Former Rice president celebrated, honored

Former Rice president celebrated, honored
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BY MARGOT DIMOND
Rice News Staff

An audience of
faculty, staff, trustees, alumni and students filled McMurtry
Auditorium in Anne and Charles Duncan Hall Dec. 10 to celebrate
the inauguration of a new endowed chair and fellowship in
honor of former Rice University President Kenneth S. Pitzer.

Speakers included
Rice Board Chairman Bill Barnett, Rice President Malcolm
Gillis, Dean of the Wiess School of Natural Sciences Kathleen
Matthews and historian Melissa Kean — all providing
ample testimony to the achievements of Rice’s third
president.

Barnett began
the program by reflecting on the growth of Rice from its
“modest, ambiguous beginning” in 1891 into a prominent
national research university.
“Along the way, at critical junctures, certain individuals
stepped forward with a broad vision of what this university
could be and what it ought to be,” Barnett said. “These
individuals did things that lifted Rice up to a new level
and opened a new vision of what it should be.

“One such
person was Kenneth Pitzer. He left Rice better than he found
it. He did things that, but for him, Rice would not be the
university it is today.”

Pitzer was named
Rice’s third president in 1961, after serving as dean
of the College of Chemistry at the University of California–Berkeley.

“At the
time, Rice was a very highly regarded regional institution
known for its rigorous undergraduate education,” Gillis
said. “When Kenneth Pitzer left in 1968, Rice was a
research university of national standing and known then,
as today, for superlative undergraduate teaching and training.

“His innovations
during his seven years at Rice paved the way for the international
reputation that the university enjoys today,” Gillis
said.

When Pitzer became
president, Rice was at a crossroads, said Kean, who holds
a Ph.D. in history from Rice and has written histories of
Rice’s School of Continuing Studies and the Jesse H.
Jones Graduate School of Management and now is working on
a history of the science and engineering schools.

The university
faced financial and ideological constraints that were holding
it back.

Ideologically,
she said, the school had a profound mistrust of the federal
government, stemming in part from its southern location,
its racial segregation and the Houston business community’s
distrust of government regulation.

Financially,
Rice had a long history of self-reliance, Kean said. But
“as Rice grew and expanded, it took on responsibilities
and obligations it had not had before. And all of these
responsibilities and obligations were funded out of its
own pocket.”

By the early
1960s Rice was facing a budget crisis — as well as
a leadership problem, after the heart attack of its president,
William V. Houston. The board had to decide whether to pull
back and modify Rice’s aspirations or change its ways
and move forward.

“When the
Rice board of governors went out to California to get Kenneth
Pitzer, they had already made up their minds what they wanted
to do,” Kean said. “They were looking for the
man who could actually make it happen, and that is exactly
what they got. Pitzer arrived on this campus with a thriving,
expansive, outward-looking vision of what the university
could be, and he immediately set about the task of untangling
that knot of ideological and financial problems.”

Just a few of
Pitzer’s contributions to Rice include bringing in
federal funding for research projects, creating the nation’s
first space science program, doubling the size of Fondren
Library, opening the university to students of all races,
starting the Continuing Studies Program, creating a biochemistry
department, expanding the social sciences school and more
than doubling the number of graduate students and faculty.
But Pitzer did much more for Rice than bring in money and
start new programs,” Kean said. “He changed the
place from that sort of insular, though excellent, college
into this outward-looking member of the community.”

Pitzer left Rice
in 1968 to become president of Stanford University. He later
returned to teaching and research in chemistry at Berkeley,
where he retired. Pitzer won numerous awards for his contributions
to the field of theoretical chemistry, including the Welch
Prize in Chemistry, the American Chemical Society’s
Award in Pure Chemistry and a membership in the National
Academy of Sciences. He died in 1998 at age 83.

At the conclusion
of the presentations, Matthews recognized the group of faculty
who launched the fellowship effort to ensure “that
Dr. Pitzer’s time at Rice and his manifold contributions
were recognized.”

They are Franz
Brotzen, the Stanley C. Moore Professor Emeritus in Mechanical
Engineering and Materials Science; Robert F. Curl Jr., the
Harry C. and Olga K. Wiess Professor of Natural Sciences;
William E. Gordon, distinguished professor emeritus in space
physics and astronomy and electrical and computer engineering;
and G. King Walters, the Sam and Helen Worden Professor
Emeritus in Physics and Astronomy.

“With their
help and that of other colleagues, $454,000 has been contributed
to establish the Kenneth S. Pitzer Fellowship in Natural
Science,” Matthews noted.

She also recognized
“the deep generosity of the Schlumberger Foundation
in establishing the Kenneth S. Pitzer/Schlumberger Endowed
Chair at Rice. “This chair will stand as a monument
to the work of the man we have heard described and as a
testament to the involvement and engagement of Schlumberger
in recognizing quality and dedication.” And she presented
a scroll of thanks to the members of Pitzer’s family
who had attended the event.

Matthews then
introduced the first holder of the chair, Curl, who reminisced
about his long association with Pitzer — from graduate
school at Berkeley, to his presidency at Rice and into his
later years — calling him “a truly remarkable
man.

“This is
a wonderful occasion to have an opportunity to celebrate
this person who not only did so much for Rice, but also
did so much for me,” Curl said.