Deceased--John Toll

John Toll
October 24th, 1923 to July 15th, 2011

"University of Maryland's founding chancellor John Toll dies"

He had been president of UM and later Washington College

by

Liz Bowie

July 15, 2011|By

The Baltimore Sun

John Sampson Toll, a gifted physicist and founding chancellor of the University System of Maryland, died Friday of heart failure at the Fox Hill assisted-living Facility in Bethesda. He was 87.

Dr. Toll, an indefatigable worker who led three institutions of higher learning in his six decades in education, was credited by friends and colleagues with bringing national recognition to each of the colleges and universities he had a hand in steering.

"Maryland higher education is now nationally known because of the foundation he and others laid decades ago," said Freeman A. Hrabowski III, president of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.

William E. "Brit" Kirwan, the university system chancellor who worked with Dr. Toll off and on for 30 years, said Dr. Toll had a clear vision of what he wanted the Maryland system to become and he never stopped talking about it.

"He was very self-effacing. He was very warm and gracious but always deferential to others," Dr. Kirwan said.

He also was seen as a giant at Washington College in Chestertown, which he led for a decade. An accomplished fundraiser, he moved Washington College from an institution with three years of deficits to one that balanced its budget and tripled its endowment.

"He lifted the profile of the college dramatically. We raised the largest amount of money raised for a private college in Maryland with the exception of Johns Hopkins," said Jack S. Griswold, who was chairman of the board of trustees when Dr. Toll was recruited to become president.

He exceeded the fundraising goal by more than 40 percent, increasing the endowment from $27 million to $112.4 million, according to the college.

Born on Oct. 24, 1923, in Denver, Dr. Toll attended the Putney School in Vermont, then graduated from Yale University with a degree in physics. He served in the Navy during World War II and earned a doctorate in physics in 1952 from Princeton University, where he helped to establish what is now known as the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory.

He joined the faculty at the University of Maryland in 1953 and became chairman of the physics and astronomy department, leading it to become one of the first nationally known academic departments there. Dr. Kirwan said Dr. Toll recruited outstanding faculty in physics.

"He did such a good job that he was recruited away to become a president" at State University of New York at Stony Brook in 1965, Dr. Kirwan said, adding that such a leap from department chair to president of a university was highly unusual.

Dr. Toll took Stony Brook from a small campus with 1,800 students to a state research university with 17,000. He recruited elite researchers and scholars, including Nobel Prize recipient C.N. Yang, to develop competitive academic departments, according to the university.

For his contributions to the university, Dr. Toll was listed among "100 Who Shaped the Century" by Newsday.

Dr. Toll returned to Maryland in 1978 and began a 10-year tenure as president of the five-campus University of Maryland, guiding its merger with the six campuses of the Maryland Board of Trustees of State Colleges and Universities to form the University System of Maryland.

In 1988, then-Gov. William Donald Schaefer appointed Dr. Toll to serve as the first chancellor of the new system.

"He just worked tirelessly toward the vision he espoused. His energy and enthusiasm were galvanizing. Faculty and staff and alumni got behind what he was trying to do. Because of his efforts, the university moved quite far along that path toward eminence," Dr. Kirwan said.

Dr. Toll stepped down as chancellor in 1989 and was named chancellor emeritus. He was appointed the next year to head the Universities Research Association.

In 1995, at age 71, Dr. Toll was recruited to become interim president of Washington College. He stayed 10 years, working late into the night to increase the academic offerings of the college and bring it financial security, said Mr. Griswold, who praised him for his sense of humor and good judgment. "He was totally selfless, a humble man, not impressed with himself in any way."

Dr. Hrabowski remembers being interviewed by Dr. Toll when he was chosen as president of UMBC. "He was clearly a visionary, someone who understood the importance of higher education to Maryland, for both the good of the citizens and the state's economy.

"He was indefatigable. The man kept going and going and going. He had this amazing vision of what was possible and was always pushing to make us better," Dr. Hrabowski said.

