The Lab Report Spring 2012 - Chemistry - Emory University

The Lab Report
Spring 2012
Alumni Reflection
Malcolm Hendry MS48 PhD50
After I spent 2 1/2 years in the navy, my young bride and I finished our
bachelors degrees, mine as a chemistry major. But I didn’t feel I knew
enough to be a real chemist. My adviser suggested several graduate
schools for me to consider. I still had almost two years of GI bill
remaining. After writing to each I set off to select a school. Having no
money, I hitchhiked, not nearly so scary in 1947 because the public
had picked up hitchhiking service men all during the war.
just as my GI bill ran out. It was the 5th PhD given by Emory. There
was just enough money left in our piggy bank to take the Greyhound
to my new job in Ohio.
Our years at Emory were Wonderful and life changing. Our greatest
adventure!
My plan was to hitch to three graduate schools including Emory. I
didn’t plan well, reaching Lookout Mountain in the middle of the
night...but then a got a lift on down to Atlanta. When I walked onto the
Emory campus and saw all those beautiful Georgia marble buildings I
thought it was heaven. They almost glowed in the sunlight.
Emory’s chemistry graduate program was new with only about a
dozen students. After meeting the chemistry faculty and determining
our mutual interest it seemed that Emory was the place for me.
But where would we live Before the war it was unheard of for
married couples to attend school so our next problem was living
accommodations. Emory had provided for the deluge of married
couples with trailers on campus and the tar paper covered army
barracks on Clifton Rd soon to be known as “mudville”. We were
assured of a one-bedroom apartment (at a cost of $17 per month,
with army bunks and an ample supply of cockroaches).
The chemistry department’s budget was very sparse in 1947. Vessels
fitted with ground glass connectors were scarce. So we used rubber
connectors. Potentiometers and heating mantles were given, one to
each organic researcher. We made our own distillation columns from
glass tubes filled with glass beads. Ground glass equipment gradually
became available. Each of us had to build our own carbon/hydrogen
analysis train to substantiate the new chemical compositions we were
synthesizing.
I began my masters research, on an organic chemical reaction
involving bromine. The problem was the chemical hoods had no draft
to draw off the fumes...so I ran a rubber tube out the window. The
clearest indicator of my research was the growing orange bromine
stain on the outside marble window ledge.
Our organic research labs were on the first floor, you know, one flight
up the grooved marble steps, just below the analytical labs identified
by the perpetual rotten egg odor.
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Our manometers were filled with mercury. And our stirrers were also
sealed from air with mercury. As a consequence of these homemade
devices there was always a puddle of mercury in the water troughs
used to channel the cooling water from the distillation columns. No
problem.
The hood problem became more difficult during my doctorate
research. The work involved butyric,
valeric, and isovaleric acids (which smell like dirty socks, rancid
meat and dog poop.) My wife always made me take off my clothes
before entering the apartment and when I stood in a line at the store
everyone began sniffing their arm pits and looking in every corner for
a “deposit”
My wife worked as a secretary to the Emory admissions director in the
building next to the chemistry building. We walked back and forth to
Mudville every day... until June 1950 when I finished my PhD
Department of Chemistry • 1515 Dickey Drive • Atlanta, GA • 30322