coming in from the private companies.  That's--fellowships.
CB:  	Well that came later.  
LS:    	Oh.  Well in the '30s--
CB:  	And it wasn't--yes, and that was not used for faculty salaries.  That was for graduate assistants and maybe technical help.  
LS:    	But that made a big difference too.  It must have because--
CB:  	Oh yes that helped, of course.  That, by the way, has been criticized because--and particularly during the '60s where people claimed that the University was dominated by outside interests.
LS:    	Well it's very funny to see the debate about industry and University connections now when this has been going on in the Ag College all along.
CB:  	All along, yes.  They did get some lawyers a long time ago to draw up the contracts by which money could be accepted and there were clauses in there that said something to the effect that all of this--all work done under this project will be published in the usual way in acceptable journals and the donor will receive a report of what has been done.  But implied in this was that they could not dictate what would be done or that the results were not the property of the donor.  That was part of the original contract.
LS:    	Now did--I saw some correspondence in Hart's files in which a company, I've forgotten which one, was furious at him for some testimony that he gave which they said was completely ignorant and that he didn't understand the point.  But I assume that it in fact it was probably the other way around.  But do you remember that?
CB:  	That doesn't ring a bell at all so--
LS:    	But it makes me wonder if it was an effort on their part to control--I mean they must have felt we'd given them all this money and you're testifying against us.
CB:  	There may have been something like this, yes.  There may have been something like that, but I--That one I don't recall at all.
LS:   	 This might have been ???  
00:41:10
Well you say that's one reason. Are there other reasons why the life sciences in the College of Agriculture would have been so outstanding?
CB:  	Well they got a head start with Babcock's reputation and I suppose that in the distribution of federal funds for agriculture research, Wisconsin always got somewhat more than its share.  I heard Dean Baldwin once talk about the system in general terms to the affect that maybe half the total funds were distributed on a geographical basis, so every state got something and the other fraction was distributed on the basis of the merit of what was going on there.  And this merit component certainly contributed to Wisconsin's continued development.  Incidentally, Baldwin's point at the time was that well one might have criticized the system but it went to many states where maybe not very much was done with it.  In each case, however, there was a setup in which young people who were interested could find jobs and South Dakota was a case in point.  It became a very good source of potential graduate students and potential faculty people.
LS:    	You said Henry Lardy and Van Potter came from there.
CB:  	Yes and Robert Burris. 
LS:    	Oh really?  That is quite a high proportion isn't it?
CB:  	Yes.  So.  And quite a number of others.  I was just going through some papers.  One on Orville Bentley.  He was one of our people.  He's the dean of Agriculture at Illinois and is now the Assistant Secretary of Agriculture.  Because the Secretary is another Illinois man.  But he's another South Dakota—
00:43:38
LS:    	You said that there was a--that the department was very inbred for a long time.
CB:  	Yes, well let me elaborate.  Steenbock was the first one.  Before I name them, let me say that there was a modifying factor.  Nearly everybody, I guess everybody that ultimately ended on the faculty was sent somewhere else for a while.  And for many Europe was the place to go.  So Steenbock spent a year in Berlin just before World War I, I think that was 1912.  And the next year Peterson went to the same laboratory.  And then K.P. Link after the War went to Austria and Switzerland.  Let's see, who was the next one?  Elvehjem went to Cambridge.
LS:    	These were on funds that the University provided or other fellowships?
CB:  	As far as I know, Steenbock and Peterson used their own money.  They may have had some slight grant but this fellowship system wasn't as well developed.  But Link and Elvehjem I know definitely received--I think they were Rockefellers, I'm not sure.  But by that time this fellowships system was pretty well developed.
00:45:30
LS:    	What was the function of this year in Europe?
CB:  	Well at that time chemistry was very much more advanced and better supported in the better European laboratories than here.  I suppose the Nobel Prize winners in chemistry for the first--I don't, there was an occasional American on the list but it was primarily Europeans up until World War II.  My own experience.  I had a--I was awarded a fellowship.  I was to go to Johns Hopkins for for a year with the possibility of a year at Cambridge.  And then Professor Steenbock was on an international commission and visited a number of European laboratories and was so impressed with an institute in Heidelberg that he said it would be a mistake to go anywhere else.  So this was 1934, by the way, and so that was--the general education board approved that and I was there for about nine months.  And it was true.  Their chemical techniques and their equipment were very much more advanced than--
LS:    	That's interesting considering there was a fair amount of money here, that the equipment-
CB:  	The graduate schools were not very many.  Johns Hopkins was the first one.  Somebody, one of the presidents quite a long time ago, set up a program on the European model for doctorate work in the sciences.  And some of the Ivy League schools sort of fell in line.  But, no, there weren't very many places where--
LS:    	Yes but Wisconsin had a graduate program.  Why--and they had--you say reasonably, a reasonably good amount of money.  Couldn't they have gone--
CB:  	No in money--oh equipment wise, ag chem was a disaster.  It was very, very frugal.  We had animals and we had materials for diets and the very ordinary chemical reagents and shortage of glassware, shortage of all kinds of things.  
LS:    	So this was Hart's doing because--?
CB:  	This was Hart's, yes.  Now the other side of Hart, by the way, was his choice of people.  And an administrator who then let them alone.  Let them go their own way.
LS:    	But if all you people went to Europe and you saw these labs and the fine equipment and wasn't--didn't you say to yourselves, "Couldn't we have equipment like that in our labs?"  Wouldn't you have done as well?
CB:  	Well you see, this was the Depression. 
LS:    	Yes, that's true.
CB:  	No, one didn't rock the boat.  And Steenbock was the one who was able to do some of this with his own money.  Or with money which he had with patent money.  But the University didn't--they had to cut--they were cutting salaries and it was an economy program more stringent than is here right now.
LS:    	Did Steenbock get unusually good equipment in?
CB:  	He bought a number of things like spectrophotometers and--
LS:    	But that's during the War.
CB:  	No, no, beforehand.
LS:    	Beforehand, all right.
CB:  	Oh yes.  And for doing things with ultraviolet light and measuring ultraviolet light.
LS:    	So he did have some?
CB:  	Yes he did have some of that.  His own background wasn't--didn't involve these things but he usually managed.  One of my contemporaries consulted Harrington Daniels rather regularly on some of this specialized photometric work, let's call it.
LS:    	So Harrington Daniels did keep up? 
CB:  	Oh yes.  In other words there was always--the practice of collaborating on research was very well established.  And that goes way back to Hart.  If you look at the list of publications of the department you'll find that most of the papers have three or four authors on them.  Very often it's a professor in the department and another professor in another department and then the graduate students in each department.  So this long list of authors became something of a joke but that's the way it was done.  This was sometimes a disadvantage when somebody was old enough to be admitted to a national society because one of the requirements was that the members do independent research and a man might have ten published papers and there were always other names on the paper and somebody had to explain that, well this man really knew what he was doing.
LS:    	You mean this wasn't general practice?  It was more true here at Wisconsin?
