Talk given by Nelson J. Leonard for the Noyes Laboratory Centennial Celebration on September 13, 2002
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Herb Gutowsky performed a great service, together with his students and followers, of transferring NMR from the purvey of theoretical physicists to the practice of chemists, laying the foundation for the origin of chemical shifts and their use in chemistry; the existence and origin of spin-spin couplings between nuclei in molecules in liquids; the use of NMR to study structure and motion in solids; the use of NMR to study chemical exchange processes and conformation changes. The citation for his National Medal of Science (1976) read simply:
Especially under the leadership of Herb Carter and Herb Gutowsky, the University of Illinois could claim a primary place in the instrumentation available for research, along with all service facilities. I have been trying to indicate the diversity of the Chemistry, Biochemistry and Chemical Engineering that was housed in Noyes Laboratory, as suggested by the different professors and, somewhat imperfectly and incompletely, by the voices I still hear. A further, special example of diversity, was in what happened in 1950 on the third floor of Noyes. A quantum leap in quality of the Microbiology Department took place with the hiring of I.C. Gunsalus, Salvador E. Luria and Sol Speigelman. These colleagues, with their students, operated in cramped space until new quarters became available together with other components of the School of Life Sciences. The breadth of accomplishment of these Noyes-belonging faculty members did not go unnoticed. Gunny later moved into position as Head of Biochemistry and continued to add distinguished faculty to that discipline. His lesson to me involved how to do something ambitious and possibly important.
Salvador Luria showed a unique ability, in the University Senate, of steering parliamentary procedure in a useful fashion. In Medicine, he received the Nobel Prize after he had moved to M.I.T. He had also been the mentor of another Nobel Prize winner, James Watson. Luria's citation for the National Medical of Science, awarded to him in 1991, read:
Diversity was also to be found in the students who spent part of their existence in Noyes Laboratory. The undergraduates, industrious and eager in general, came from Illinois cities, towns, and rural communities. The graduate students came from the great universities and distinguished colleges of the country. Any measure of greatness that accords to the University of Illinois in the Chemical Sciences started with staff and student inhabitants of Noyes Laboratory. During the academic year 1907-1908, the first year on campus of William A. Noyes, so said the Alumni Quarterly, 180 students from 52 different colleges and universities other than the University of Illinois were enrolled here in graduate work. President Charles W. Eliot, visiting that autumn from Harvard, "was deeply impressed" with the budget of $50,000 per year. To a convocation of the students of the University of Illinois, he made the statement:
Those are words that we should continue to "hear"! |
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