Dr. Kirwan said Dr. Toll and his wife entertained constantly, and because he had worked with "some of the intellectual giants" of his time, he often engaged them in discussions about how to build a better university. "His expectations and his demands could at times bother or irritate people, but you couldn't help but love and admire the man," Dr. Kirwan said.

After leaving Washington College in 2004, he went back to College Park and the physics faculty, working in a building that had been named after him in 2002.

"Johnny was unfailing polite, and always purposefully on the go, to build, to educate, to advance science. But he was essentially lovable because he was also very kind," said his wife of 40 years, Deborah Taintor Toll of Bethesda.

A memorial service is being planned for early autumn.

In addition to his wife, he is survived by two daughters, Caroline Toll of Minneapolis and Dacia Toll of New Haven, Conn.; a brother, Daniel R. Toll of Chicago; and one grandchild.

Deceased--Craig Dunlap Culbert

Craig Dunlap Culbert
1927 to March 27th, 2009

Probably not well-known but a fine example of a dedicated educator.

"Craig D. Culbert Chemistry professor, 82"

April 4th, 2009

Philadelphia Inquirer

Craig Dunlap Culbert, 82, of Merion, who taught chemistry at Arcadia University for 30 years, died of cancer March 27 at his home.

Professor Culbert joined the faculty of then-Beaver College in 1963. He was devoted to his students and spent hours giving them extra help, his wife, Mary Wilson Culbert, said. In 1977, he received the Lindback Award for Distinguished Teaching. After retiring in 1993, he continued to supervise the chemistry lab at Arcadia until 1999.

A graduate of Lower Merion High School, Professor Culbert earned a bachelor's degree from Haverford College and a master's degree in chemistry from Temple University. He completed course work for a doctorate in chemistry from Bryn Mawr College.

He was a timpanist for 25 years with the Merion Concert Band, until 2006. His wife was the band's conductor. He and his wife, who plays French horn, first met while performing in an amateur orchestra and married in 1954.

James Bryant Conant...chemist, educator

Not exactly a household name anymore but a very striking innovation came from him while he was president of Harvard:

As the university's president, Conant was instrumental in transforming Harvard, until then widely perceived as a 'finishing school' for members of the New England upper class, into a world-class research university. He introduced aptitude tests into the undergraduate admissions system so that students would be chosen for their intellectual promise and merit, rather than their social connections. Many American colleges followed Conant's lead, and this campaign led eventually to the adoption of the SAT.

He was a brilliant physical and organic chemist and was instrumental in the Manhattan Project. Unfortunately, from my perspective, he emphasized the sciences to the extreme and even changed the "...general undergraduate curriculum away from its traditional emphasis on the classics, and towards a more scientific and modern subject matter." A happy medium would have sufficed.

Chemist, diplomat, and educator, born in Dorchester (now part of Boston), Massachusetts, USA. A Harvard-educated organic chemist noted for his work on chlorophyll and haemoglobin, he taught at Harvard (1916–33) and was president there (1933–53), where he strengthened the professional schools, increased the geographical and social diversity of students, opened the university to women, and introduced curricular reforms. He chaired the National Defense Research Committee (1941–6), which developed the atomic bomb, and was instrumental in the targeting of Hiroshima, Japan. He also helped found the National Science Foundation (1950). His diplomatic career in the 1950s included four years as high commissioner and ambassador to West Germany. Finally turning toward the reform of public education, he conducted an extensive Carnegie Corp study of American high schools which resulted in The American High School Today (1959). His many other educational contributions include Slums and Suburbs (1961), The Education of American Teachers (1963), and The Comprehensive High School (1967).

His publications on organic chemistry are fascinating.

Here is a sample from:

ORGANIC SYNTHESES: AN ANNUAL PUBLICATION OF SATISFACTORY METHODS FOR THE PREPARATION OF ORGANIC CHEMICALS

He stated in the introduction "...the main object in this series is to give the most convenient laboratory methods for preparing various substances in one-half to five pound lots, an attempt has also been made to have these processes as far as possible adaptable to large scale development."