CB:  	I think it was more true--it did occur in other places.  But it was particularly part of the pattern here.
LS:    	How do you account for that?
CB:  	Well the nature of the research work.
LS:    	But that would have been the same in other colleges too.
CB:  	Well, for instance, we had a good many students who were joint majors with other departments in agriculture.  And so the large animal work was done elsewhere and the chemical aspects of the work were done in our department.  The same thing with people from home economics.  On nutritional problems some of which were done in their building and some which were done in ours.
LS:    	But that--
CB:  	This was advantageous to the individuals involved because many of these then became faculty members in departments of home economics elsewhere or animal husbandry elsewhere.  And their association with biochemistry gave them more exposure and practice in a basic science.
LS:    	What I'm--I am driving at something in asking you this.  It would seem to me that in any university setting it would be logical to have interdepartmental cooperation--
CB:  	Yes but there also are rivalries and people have their own domains and so on.
LS:   	 Well that's what I'm wondering, is it--I've heard it said--
CB:  	And I think that was particularly between departments.  There was not too much rivalry I would say.  There were rivalries between individual professors in the same department but not too much--no, if one needed something, a skill which somebody else had which could be used in your research problem, why you were stupid not to take advantage of it.  This meant you had to share the result but a result was achieved.
LS:    	It occurs to me, part of the explanation could be that there was a reasonably comfortable amount of money because of the setup that you described earlier.
CB:  	Yes.
LS:    	And also--or could it have been that the dean who--let's see, who--Do you think that had any affect?  The person who was dean?
CB:  	Well of course the big name long before my time, Dean Henry was the one who supposedly put Wisconsin on the map administratively.
LS:   	 In your time is was Russell and Christensen.
CB:  	Actually Nobel Clark who was the, I don't remember what his title was, but he was the administrator of the federal funds and the research reports went through him and actually our manuscripts were supposed to go through him.  And he certainly was all for collaboration and getting the work done and it didn't matter which department it was done in. 
00:55:23
LS:    	It's been said of the University that it's unusual, people have said, in its interdepartmental cooperation.  I'm not so sure it's true now but--
CB:  	I can't say.  I've been out of it for ten years.
LS:    	But even in L&S and other places it has been said that it used to be.  I mean this is a feature of--
CB:  	Oh yes there are still.  Of course there weren't nearly as many faculty people in those days.  And, for instance, there was an arrangement for a biochemist to get a degree.  The degree had to be approved by either the biology conference or the chemistry conference, so called.  And I think that was a system which was put into effect when departments were small and I was aware in the committee meeting that the origins of this conference system--the members, the total membership in these conferences wasn't much greater than our department at the time.  So the idea that no one man should have complete authority on whether someone gets a degree or does not I think was back in this system.
LS:    	And it worked?
CB:  	Yes.  But then after departments became bigger and really self-sufficient and of stature then it was really more of a nuisance.
LS:   	So when are we talking--what time?  When does that happen?
CB:  	Oh this was in effect maybe up to World War II.  It may have been a little--
LS:   	These preceded divisional committees, do they?
CB:  	Yes.  That preceded the divisional--oh, divisional committees do not pass on degrees now.  They pass on appointments and new courses.
LS:  	Well that's interesting.  So these people would meet at the end of the year, whenever it was appropriate, and all the candidates would—
CB: 	 Well in some cases they drew up examinations which had to be passed.  There was--or imposed certain course requirements.  I think this was one of the difficulties with biology.  Because we, I remember one case where a man had completed all of his requirements, had done his thesis and passed all our examinations and he hadn't had a course in freshman botany.  And he wasn't working on plants and this, well I think we actually withdrew from the conference at that time, if I recall correctly.
LS:    	The department?
CB:  	Yes.
LS:    	Do you remember when that was?
CB:  	Oh that would have been either just before World War II or just after it.
LS:    	So--
CB:  	But that was a system which was geared to small departments.
LS:   	 It sounds like a very good system really.  I mean it prevented just a few people from giving degrees.
CB:  	And now one has--now our department was divided into subunits of four or five professors whose--
LS:   	 Do you have any idea where one would look for papers on these committees?  They must have left records.  These conferences.  Or who was the head of it?  Or did you ever participate in them?
CB:  	Never.  I was--I participated in divisional.  
LS:    	But not in these conferences?
CB:  	And I was in the curious situation of being a member of both.  You see biochemistry has an interest in chemistry and also in biology.  So the physical science division and the biological division, I've actually served on both committees at different times. 
01:00:00
LS:    	We were going on two tracks then.  We took off from your--Just one point I want to settle.  When I asked about Harrington Daniels what I meant was he had up-to-date equipment, did he?
CB:  	They had equipment, yes.
LS:   	 Better than yours?
CB:  	Better than ours, yes.  Because their teaching program required it.  Physical chemistry was taken by second semester juniors or seniors and they had experiments on many different kinds of equipment.  And that was all available.  
LS:    	And then the other thing was again on your year abroad and that of others.  You learned a lot, did you?
CB:  	Oh yes, yes.  Well actually I spent time in three--I was gone for two years and spent time in three different institutions.  The Heidelberg Institute was mainly chemistry.  At Cambridge there was a great deal of work on enzymology and what was called cellular respiration at that time.  And I actually published two papers from there.
LS:    	Did they take you in under their wing and--?
CB:  	Oh yes.  Oh yes.  That was very--and it was very much more relaxed and very different from the system at Heidelberg.
LS:    	Oh is that right?  Oh wait, say that again.
CB:  	People did not keep regular hours and they rather prided themselves on taking time off to think.
LS:   	 This was in Europe instead of here.
CB:  	At Cambridge particularly.  And one had afternoon tea and talked about all sorts of things.  Somebody was writing a book and you heard all about the latest chapter, that sort of thing.
LS:    	Would you have liked to institute that here? 
CB:  	Well more of that--I don't know about the afternoon tea but certainly much of that has come to be around here too.  Whether the people in a large department really know everybody in the department nowadays, I'm not so sure.
LS:    	They don't.  All the evidence seems to be that people don't. 
01:02:41	End of Tape 2. 
Tape 3, Side 1
00:00:01
LS:    	Somebody said at one point or I read it that equipment had to be brought from Europe and that it was--
CB:  	K.P. Link brought his micro equipment.
LS:    	No I don't mean that.  Yes.  Did I read this in files?  That the best equipment came from Europe and either there was a period when it was hard to get it or it wasn't made in the United States?
CB:  	Oh yes, that's true.  The more advanced equipment industry started in Europe and for a long time special materials were purchased abroad.
LS:    	When did that change?
CB:  	That changed gradually but particularly after World War II.  
LS:    	But not before then?
CB:  	I suppose even during the War technical equipment had to be manufactured here and of course since the War why I suppose we export equipment to other countries.  There are still specialty items which may be purchased elsewhere and I wouldn't be surprised if the Japanese weren't competing in quite a number of areas.
