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HH: How long were you there?

WW: Well, let me see, that was 1942. So I stayed through '43, and I believe I left at the end of '43.

HH: 1943.

WW: Either December of '43 or January of '44, I don't recall precisely. And then I left under the auspices of the Student Relocation Council, the Quakers, essentially, to whom I think I and everybody else owed a real debt of gratitude. They made arrangements for me to go to the University of Chicago. I had wanted to go to one of the Midwestern colleges, but there wasn't much choice on our part. And I had finished two years of chemistry at University of California, Berkeley. So with some extra credits besides the three years. So when I reached Chicago, I was able to enter the college with two full years of college completed. And I'm trying to think now how I did this, but at the end of 1944... let's see, yeah, okay. So after one full year of college at Chicago, I got my bachelor's degree. So somehow or other, I must have compressed something. I think I took four quarters, they were on a quarter system. And having completed my degree, and incidentally my older sister also came to Chicago, and there she was able to find work that she could do in which he had sufficient salary, so she helped support me during that time. And at the end of that time, after I got my bachelor's degree, I wasn't quite sure what I wanted to do, but I decided I would probably take a master's degree or whatever. And before I knew it, I was on a PhD program. And I stayed on that until the middle of 1948, when I finished the PhD program.

HH: That's still at the University of Chicago?

WW: Yes. All of '45, '46, '47, and then into the middle of '48. And I got my PhD degree in the summer of 1948, which was probably the last time that Robert Maynard Hutchinson ever appeared in person and put the hood over a PhD graduate, probably his last major appearance before he retired or went on to other things. So that's the extent of my formal school.

HH: I understand it, he took a postdoc at MIT.

WW: Yes. And then after I got my degree, I was fortunate enough to be recommended to a man at MIT for a postdoctoral research associate. And that was an excellent experience, really, the transition from being a student under the gun to being a research associate, a quasi member of the faculty able to do things without having to really account for my time or having to worry about exams, it was quite remarkable, so I enjoyed myself tremendously. And near the end of that year, I applied for a, what at that time was probably the most prestigious postdoctoral fellowship available, which was one given by National, what they call the National Research Council, which was an arm of the National Academy of Sciences. And to my great pleasure, I was granted that scholarship. In applying for that scholarship, one could name a person with whom one wanted to study, and the man I named was at Columbia University. So I spent one year at Columbia, this was in 1948, close to 1949. And at the end of that time, the professor with whom I was working had had a number of substantial contacts, wartime contacts with a group of chemists and chemical engineers. And one of the members of this rather illustrious group, who worked researching rockets and things of that kind, had then gone down to work at Rohm and Haas company. And Professor Louis Hammett, with whom I was working at Columbia, became a consultant to Rohm and Haas. So he recommended that I go down there and see what the possibilities were. In 1950, I believe we were either going into or coming out of the Korean War, and this was a lull in the hiring of professionals. So I decided that, well, if I can get a job in the industry, this would be a lot better than going off and trying to get a job teaching somewhere. So I was able to get a job at Rohm and Haas. And that brought me to Philadelphia in 1950, and that's where I've been ever since.

<End Segment 4> - Copyright © 1994 JACL Philadelphia. All Rights Reserved.