UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON ARCHIVES
ORAL HISTORY PROJECT

Interview #291
RAPER, KENNETH B.

RAPER, Kenneth B. (1908-1987)
Professor of Bacteriology
At UW: 1953-1979

Interviewed: June 4, 1984, June 8, 1984		
Series: Life Sciences
Interviewer: Laura Smail
Length: 2 hours, 54 minutes
Transcript: 63 pages

Reasons for coming to UW; Prior training; Interest in fungi; Position in Division of Soil Microbiology in Washington, D.C.; Work on slime molds; Graduate work at Harvard; Work on penicillin at Northern Regional Research Laboratory during WWII; Department personalities and issues; Research grants; Influence of NSF and NIH on direction of research.

Tape 1/Side 1

00:00:06 	Interviewer’s introduction. 

00:00:24	First awareness of University.  Undergraduate at North Carolina.  Used botany text written at UW.  Department had good reputation.  Gives names of well-known people in botany.  Later got to know E.B. Fred, who used to stop in at department when in Washington at N.A.S. meetings.  Later Raper was visiting professor at University of Illinois-Urbana (while at Peoria) giving one course on Saturday mornings.  Decided wanted to go into teaching.  Had offer at Columbia.  Wrote Fred, was invited up for interview.  Came up in 1953, January.

00:07:57	From 1940-45, worked on penicillin in lab at Peoria.  Describes background. 

00:11:49	The process of the research.  The mold on the cantaloupe.  Sent culture to UW so they'd contribute to further research on it.  Sent to labs all over country.  Worked on by two people in botany.  Stauffer and Backus.  Describes the further developments.  The rate at which the yields increased.  A patent situation that caused trouble.

00:21:34	Choice between Columbia and UW.

00:22:52	Discussing his prior training.  Had degree at Harvard in biological sciences.  While working in Washington went to night school at George Washington University.  Got masters degree in biology--bacteriology, botany.  Principal interest was fungi--molds.

00:24:54      Going back to how he got interested in fungi.  At end of first year in college was offered job as lab assistant, having done well in botany.  In close contact with three professors.  (Had expected to major in history.  Did minor in it.  Studied with Frank Porter Graham--his career.)  John Couch in botany department.  His excitement in his work infectious.  William C. Cooker another influence.

00:28:39	End of side.

Tape 1/Side 2

00:28:41	On graduation, took civil service exam for position in mycology in Washington.  Charles Thom came to interview him.  Got job--1929.  Thom an authority on aspergillus and penicillium.  Raper in charge of his collection of molds.  Thom suggested he go to graduate school at Harvard.  AAAS meetings there 1934.  KR talked to professor there.  Got fellowship, and leave from Washington.  At Harvard worked on fungi.  Before then had been working with slime molds.  Job was in Division of Soil Microbiology, so, interested in organisms in soils.  Little known about slime molds.  KR continued his work on slime molds at Harvard.  Still at it.  Publishing book in July.  The significance of the research.  Worked with William H. Weston at Harvard.  A year after KR left, John T. Bonner came to Harvard and began his work with slime molds.  

00:40:37	Widely studied today. Discussing questions being researched. 

00:45:22	Didn't get closely attached to Harvard.  Recalls apprehension when on way to Harvard.

00:47:49	When got back to job--just research now--Thom proposed study of a group of aspergillus molds.  So didn't get thesis written for four years (1940). 

00:50:48	1939 job available at Peoria--Northern Region Research Lab, Fermentation Division.  Objective.  KR to set up culture collection.  Took cultures from Washington since Thom about to retire. (Phone call interruption.  Discussing journals.  Science one KR finds most valuable.)  

00:53:59	Feeling was microorganisms hadn't been surveyed as fully as could be to see how might be made use of.  One part of project a distillery to produce motor fuel.  

00:55:50	End of side.

Tape 2/Side 1

00:56:15	More on the alcohol project.  Never fully operating.  Had to be round the clock; not enough money for labor.

00:57:36	When the English research group, most of attention was given to production of penicillin until 1945 or 1946.  Fifty or sixty people working on it.  KR was head of culture collection and in charge of research for penicillin-producing molds.  

00:59:22	The painting of the melon is in the bacteriology building.  Has created much interest in penicillin.  Is based on an inaccuracy.  Fully written up.

01:01:33	The atmosphere at the lab.  KR's brother, also a biologist, working on Manhattan Project.  Studying effects of beta radiation on lab animals.  Never could talk about it, so disturbed at effects he was finding.

01:04:13	KR was put on third floor of Ag Hall at UW.  The first teaching he did.  First course he offered was on use of molds in industrial processes.  

01:05:25	Question about course on molds in bacteriology.