00:01:37
LS:    	I'm not sure whether we said all you meant to say about the inbreeding of the department.
CB:  	Yes.  All right.  I could run through a list of some of the people.  Marvin Johnson was one of Peterson's--was associated with Peterson for many years.  Went to Prague.  Frank Strong was in Switzerland for a while, Zurich.  
LS:   	 So we're talking about both inbreeding and students going abroad.
CB:  	Yes.  Well Frank Strong--no Frank Strong got his Ph.D. in the chemistry department and moved over to biochemistry later.  And he was sort of the expert on chemistry within the department.  Then, oh well, Hector DeLuca quite a bit later went to Cambridge in a tissue culture ??? 
LS:    	So even after the War they ???
CB:  	Oh yes, even after the War.  Bill Hoekstra went to Redding, England, again.  Lardy was in Canada during the War, in Toronto, and worked with a European who was a refugee from Europe.  So this system of going abroad was very much a part of the picture.  And I think I mentioned in connection with the start of the Enzyme Institute that E.B. Fred's idea was that with the European labs less available and American students increasing, numbers of Americans wanting to do postdoctoral work, that Wisconsin was a place where one could set up a postdoctoral institute.  The funds for the--the outside funds for the Enzyme Institute came on that argument.
LS:    	Yes I'll ask you about that later I guess.  So you mostly got your own students.  Were you criticized for this?  Oh, incidentally, did other departments send their students to Europe also?
CB:  	Some of them, I think.  But not--chemistry for instance--organic chemistry for instance, which had many, many students and very good ones.  Nearly all of them went into industry.  
LS:   	 Their graduate students?  More than yours?
CB: 	More than ours, yes.  But I really don't know.  
00:04:40
But I would guess that there was more an interchange of faculty people.  I remember when Johnson and Wiles were added to the department.  They came from two other schools and comparable Wisconsin people went to other schools.  There was a pretty good relationship between some of the organic chemistry departments.
LS:    	Which other ones?
CB:  	Illinois was one of the good ones.  I think Wiles came from Michigan.  Johnson came from Harvard.  But in later years I had less contact with organic so I really can't say.  But I think it's true that every one of the Wisconsin--let's say the biochemistry graduates now on the biochemistry faculty, without exception, they all spent some time postdoctoral in another institution.  But Julius Adler, one of the younger ones, spent his years at Stanford.
LS:    	But most of them were graduate students here.  This--in a strong department this developed sort of ???  In a weak department it can be disastrous.
CB:  	Exactly.
LS:    	In your department it worked.
CB:  	And there was a time when, oh beginning about the middle '50s or thereabouts, where many of the younger faculty members in the department--well, there were, others had been brought in from elsewhere and there was really a real movement to stop this inbreeding.  But well, the present people, DeLuca certainly, are O.K.  Harper was the head of the--had a joint appointment in our department and nutritional sciences, was the head of nutritional sciences for a while. And of course now the biochemistry department is so diverse that, as they used to say about genetics, one wing can hardly understand the papers written by the other. 
LS:	Yes, in the book, everybody’s cross-listed, somebody, almost everybody, with another department or institution. 
00:7:48
	Well, we’re still a bit in the 30s, and it does occur to me to wonder… You, I don’t know what your opinion of Elvehjem and Hart as scientists… I gathered, when you said that Link was the outstanding – and other people have said that too. I’m just wondering how all these fine graduate students got trained.
CB:	Yeah. No, if you read the biography of Elvehjem—
LS:	Yes, I did.
CB:	You did? Uh, I tried to put the emphasis on where the real talent was. And he was somebody who could sit in on the committee meeting, and people would talk around the subject, and he would make a suggestion, and then the arguments would go on for a long, long time, and the conclusion that finally emerged was what Elvehjem had suggested an hour or two beforehand. 
LS:    	So you think--
CB:  	And not because he pounded the table and insisted on his way of doing it but he had an amazing facility for taking a group of facts and seeing the next logical step.
LS:    	Does this make him a great scientist?
CB:  	Applied to scientific problems, yes.  It is a very useful--I don't know what you mean by great.  I think there were people who would say that many times what Elvehjem were small steps.  He was a very good organizer.  The nicotinic acid recognition came as a result of activity of quite a few people and he was the guiding spirit of the whole thing.  I think he managed many things at once at a time when the vitamin B complex was, seemed like a tangled mess, and ultimately clarity emerged and he had a good deal to do with this.  I suppose there are different kinds of brilliance and Link, as a spectacular speaker, personality, was very different from Elvehjem.  And Steenbock was also different from the other two.
LS:   	 If one were to rank them as scientists or can't you do that?
CB:  	I wouldn't want to do that.
LS:    	All right.
CB:  	Each one made real substantial contributions.  And more than once so it obviously was not a lucky shot in the dark.
LS:    	Let's see…
00:11:00
I still would like you to say what you said about salaries and the way Hart ran the department which is interesting and I think is characteristic of the University at the time.  So would you describe your--
CB:  	Yes.  Well Hart, Hart was the chairman and he prepared the departmental budget and this involved salaries and this wasn't anybody else's business.  This must have been the practice, oh I suppose until maybe about 1930 when Steenbock and Peterson were of sufficient stature that they at least wanted to know what was going on.  But faculty meetings that I had any contact with did not involve people's salaries.  There were very spirited discussions on whether somebody should be added to the staff as an assistant professor.  Originally these were the qualifications of people that we all knew.  But they--whether this was the time to promote this man was what the argument was about.  And what his function would be as an independent investigator.  Actually in many cases the new man was associated with an older one.  Elvehjem was associated with Hart.  Johnson was associated with Peterson.  My association with Steenbock was not quite so strong because when I came back from Europe I was assigned to the cancer problem and I was housed in physiology for two years and came back to biochemistry to teach Steenbock's courses and had some space of my own, partly in the Steenbock area, but with the understanding I could continue with the cancer problem and much of my work was done--at first all of it with Harry Rusch and some of his people.  So once again we had four authors on a published paper.  Then later on as I remained in biochemistry and taught the vitamins course, my research tended to move over in the direction of the materials that I had to be ahead of in connection with my teaching program.
LS:    	I'm trying to get the time phase straight.  You--when you would have been in the department in the position to go to faculty meetings how soon was that?
CB:  	I became an assistant professor in 1941.  
LS:    	So you weren't really in the '30s.  You wouldn't have been going to--
CB:  	No, no I did not go to faculty--
LS:    	When did Hart die?
CB:  	In the early '50s.
