UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON ARCHIVES
ORAL HISTORY PROJECT

Interview #317 
ALBERTY, ROBERT

ALBERTY, Robert (1921- )
Professor of Chemistry; Dean of Graduate School
At UW: 1946-67

Interviewed: 1985	
Series: Life Sciences
Interviewer: Laura Smail
Length: 1 hour
 
Reasons for coming to UW; Research projects in 1950s; Research in enzymology; Chemistry Department; Issues in life science programs during deanship; Relationship between UW and state industry; Enrollment and federal funding; Decision to leave UW for MIT.

Tape 1

00:00:01	Why he came to the UW. 

00:01:57	Williams outstanding chemist, NAS.  Active project.  Collisions with administrations.  Gift of ultracentrifuge.  Regents' concern for safety.  Williams could be abrupt.  Had high goals.

00:04:58	Doing graduate work nights.  Ph.D. in 1947.

00:06:28	Planned postdoc at Columbia.  UW offered instructorship.  Matthews promised sabbatical leave.  So accepted postdoc year with Linus Pauling.  Proudest of developing method to get pure gamma globulin from blood plasma.  Became interested in enzymes.

00:10:13	Summer 1950 work with Potter, Green.  Green's contribution to enzymology.  Alberty interested in mathematical and physical side of enzymes.

00:14:10	RA doesn't remember effort to get Krebs.  

00:19:29	Molecular biology.  Nomura and Halvorsen both had molecular biology programs.  Problem was relationship of program to biochemistry and McArdle Lab and source of money.  Got federal money.  Recalls recruiting Khorana.  Visited him in Vancouver.  Khorana didn't want to teach.  

00:24:00	Recruiting for molecular biology relatively easy.

00:25:25	Khorana now at M.I.T.

00:25:55	MURA.  Accelerator went to Chicago because Fermi there.

00:27:27	Lima, Peru project.

00:28:25	Computing.

00:29:05	End of side 1.

00:29:10	Hiring Mervin Muller.  Debate between digital and analog.  Not clear then which would prevail.  Barbara Newell involved.

00:33:00	Suomi invented weather satellites.  NASA gave money for building.  Bryson had controversial ideas.  Water Resources Management--Rohlich.  Good man.  Associate dean, ran UIR.  

00:36:03	Harlow controversial, difficult.  WARF board's interest in people and work on campus.  Support for quantitative research in the social sciences.  Alberty made many trips to Milwaukee, had associate dean there.  RA sympathetic with people in Milwaukee.  Industry needed an institution there.  Hazards of doing too much for industry; a university can't keep secrets.  University could help solve industrial pollution problems.  Kimberly Clark example.

00:41:23	Land grant money given to colleges in small towns unfortunate.  Had advantages, but was bad for industry.  Cities needed strong university, so RA sympathetic with Harrington for putting universities in metropolitan communities.

00:44:05	RA enthusiastic about theoretical chemistry.  Hirschfelder a friend.  Department faculty critical of him.  RA thought theoretical chemistry would  have practical uses.  Center very successful, contributed to strength of the department.  Much hostility to Hirschfelder when he came back from the war.  But calculation used more and more in chemistry.

00:47:18	Increase in enrollment of graduate students.  Federal funding decisions determine fate of the university.  

00:48:38	MIT approached RA in 1966 because he had reorganized graduate school.  Increase in federal money as of 1963 when RA became dean.  Wisconsin could profit from it.  Space, energy, biology.

00:51:48	Contrast of MIT and UW.  Similar size.  Scientific community at MIT stronger--radar, computers, accelerators.  More inter-departmental labs at MIT.  How MIT handles it.  
		
00:56:00	End of Tape 1

Tape 2

00:56:02	As private university, MIT can raise money and has quality control.  More freedom to do what they want.  But also more dependent on federal funding.  Question re Math Research Center.  MIT has its MRC off campus.  Space exploration contracts.

01:01:21	Question re taking Khorana.

01:02:05	Question re weakness of research in Medical School.  Strengths of UW.

01:05:07	End of interview.

END