FALL/WINTER 2007
A century of science
(continued)
At Purdue, physicists contributed to the first transistor, developed by Bell Labs in 1947. The first graduate degree-granting computer science department was created out of the mathematics department at Purdue in 1962. Chemistry professor Herbert C. Brown won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1979 for his work on boranes. Structural biologist Michael Rossmann began researching viruses, cracking the structure of the human rhinovirus-14, one of the common cold viruses, in 1985. Multidisciplinary centers were created in the 2000s to spur new approaches to solving society’s salient problems.
“Campus was pretty spread out. The Recitation Building … it was new then. University Hall was an old building even then. The Home-Ec building was new then. We spent most of our time in the library. There wasn’t any traffic. There were never that many cars around then. Parking was no problem.”
— Dorothy Barnett (BS ’32, Science)
“My God, when I was in school, people were walking around with slide rules on their hips. You have laptop computers and campus-wide network (now). Science itself has advanced. We’ve got new drugs and all kinds of new things that I’ve had to learn about so we can produce treatments. It’s the same thing on campus. We didn’t know anything about the human genome when I was in school, let alone have a computer.”
— Bill Risk (BS ’59, Biological Sciences)
“Someone had asked me out to a Victory/Variety before I met my husband. He had also asked someone out. We never talked about it (after we met) because we both knew we were already going with someone. Those were important shows. You asked so far ahead of time.”
— Beverly Ann Peacock (BS ’62, Mathematics)
“Things have meshed a lot in terms of nanotechnology and biological sciences. Obviously we knew about cellular structure then but the way in which biotechnology is talked about now was really in its infancy back then.”
— Eric Stark (BS ’71, MS ’73,
Biological Sciences)
Join us this year for a year-long celebration of a century of leading scientific inquiry and achievement. From October through April, visit us in person or online to see and participate in events that celebrate both where we’ve been and the exciting future we have to look forward to.
October 28, 2007: Science Centennial Kick-off with the MythBusters
Throughout the academic year: Presentations by leading scientists
March 29, 2008: Science Centennial Finale: An afternoon with Jane Goodall
Visit our centennial Web site for event previews, wrap-ups, special features, and more. While you’re there, we invite you to share your memories of Purdue and a century of science — www.science.purdue.edu/centennial.