LS:    	Ah, I see.  So all through the '40s he was the chairman. CB:  He was chairman until '44 I think.  He had to--I remember the meeting very well when he told us that you can check his years.  A chairman had to retire the chairmanship at age 69.  And he retired as a professor at 70.  So when he knew that he was going to retire, so this must have been 1940, no '43 because he was born in '75 so that would have been '45 when he retired.  So this must have been one year before giving up the chairmanship he once told us in a faculty meeting that he would have to retire as chairman at the end of the year and we would undoubtedly be asked to vote on who our choice of chairman would be.  As a matter of fact this system was in affect in the '30s--well even in the '30s.  We would get a notice from the dean and an envelope to go directly to the dean with a statement "My choice for chairman of biochemistry for the following year is _____".  Well this was a joke as far as we were concerned because Hart was chairman and that was it.  Nobody wanted to change the chairmanship.  And by the time that he did retire Elvehjem had been actually carrying out functions of the chairmanship.  He was so closely connected with Hart that there was just no doubt at all as to who the next chairman was going to be and who it should be.
00:16:35
LS:    	Was there any discussion of it?
CB:  	Oh there was--yes, but Elvehjem was the heir apparent and discussion was kind of--incidentally, a light on how E.B. Fred operated.  I heard this later.  He first went to Peterson as the oldest professor and in effect said "Would you like to be chairman" or "I am assuming that you really don't want to be bothered with the chairmanship and who do you think would be the best man?"  And then he went to Steenbock and said the same thing.  And so the older staff people--
LS:    	That's nice.  So they didn't feel neglected.
CB:  	And also Link was senior to Elvehjem at that time and one of the first things Elvehjem did as chairman was to appoint a committee of the three elders to be the budget committee.
LS:    	So they would have a say in salaries.
CB:  	Yes.  But I understand that they didn't particularly want to be bothered.  But at least the opportunity--the door was open.  
00:18:15
And you see Elvehjem became dean of the Graduate School not so many years after he was chairman and he actually became both jobs.  So much departmental business had to be done by committees at that time.  But Elvehjem's contacts in the University as a whole were such that one was perfectly happy to let him grade such things as salaries.  And we never really knew who was getting what and there were--immediately after the War there were a good many people--there was a great deal of expansion and in hiring people there was a great deal of discussion whether one man's talents or particular expertise was preferable to somebody else’s.  But on the salary question, that was up to the chairman and the dean.  We were never in on that.
LS:   	 You were saying something about that you had to--if it was necessary to pay somebody a lot of money to get them in.  And what was it, Elvehjem, who said, "Well that's all right.  We have to have them."  Or how did that go?
CB:  	Yes this was during the later Elvehjem years when we began to bring in people from other places.  The argument was simply that we want the best man we can get and it is up to the chairman and the dean to negotiate a salary which will get him, which will bring him.  And implied in that was that the new man might be brought in at a very substantial salary if that was necessary.  But during that period the salaries automatically went up because there was a demand for younger people of academic quality.
LS:   	You said you were given a sizeable salary raise to keep you from going somewhere else and then you noticed that you didn't get any raises for subsequent years. 
CB:  	Raises for a while.  But that was all right.  That was sort of a temporary bonus but in time I'm sure I was handled like everybody else.
00:20:57
LS:    	Would you talk about your awareness for one thing of WARF.  In the background as really sort of a, you must have thought of it as a fairy godmother ??? biochemistry.
CB:  	Oh yes, exactly.  Well one thing--that even goes back to my graduate student days.  When the patents on irradiated milk--when irradiation of milk itself was the means of adding vitamin D, this was a big money maker and to control the product.  The government labs were not equipped to run biological assays on vitamin A activity and so the Alumni Foundation set up a laboratory of their own and their licensees had to pay for periodic analysis of samples of their product which were bought at the open market.  The first man involved in this was actually at the desk in the laboratory of the lab bench opposite of mine.  This was done in the biochemistry building to begin with and then when the WARF lab was started why that was where these analyses were made.  And also the WARF lab was a place that hired biochemists before there were jobs anywhere else and some of these people ended up ultimately in very good commercial jobs.  I might mention two of them, both became presidents of the Wisconsin Alumni Association.  One was a man by the name of Keenan who was one of Elvehjem's people who started as an employee in the Foundation.
LS:    	You mean in WARF?
CB:  	Yes in WARF.  And then later on moved to an industrial job and became prominent nationally in Alumni affairs.
LS:    	What's his first name?
CB:  	He was Art Keenan as a student, but John Arthur is his name.  And the other one was Carl Kreiger who has been involved in--He went to Campbell Soup and became a vice president and ultimately president of the Wisconsin Alumni Association as well. 
LS:	Is he the one that wrote the biography of Steenbock?
CB:  	No, no.  That was Howard Schneider.  But yes the WARF Fellowships were a godsend and particularly in keeping Ph.D.'s on the campus.  For instance I got my Ph.D. in 1933 and the '32 Ph.D.'s both in biochemistry and in chemistry proper without exception were still on the campus.  There were no jobs for any of these people and some of them were really top people.  And the fellowship paid very little, I think it was less than $100 per month.  But this kept body and soul together and the people were able to continue with research work and continue in an academic environment.  So when you say fairy godmother, yes, that was very much the case.
00:25:22
LS:	Did you feel that you, that your department would get the--it got any special treatment because of Steenbock?
CB:	I don't think so.  At that time E.B. Fred was the graduate dean and he was very much involved in the administration of--in the handling of Ag funds and his argument and basic philosophy was that the fund should go to departments which could use them most effectively.  And then Steenbock personally of course was--well I was just going to say was handled in a special way.  In one sense he was and in another he wasn't.  He insisted that the allotment of graduate students who were on WARF Fellowships unassigned were handled by a departmental committee and that he had no special claim on any of them.  But he did, of course, get some of them.  And how much he had in the way of WARF funds that came through the Graduate School, I don't believe I ever knew.  We were more aware of the funds which came through his own private route which I think I explained beforehand were handled.  These were part of what he should have received as his share of the patent money, his personal share of the patent money which was actually held by the Foundation and then used by him for laboratory expenses, including salaries.   
LS:	You didn't have to apply for these grants did you?
CB:	No.  Oh yes we did.  To the Graduate School.  
LS:	Do you mean you filled out a form or--?
CB:  	Yes.  Some of my research assistants, for instance, were supported by a fellowship from the Graduate School.
LS:    	Now that's in the '40s.  You didn't--yes.
CB:  	This is in the '40s.  Yes, before then.  Yes I had my first graduate assistant I actually had--well I became an assistant professor in '39.  That did not involve tenure.  But I did have a graduate student who started his research work then.  And he was a--his first year he was on a Graduate School Fellowship and that was WARF money.  Then later on he took on a teaching assignment and he was paid from departmental funds and the cancer project which came from the Graduate School, that money went to the next man, the next graduate student that was hired.
LS:    	Well would he apply or would you for him?
CB:  	No in that--oh, for the student?  Oh no, the professor applied.  The student did not.  Later on, after the War, when there were national fellowships through the National Science Foundation and later on through National Institutes of Health, many of those applications went directly from the student to the granting agency.  We usually had students do that after, for maybe their third year.  We supported them the first years and then their application to the national organization could involve proof of accomplishment and so in general our students fared very well in applying.  And the big advantage of the outside grants was that they included family supports and so postwar people were older and many of them had families or were developing families and so the outside support was very welcome.  But then immediately--back to WARF.  Immediately after the War there was a big grant from the Foundation to the Graduate School specifically for fellowships for returning veterans.