01:11:10	When fewer students gave course only every second year.  When first given, height of antibiotic era.  Plenty of jobs.  Now not course given at all.  No one here to teach it.  Students in bacteriology interested primarily in microbial genetics, molecular biology--which they and staff regard as more up-to-date.  But food still gets moldy, feed gets moldy.  Someone needs to know what these things are.  KR sometimes called by people in industry for identification of molds.  They have an organism they can use; to get a patent they have to have a verifiable name for it.  Discusses courses given elsewhere--Davis, Rutgers.  None like the one KR gave.  Discussing moldy hay.

01:17:08	Question about Elizabeth McCoy.  Had dual life--spent as much time here as anyone; devoted to students; wide knowledge of bacteria in fermentations, nature.  But also a farmer.  Ran a farm successfully.  Her office was next to KR's.  Vigorous person.  Thin, wiry.  Didn't take care of herself the way she should have.  No one realized how ill she was.  Wouldn't ask for help.  Emily Chervenik a close friend.  Her research.  Had worked on penicillin.  May have assayed fermentations carried on here.  But when KR arrived, penicillin study had shifted to botany and to biochemistry (Backus and Stauffer; Marvin Johnson).  Focussing on high yielding strains.  In bacteriology didn't have any small fermenters, KR thinks.  

01:24:56	End of side.

Tape 2/Side 2

01:24:58	Close relationship of bacteriology and biochemistry.  More on McCoy.  Her standing in the department.

01:30:00	Others in the department.  Sarles' chairmanship for fifteen years.  Did not retire willingly.  Younger people felt needed new direction.  Joe Wilson became chairman.  Raper supported.  Bill Sarles rarely comes around to department.  KR, Sarles, Baldwin, Wilson meet at Blackhawk once a month, plus department chairman and some members.

01:37:53	Frazier.  KR met him in Washington.  Perry Wilson.  How Wilson happened to come to UW.

01:42:38	His course in writing on Saturday morning.  Subsequently dropped.  Used to require a written MA thesis.  KR's regret at dropping the requirement.

01:46:12	Marvin Johnson.  He used to come to Peoria.  Honors he received.

01:50:24	KR was new to academic politics at UW.

01:51:06	Department meetings.  Department made up of all Wisconsin people.  They rallied around when there were problems.  Sarles decided on salaries and promotions.  Not discussed in staff meeting.

01:54:40	End of side.

Tape 3/Side 1

01:54:50	Bacteriology late in getting an electron microscope.  No one here with experience.  Sarles, Chairman.  Department realized any modern department should have one.  Wrote up request.  Got grant from NIH.  Been used a lot.  Now, two.  KR had one student that used electron microscope  and a postdoc.  KR didn't have anything to do with HVEM.  It's an electron microscope in 3-D.  The Trelease professorship.  Had some offers but never considered them seriously.  Liked Madison.  Could have gone to Texas A&M.  

02:00:14	The professorship gave some extra money.  KR used it for travel and equipment.

02:01:56	1969.  Eleventh International Congress of Botany in U.S.  KR was chair of organizing committee.  Did a lot of travelling for that.  Discusses reason for naming the professorship for Trelease; had introduced bacteriology into botany.

02:04:24	Q. re whether people came to see him because of his reputation.

02:05:35	Did KR do as much research here as at Peoria.  At Peoria a lot of paper work.  Working hours.  Now comes in every day.  Has just finished a book.

02:08:41	Hasn't used computers.

02:09:45	No obstacles to what he's wanted to do.  Fits his plans to what is feasible--space, equipment.

02:15:33	Discussing committee work.  

02:17:15	The Research Committee.

02:20:02	University Club.  Protest Movement.  Bill Sewell caught in impossible situation.

02:25:25	End of side.

Tape 3/Side 2

02:25:30	Conclusion of above.

02:27:12	Q. re environmental issues arising in department.  (Reference to botany department and issue of DDT.)  KR doesn't remember any.  [KR working way through list of topics LS gave him].  Course load–contrast to when he came.  New appointees given chance to start doing research first.  Then teach a course in own field.  Older professors left with routine work of teaching.  The enormous importance attached to grant getting now.  But thinks is out of proportion.  Don't have to have a grant to do research.  Grants bring money to University, but also bring expense.  Thinks national committees have too much to say what research is being done.  NIH and NSF have panels, and they become skewed.  Active ones get on panels.  Emphasize own fields.  Free thinker, broad thinker may not have a chance to do what he'd like to do.  Person studying obscure group of fungi would be most unlikely to get a grant.  Molecular, cellular biologists dominate panels.  No support for taxonomy.

02:37:35	Commenting on his two books on aspergilli.  Issue of what stage determines what the name should be.  KR was invited to be on panels of both NIH and NSF, but was on two other major committees, one of NAS, so couldn't do it.  Wasn't asked again.

02:40:38	NAS and its working arms is so big not easy to introduce criticisms of grant scene for debate. 

02:41:26	General comments on topics, e.g. merger detrimental. 

02:43:45	Department library given up when Steenbock library built.  Was a good place to work.  KR hated to see it go.  

02:46:23	Standing of department.  
02:50:20	General comments.

02:54:39	End of Side
  
END