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The John Bailar Stained Glass Window The John Christian Bailar, Jr., window was given to McKinley Memorial Presbyterian Church by his sons, Dr. John Christian Bailar, III, and Dr. Benjamin F. Bailar, as a memorial to their father, Professor John Bailar, Jr. Professor Bailar was a world-renowned inorganic chemist, and various segments of the window symbolize his interests and achievements. The window committee and designer expanded upon Professor Bailar's interests and achievements to include symbols of science and scientists from a broad perspective. There are thirteen major symbolic areas in the window. At the top-center is the official seal of the Presbyterian Church (USA), particularly appropriate in view of the long association of Presbyterians with higher education. In addition to his duties at the University of Illinois, Professor Bailar served for many years on the McKinley Church Session and also on the Senate of Monmouth College, a college founded by Presbyterians. The two largest areas of the window symbolize two aspects of university science: teaching and research. Teaching is depicted by Louis Pasteur lecturing and research is depicted by Marie Curie in her laboratory. The two teardrop-shaped areas of the window above Pasteur and Curie symbolize biology, by depicting a fetus and the birth of a child, and astronomy, by depicting a nebula and the birth of a star. The areas below Pasteur and Curie symbolize the Greek view of science and its four "elements" - earth, air, fire, and water - on the left, and mathematics, by the Pythagorean theorem, on the right. The rose-shaped area immediately below the earth-air-fire-water motif represents atomic physics and the other area on the same level represents the solar system. The two square areas next to the bottom relate to two organizations long associated with Professor Bailar. On the left is the coat of arms of Alpha Sigma Chi, the professional chemists' fraternity. Professor Bailar served as advisor to the local student chapter for many years. On the right is depicted a postage stamp commemorating the Centennial of the American Chemical Society, which Professor Bailar served as President. (The stamp was printed during the tenure of Professor Bailar's son Ben as Postmaster General of the United States of America.) The two areas at the bottom of the window depict the property of chirality or "handedness" by which some chemical compounds differ from others by being non-superimposable mirror images. Pasteur demonstrated this phenomenon, and Professor Bailar's research on coordination compounds illustrates it. The narrow borders of the window contain a variety of symbols - the binary code (computer science), emission and absorption spectra (physics), ivy (botany), medicinal herbs (medicine), chromosomes (biology) - all interspersed by examples of alchemists' symbols for some of the chemical elements, operations, or processes. For example, the five-ring symbol atop the Alpha Chi Sigma coat of arms denotes the "elixir of life". Dedicated: April
16, 1995 |