LS:    	How did you ask for that?
CB:  	And these, you see, these supplemented so-called GI money.
LS:    	Is that something that the department thought up and asked WARF for or--?
CB:  	No, that I think was E.B. Fred's idea and probably with many--after consulting many people.  Because that was the other aspect of E.B. Fred's way of operating.  He always consulted.  He was accused of consulting everybody but the janitor but—
00:31:03
Tape 3, Side 2
00:31:06
LS:	About your own work, did you at any point have to apply for a grant from the Graduate School or were you working with people who already had big grants?
CB:	Oh I, like everybody else, I had to apply elsewhere.  I had grants from the American Cancer Society, for example.  And I had many grants from the National Institutes of Health.  And sometimes there were fellowship--well, when there was more fellowship money available then sometimes you needed to apply for additional funds for supplies and equipment for that individual.  So that, yes, the writing of reports and applying for money was very much a part of a professor's life.
LS:    	Was it ???
CB:  	Up to--see I sort of stopped when I--in 1966 when I went to Peru and had only--I had a number of people finishing up and one or two who were joint majors whose work could be taken care of by somebody else.  I was 60 years old at the time and was asked to go to Peru and I thought, well, some of my own graduate students were doing more advanced work than I was and maybe what I had to offer in a different environment would be more important than just another biochemist in a department that was full of nutritional biochemists.
LS:    	Was it a wise decision?
CB:  	It was a very interesting one, yes.  And I actually stayed for three years.  I was in a College of Agriculture and sort of attached to the dean's office.  I had to learn Spanish and I gave seminars and I even taught a course in Spanish and this was quite an experience I can assure you.  These were younger faculty people and sometimes I wasn't quite sure of a word and I'd sort of hesitate and they'd blurt it out.  
LS:    	I wanted to know whether you ever--whether it was a strain applying to grants.  Were you ever turned down?  Did you have to work very hard to get just the right wording?  Or was it a pretty automatic thing?
CB:  	No it wasn't automatic.  And incidentally I spent a great deal of time on national committees which had to review these applications and that was really a chore.  And I had to--oh one was a three year stint originally for the National Cancer Society and then a three year stint for NIH originally on more general biochemistry, it was called a metabolism study section.  Later on there was a special nutrition study section and I was on that for a number of years.  So I had both sides of it and for a while it was relatively easy and then the number of applications increased and the acceptances were a little harder to get so it did become more a strain later on.  
00:35:34
Well you see the people who had--now the other thing which developed in the '60s was that research professors often had assistants who were post docs, who already had a doctor's degree.  So, for example, Hector DeLuca's group has always had several who got their degrees somewhere else and in a sense now our department is doing what the foreign laboratories did for us.
LS:    	Why did you mention that?  What brought it to your mind?
CB:  	Well you were talking about financing.  And we were also talking about difficulties and strains.  I guess it was the word strain.  Because every four years your best assistants--when you had graduate students every four years your best people left and you had to start over.  And if you wanted to continue the same problem you were starting a relatively untrained individual on that problem and other laboratories, maybe your competitors, had somebody working on that problem with postdoctoral assistance rather than with a first year graduate student.  So this was particularly obvious, for instance, in the cancer problem.  When McArdle consisted of only three people, and I was one of them, then our assistants were part of the family and then when I moved to biochemistry, well, Harold Rusch had some assistants and I had some and we collaborated.  But gradually McArdle grew and the people who were hired were Van Potter,  Jim Miller, Elizabeth Miller, both my people, by the way, and they continued at a very high level of activity, pretty much the same problems that I was interested in.  And it wasn't quite fair to expect a new graduate student to be competing with them so the professor, in this case me, had to decide on a problem in the area which was attainable by a new man.  And those problems couldn't always be the things that post docs were working on elsewhere.  So the post doc element in research groups was a factor in how research-
LS:    	It made it easier and I'll bet you did better research.  Your research went better.
CB:  	Yes of course.  Yes.
00:38:52
LS:    	So you really had to choose between whether you were training people--
CB:  	Whether training, yes.  Exactly.
LS:    	Or getting your own research done.
CB:  	And so, for instance, when you were talking about--a while ago about Elvehjem's group.  Elvehjem had many, many people which he started as incoming graduate students.  Once he became dean, Alf Harper took over the day by day management of his research team.  But Elvehjem still knew what was going on and still was a part of it.  Elvehjem never--he had some post docs but not very many.  But it was the younger people who came in later who developed, who almost preferred post docs.  The people in the Enzyme Institute, for example, operated primarily with post docs.  David Green I don't think ever had a graduate student.  His team of laboratory workers were all Ph.D.'s, mainly from somewhere else.  Henry Lardy had Ph.D.'s always but usually had one or two graduate students and they were very able and special people because they had to compete with people who were more experienced than they were.  So that's how research done in biochemistry has changed through the years.
LS:	How did this affect you?  I mean--what you're saying???
CB:	Well I actually had to change--I would say that a good--one problem led into another.  I never really broke or stopped research and dreamt up a brand new area but maybe one--Let me back up a step.  Our Ph.D. theses usually consisted of three or four chapters or special sections, each of which might be the basis of a published paper.  And every student I had either did some--always did some animal work and always had to have a chemically oriented problem as well because much animal work was very time consuming and it would take a long time.  You had to feed an animal for a long time before the thing developed which you wanted to observe.  In the meantime the man fed his animals for about an hour but he had the rest of the day to do something else.  And this was a chemical problem related to his feeding problem.  But then results emerged which pointed to other areas of research.  So there was a period of time when my laboratory was involved in microbiological assays for amino acids and for some of the vitamins.  We were more interested in what happened to food stuffs within the animal body.  That I think was the thread through all of the research which came out of my department.  And, of course, vitamins were--this involved vitamins and involved proteins and ultimately minerals.  For example, one of the joint majors had been working on vitamin E and didn't--and it turned out that the mineral selenium had a good deal to do with what one observed in vitamin E deficiency.  And this was a new area and the next graduate student worked on selenium and was very successful and his research gave way to four more problems on selenium so the last research group was mainly on selenium.  And the key man in that group was Howard Ganther who now is on the faculty in the Department of Nutrition, not in Biochemistry.  There was a period of time when we were working on sterols, some of the--not on cholesterol itself, but on some of the related compounds.  And that was a very good chemical problem and was very productive.  And was sort of ancillary to the cholesterol problem but didn't really have anything to do with heart disease.  But that was supported from NIH funds and some of those people also had fellowships of their own.  So I suppose looking back on my career I would say maybe the men and women who emerged from it are the single most important element.  We published nearly 200 papers.  They undoubtedly contributed something.  But many of my people have very good jobs now and have done well subsequently.
LS:    	So you're saying that what--
CB:  	So I have no apologies for the training that those people got or, if you want to be real conservative, it was obvious that some very talented people were not spoiled while they were with us.
LS:    	Are you saying that what you--the best thing you accomplished was training people?
CB:  	I think so.  And we started with very select and talented people and they produced research and some of them have continued for the rest of their academic careers on what was started as graduate students.  The two Millers are a case in point.  One of the nutritional people who became the head of the Army nutritional laboratories, the head of Ran, a very big show, very productive.  We had some very capable women among the home ecs and they have given a good account of themselves in academic.
00:46:52
LS:    	Would you have stayed on, do you think, at McArdle if you hadn't had to go back and teach Steenbock's courses?
CB:  	I might have.  I might have, yes.  This was--I certainly was--even while I was with Harold Rusch, the work done on the cancer problem all had a nutritional aspect to it and much of it involved exposing animals to carcinogenic agents and then modifying the diet and determining whether the development of tumors was accelerated or slowed down.  That was the general.  Now much of that work actually had--I think the results which we observed were certainly reproducible but the carcinogenic agents, some of them, are altered in the body and what happens to that carcinogenic agent depends on how well the animal is fed or what else is done.  So diet, except a high or low calorie diet does not really make much difference as far a cancer is concerned that is already in existence.  But I suppose we are all exposed to low concentrations of very many different compounds which can be carcinogenic in higher concentrations and it may well be that what we eat may determine whether one or another of these substances is destroyed more rapidly or, on the wrong side of the story, whether it is converted to an active compound more easily.  So the dietary factor--there is a dietary factor.  But the present organic diet cultists claim that you can do a lot of things which I simply don't believe and for which there isn't any evidence.  

00:49:40
LS:    	I guess some questions have to do with how much--how you perceived the research committee, how important it was.  Was it merely a source of money, this is the Graduate School Research Committee.  Was it merely a source of money?  Was it important?  Who was on the committee?  Did you pretty much always get what you wanted?  Just questions like that.
CB:  	Well actually I had no contact with the committee here.  And these committees were made up by representatives from all parts of the campus.  And sometimes the committee member--I remember one of my projects, a cancer project, a man came to interview me on it and it was Salic Perlman.  And I told him what we were doing and when we got through he said, "Well if they sent an innocent like me to interview you, I don't think you have to worry about whether it will be approved."  But I'm sure there were cases where knowledgeable people were--did look at the proposals.
LS:    	Do you think this wasn't a good idea to send somebody from??? 
CB:  	Oh, no.  But in contrast to the way the national committees operated.  Those committees were made up of well-known people.  For instance on the committees that I served there were always medical people and there were usually a statistician who worked with biological phenomena.  In other words, various areas of expertise related to the central function of of this committee.  And so these were supposed to be informed opinions.  The people who voted on the projects at the national level.  Now there must have been projects within the University that came to the University committee that someone had his doubts about.  But I never--the problems in later years were rather--the dean would say something like, "Isn't this something for which you can get funds from the outside?"  And particularly once Bob Bock became graduate dean.  He had--funds were not so available and he had to make sure that what could come from the outside did come from the outside.  And very often graduate, Wisconsin grants were made as kind of insurance in case one of the other grants did not come through.  In later years there was often a situation where a grant would be approved but there wouldn't be funds available to fund it.  This is from the national level.
LS:    	And then would you hope to get some from the research committee?
CB:  	Local, yes.  
00:53:48
LS:    	You know I have thought of a specific question still on the department before we get into the general University and that is the whole furor over Karl Paul Link's desire to have vitamin K included in aspirin and Steenbock's opposition to making that possible except in prescription drugs.  I think that's the way it works.  Is that right?
CB:  	That isn't my impression.  I don't know--was Steenbock?  You might know this as you've looked through--
LS:    	I've just been reading newspaper clippings and—
CB:  	No it always seemed to me that the combination of vitamin K and aspirin was a good idea because it certainly is clear that chemically some of the salisilic acid derivatives arise from dicoumarol and they have some of the properties of dicoumarol.  Wasn't the--this was Link's argument.  [Break in tape.]  When Link's warfarin patent was turned over to the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation he in effect wiped his hands of the problem and said the licensing, the commercial use of it, the handling of the money, is up to them.  He would not be involved in that and privately he said "Look what too much involvement did to Steenbock."  So I think Link was absolutely right in promoting the use of vitamin K.  In fact it was a rather important discovery because in rheumatic fever the treatment of choice was very large doses of aspirin.  For many years.  And the medical literature contains many references to poor coagulation of the blood of patients with rheumatic fever and it was always assumed that this coagulation defect was part of the disease when, as a matter of fact, it was the result of the treatment.  So certainly for, as far as I know it is still approved practice of anyone taking a great deal of aspirin to take vitamin K as well.
LS:    	I've never heard of it.  According to this, it just--that put an end to it.  It wasn't passed by the WARF trustees.  When we finish I'll show you the article.  I think I can find it again.  Link got really angry about it.
CB:  	Well there's something else.  Just in recent years I've just been taking vitamin pills.  I'm old enough for that now.  But when I used to be--
LS:    	Me too.
CB:  	When I was sometimes interviewed or would get a phone call on what I thought of vitamin pills and my answer would be, "Well I've taught the graduate course in vitamins for so many years and I don't take them myself.  I believe in a well balanced diet."  But I think as you get older, to be on the safe side, why it's a wise thing to do.  But I've noticed that the multivitamin tablets that I have right now do not contain any vitamin K.  And just as there is--one can get too much vitamin A, and there's vitamin D toxicity and K has some adverse affects if you take too much.  I suppose that's the reason K is not in the multivitamin tablet.  The other one that is missing is folic acid.  And that can have--oh in some cases can increase the need for vitamin B12 or aggravates some other symptoms.  I don't think it's that serious, but just to be on the safe side that is omitted from vitamins.  But it seems to me that the combination of K and aspirin is just the right thing because if somebody only takes a few aspirins the amount of vitamin K will not hurt him and if he takes very many aspirin pills then maybe he does need some more vitamin K.  But the warfarin patent, the real moneymaking aspect of that is the rat killing, the rodenticide.
00:59:22
LS:    	And also there's a statement that E.B. Fred blocked Link's research on the cause of calf scours.  This was in 1952.
CB:  	Oh yes there was some argument.  Link had some idea and he actually had it tested I think at North Carolina, because he claimed that he couldn't get cooperation here.
LS:    	But you don't know what it was about?
CB:  	But the real details I don't exactly know what--
LS:    	He was censored by the regents, Link was at that point.  It seems puzzling.  I mean why would Fred have objected to it?
CB:  	Well Link--no but there was--Link, when he did something, he always did it with quite a flair and everybody knew what he was doing and saying.  And he was temperamentally inclined to be disrespectful to chairmen and deans and presidents.  
01:00:30
For instance this was a plus on the Link side.  After Pearl Harbor, when the Japanese in California were interned, the chemistry department at California Tech wrote to some of their personal friends on behalf of their ablest Japanese students and Link accepted one of them.  And President Dykstra objected very strongly and there was a real row.  And Dykstra’s argument was that the other students would be incensed and this individual might be abused.  Well as it turned out Mike (Miyoshi) Ikawa was a very self-effacing type of individual, personally.  Whether he always was that way--but he certainly when he arrived he said his objective was to be as inconspicuous as possible.  He got along very well with the other graduate students in his department.  He knew--in the Link group better than anybody else.  I had him in class.  He took course work everywhere else.  He was an absolute top student and he was the key man in the actual synthesis of warfarin.  And his name is on the patent.
LS:	Gee, that is something.  What a story.
CB:	So along with Link's cantankerousness there was the other side. 
01:02:30
Tape 4, Side 2
00:00:05
LS:    	This is more of the interview with Carl Baumann.  Your opinions of L&S as a faculty member.  I mean your--did you have any--was there any sense of rivalry or anything like that?
CB:  	Not particularly.  I think I had more personal reactions at the social level in the University Club where very often in a larger group some of the die-hards in the L&S College sort of didn't consider the rest of us as legitimate members of the faculty.  This old idea of the classics coming first and then literature and then a few other things.
LS:    	Do you mean to say this was in discussion or that they would ???
CB:  	These were just personal asides.  And just as one detects prejudice if he is the target.  Now these things were never said in so many words directly but there were people that I--well let me start over again.  I was glad that my career was spent with--let's see, under superiors other than the ones who were in Letters and Science.
LS:    	You mean Elvehjem and ???
CB:  	That's right.  And of course during the Fred years there was a real resentment on parts of the campus toward--Well there was a feeling that L&S was not properly represented in the administration and Fred of course, I suppose, was remiss on this because he immediately appointed Baldwin and then Bill ???.  He was more comfortable working with people that he knew very well.  But you see Elvehjem did just the opposite.  He appointed Fred Harrington and got people from the rest of the campus in the inner management, let's say higher echelon, if that's what you want to call it.  But I sometimes have listened to some individuals from the College of Letters of Science, just expounding on anything and I just thank my lucky stars that I was not answerable to them as a superior officer because--people who knew their own subjects very well but on the world at large came to conclusions that just weren't part of the real--
LS:    	These were particular people.
CB:  	These were particular individuals, yes.  But I think it's fair to say that, particularly toward the end of the Fred era, that there was resentment that Letters and Science was not properly represented.
LS:    	Oh definitely, yes.
CB:  	And also, of course, the Steenbock patent--or the arrangement with the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation was criticized very severely.  The irony of this is that when Steenbock turned over his patent that the funds from this was to be used in the natural sciences.  People in biochemistry and in agriculture thought he was being overly liberal because here were all these other science departments that were better equipped than the department in which the work had been--the key experiments had been done.  So Steenbock broadened, made the patent money available to any science at all and the rest of the campus in time resented--said that--I heard in faculty meeting, for example, somebody maintaining that this should never have been allowed.  That this should have been available to any part of the University.  So what looked, originally looked super generous to one group later on came to be criticized as too restrictive.  What Elvehjem did, and I think Fred also as graduate dean before he became president, with WARF money available for the natural sciences what University research money was available, which wasn't so very much, was not given to natural sciences.  That went to the rest of the University.  And this was even more true in the Elvehjem era.  
LS:    	What did you think of the push to get WARF money for social sciences?
CB:  	Well just personally, after all I grew up and have the prejudices of a natural scientist, I don't like to see the word science used as an entry.  It ought to be the nature of the work that's going on.  Social science, of course, has been supported for quite a long time.  I think to the hardcore scientist much of their work isn't really very scientific because it is hard to reproduce and hard to know when they've achieved a result.  There is, of course, snobbishness the other way.  To a biological research man, particularly in my generation and particularly the older ones, were often critical of medical people who came to conclusions and were very confident of their conclusions on a basis which no scientist would accept.  But the other side of the coin is that the medical man had to make a decision on a basis of incomplete information and the research scientist had the privilege of deferring his judgment until he did more work whereas the medical man had to act then.  So a lot of that criticism was unfair.  And it is certainly true that the sorts of problems that social scientists address themselves to need to be looked at--
LS:    	You do think they do have something--
CB:  	They need to be looked at.  Whether what they’re doing is really producing anything, I can't say.  Incidentally, in later years, down at the University Club I used to come in contact with Walter Morton very frequently.  And he, of course, was always very critical of the social scientists and his own daughter became a natural scientist.  And he said, "Well the social scientists are building models and maybe those models have some connection with reality and maybe they don't."  That was his argument.  And because he, himself, was successful as a consultant to corporations and in the stock market why he could say, "Well, they may talk well but what can they do?"  So I've been exposed to that kind of--But I can't ??? if I had to swear on a stack of bibles what I think of the social scientists I really can't answer.
LS:    	You prefer not to.
CB:  	Well, not that I'm hiding anything but I think they have to make conclusions on the basis of, well to the best of their ability.  Whether their conclusions become gospel truth.  Whether one can't be a social scientist unless he votes in a certain way.  When that sort of thing creeps in then I would say that the word science shouldn't be applied.  That's another thing I might say about the biochemistry department.  In all the years I was with it, when potential staff members were discussed the politics of the man never entered into it.  We never--I never knew how most of my associates voted.
LS:    	You're saying you feel that the social scientists tend to be that way.
CB:  	That this is more an element in their mode of operation.  Now maybe there are some individuals, maybe I've just seen some of these individuals.  But in biochemistry certainly Link was far left and Steenbock was far right.  Elvehjem I couldn't say.  I'm sure he had opinions.  
00:10:22
LS:    	Were you a member of a dining club?
CB:  	Not a University dining club.  For a while I was a member of something called the American Business Club which was a group of city people and faculty people, the faculty wasn't very well represented.  They were mainly in physics and mathematics.
LS:   	 When was this?
CB:  	This was, oh in the last--recently.  That group has rather died out.  It was--
LS:    	Since your retirement?
CB:  	Yes.  Well, yes and a little before.  No the University Club, of course, I've lunched there for years and so my personal contacts go beyond the department and I rather welcomed that.  Way back when Nobel Clark started an assistant professor's club because he thought the departments were getting too big that the younger members ought to have more contact with their own counterparts.  And that became known as Our Group.  That continued for a while.  One of the members became, well quite a number of them became administrators and so on. 
LS:	Well you were aware of dining clubs?
CB:  	Oh yes.
LS:    	Were you--did it--I mean many people must not have belonged to them.  Was there a sense of being excluded if one wasn't in them?
CB:  	If there was I wasn't aware of it.  I certainly never--I don't ever recall hearing anybody make any kind of a remark about people in dining clubs.
00:12:40
LS:    	Were you on many committees?  You said you were in a divisional, a couple, the two divisional committees.  Were you on other University committees?
CB:  	No.  
LS:    	Just those?
CB: 	 Yes.  The committees I was--Oh I was once on a committee--I've been on Ad hoc committees for the Graduate School.  But no, I was not involved in the--
LS:    	Now why would that be?  
CB:  	I think--well Elvehjem was so obviously a representative that I don't know how many others, let's say my contemporaries in the department, that they were very active on committees.
LS:    	They weren't you're saying.
CB:  	I just don't know.  Yes, Frank Strong and Marvin Johnson, I really don't know whether they--
LS:    	Well Hector DeLuca I think has been--
CB:  	Oh well, of course.  But he's younger and he's in the sense an Elvehjem.  Very different temperamentally but has a large research group and is very active in the rest of the country as well.
LS:    	People like A.W. Peterson, Glenn Pound, Sellery, Russell, Slicter, Daniels, well you've spoken of Daniels.
CB:  	Pound, by the way, I had in class.
LS:    	Did you?
CB:  	Yes.  When he was a graduate student.                   
LS:    	Do you have any particular opinions as to their effectiveness or did they affect your career in any way?
CB:  	I wouldn't say, no.  No, the deans had a job to do and I think many of us were glad we didn't have to do it.  Committee work was mainly within the department and particularly in the years when Elvehjem was graduate dean because this meant in effect that more work had to be done, administrative work, concerned the committees.  And sometimes I guess Elvehjem operated a little bit like General Eisenhower.  People prepared, well did the ground work and the choices were presented and he made a choice if that was necessary.  If the committee could come to a conclusion, fine.  But if there were two possibilities or three, well Elvehjem would be confronted with them.
00:15:30
LS:    	Do you know there is a belief on campus that faculty governance is a very important and unique part of the University.  Did you go to faculty meetings?  Do you think faculty governance is a fact?
CB:  	The trouble with faculty governments used to be that a few people did all the talking.  There were some individuals who simply took it on themselves to comment on anything.
LS:    	??? was one of them.  I know that he's often been--
CB:  	Yes, and who's the man in geography?
LS:    	Oh Harts???.
CB:  	Harts??? and later the man in mathematics.  And so the senate system I think grew out of first the size of the University which made an all faculty meeting pretty wasteful.  
LS:    	Did you go to the faculty meetings?
CB:  	Once in a while when there was something up that I was interested.  But most of the time I did not.  I think I went more often when there was--when, as part of a division where some divisional matter had to come up for faculty consideration and then the division members felt obligated to go.  But, no I would say that most of my generation did not involve itself in all University affairs.  The representation was there in Elvehjem, particularly.  And then later on Burris as chairman was very effective.
LS:    	That's right.  He was on the University committee.
CB:  	He was on the University committee for a long time.  And then, now, the DeLuca era.  
00:17:41
LS:    	What did you think of Harrington as a president?
CB:  	I had very little contact with him.  We liked the way he spoke after E.B. Fred's limitations.  He really didn't influence our day-to-day operation any way that we could see.  
00:18:07
Of course toward the end of his term in office when the whole campus was in an uproar, why we were affected.
LS:    	You were, were you?
CB:  	In the attitude of some of the students, including some of our graduate students.
LS:    	Were they active in the TAA at all?
CB:  	Not--no, but there were a few people who were inclined that way, yes.  No the general run of the average biochemist wasn't--
LS:    	I wouldn't have thought so.
CB:  	No.  One of the things that surprised me in Peru when there were student strikes and so on, that very often the center of activity was the medical school or the engineering college.
LS:    	Is that right.  Just the opposite of here.
CB:  	This was--our people were so busy simply trying to keep their heads above water that they had no time for that sort of thing.  No, I was--of course I was in--I was in Peru from '66 to '69.
LS:    	Oh, so you missed it. 
CB:  	And I came back a number of times.  I was back in the summer of '68 to teach my graduate course during summer school.  And at that time there were people on the lower campus with strange costumes sitting around--more of the flower children.  There wasn't anything violent about it.  But when I came back in '69 there had already been a great deal of trouble.  And my teaching assignments after I came back--I taught nurses for quite a while.  And there were a number in there who thought more of the, oh well boycotting lettuce and all that kind of stuff and the general feeling that the faculty didn't know as much as the students, activists.  And it was kind of--after a lifetime of teaching very able and very well motivated people it hardly seemed worthwhile to waste your time on somebody who already knew all the answers.  Even those, if those answers are wrong.  One of Homer Adkins' comments in his graduate course was that the trouble of his students who had learned organic chemistry, even at Wisconsin, was that they knew so many things that weren't so.  And I think that activists era--this was before the activists.  He didn't live to see the activists.  But in retrospect, one of the strange things was that the students seemed to believe everything that their own leaders told them and were so completely skeptical of what others, their professors said.  
00:21:35
We had a day of, what was it called, a day of concern, when this University was closed.
LS:    	In Peru?
CB:  	No, no, here.  And everybody--this was after, or was it just before the bombing or after, I don't remember.  It was shortly after I came back.  And the meeting was held in the large seminar room to discuss War problems and there was a young fellow talking about research simply has to be stopped because it is paid for and supported by the military industrial complex.  And graduate students are merely used to further the ends of the military and of corporations.  And I didn't know this fellow and of course I had been gone for three years and I asked him whether he was a--had any contact with science.  And he said he was not a science major but he had had a course in botany but he knew a good deal about the science problem.
LS:    	Who was he, do you know?
CB:  	I don't know the fellow's name.  But this kid was telling a bunch of faculty people and graduate students that research had to be and should be stopped.  And as far as I--I don't know what the situation is today but just the point you raised at the beginning of this session on support from outside sources, we never were told what to do.  That was up to the professor.  Now it is true that if funds were available, for instance Elvehjem had a large project on the composition of meat.  The vitamin and protein value of different cuts of meat and different kinds of meats treated in certain ways.  And this was a great deal of routine research.  But his people were supported to do this and some of his best graduates grew up under this support and they had time to work on other things as well and their theses contained this work and also something else.
LS:   	Well you're saying this work was supported by--
CB: 	 By the National Meat Foundation.  This would be an example.  Because the money was available and students needed to be supported, money like this was accepted on a project which had value, there's no doubt about it, but which was not very challenging intellectually.  But the students didn't suffer intellectual deprivation because they were free to, and they did--and this is where this arrangement of a thesis with separate chapters that I referred to earlier comes into the picture.
LS:    	Oh I see.  Is that one of the reasons that that system was used?
CB:  	No, but that system of theses that contained somewhat related parts meant that one could have a relatively routine chapter and then some other one which was more imaginative and which maybe didn't succeed.
LS:    	Oh I see.  That's a good arrangement. 
CB:  	So nobody suffered under that arrangement really.  But, later on, when public opinion changes something that is very normal can be made to look wicked.
LS:    	Well it may be.  It may turn out to be a little bit more--a little bit different when big industry is involved.  Who knows?  I don't know.
CB:  	Well sure.  I don't know.
LS:    	Well this is probably a good time to close.  We are getting to the end of this tape.  I thank you very much.
00:26:03	End of Second Interview Session. 
[End of oral history #253]