IV

a, g-DICHLOROACETONE

CH2ClCHOHCH2Cl + O(Na2Cr2O7 + H2SO4)--> CH2ClCOCH2Cl + H2O

Prepared by

J. B. CONANT and O. R. QUAYLE.

Checked by

A. W. DOX, L. YODER, and O. KAMM.

1. Procedure

IN a 2-l. flask are placed 375 g. of commercial sodium dichromate, 225 cc. of water, and 300 g. of dichlorohydrin (b. p. 68-75'0/14 mm.). The flask is set in a water bath and equipped with a thermometer and mechanical stirrer. The contents are vigorously stirred, and 450 g. of sulfuric acid, diluted with 115 g. of water, are introduced during the course of seven to eight hours. It is convenient to add the acid at ten-minute intervals. The temperature is kept between 20'0 and 25'0 during the entire reaction; this is accomplished by adding a little ice to the water bath from time to time. The stirring is continued for sixteen to seventeen hours after all the acid has been added; as there is very little heat evolved during this part of the reaction, the water bath may be allowed to come to room temperature.

Sufficient water is now added to the mixture to dissolve the pasty chromium salts (300-800 cc.). The mass of crystals is then rapidly filtered on a Buchner funnel and sucked as dry as possible. The crystals are then transferred to a small laboratory centrifuge
and centrifuged for several minutes. The crystals are washed in the centrifuge with about 15-25 cc. of ice water, then with 10-15 cc. of cold petroleum ether, and finally centrifuged till as dry as possible. The crude dichloroacetone is dried in a vacuum desiccator over
sulfuric acid overnight It weighs about 220 g.

The crude product is best purified by distillation from a 250-cc. distilling flask fitted with an air condenser. A very small fraction (10-15 g.) of low-boiling material is obtained, and the dichloroacetone (170-175'0) is then collected. It solidifies in the receiver to a white crystalline mass which weighs 200-220 g. (65-70 per cent of the theoretical amount). A few grams more may be obtained by chilling the low-boiling fraction and filtering off the water.

2. Notes

Great caution should be exercised in working with dichloroacetone, as it is extremely lachrymatory and blisters the skin.

In transferring the crystals from the reaction flask to the Buchner funnel it is necessary to use a certain amount of water to dissolve the pasty chromium salts which are otherwise quite impossible to filter. The amount necessary varies greatly in different runs, according to the manner in which the chromium salts separate. The amount of this water is kept low in order to dissolve as little of the product as possible. Nevertheless, 10-15 g. of dichloroacetone are thus dissolved; this material, together with a little unchanged dichlorohydrin, may be recovered by a long procedure involving extraction with ether and sodium bisulfite. This is not profitable, however.

It is not necessary to wash the crystals in the centrifuge until they are white. A small amount of chromic salt will not interfere with the subsequent purification.

Commercial sodium dichromate is hygroscopic and contains varying amounts of water. The 375 g. required in these directions are equivalent to 319 g. of anhydrous material.

The total time required for the oxidation is twenty-four hours. It is convenient to start the reaction in the morning. In this way the last part of the reaction, which requires no attention, will be accomplished during the night. The regulation of the temperature is necessary, as the reaction proceeds very slowly below 20'0; on the other hand, the dichloroacetone itself is oxidized at a somewhat higher temperature than 25'0. 3.

Other Methods of Preparation

The preparation of dichloroacetone by the following methods is described in the literature: the direct chlorination of acetone;[1] the oxidation of dichlorohydrin;[2] the action of silver chloride on diiodoacetone;[3] the action of dichloropropene (CH2Cl-CCl=CH2) and hypochlorous acid;[4] the action of hydrochloric acid on ethoxymonochloroacetoacetic ester;[5] and the hydrolytic cleavage of dichloroacetoacetic ester.[6]


[1] Jahresb. 1859, 345; 1871, 531; J. prakt. Chem. (2)4, 52 (1871); Ber. 7, 467 (1874); 8, 1330, 1438 (1875); 26, 598 (1893); 42, 3233 (1909); Ann. 279, 315 (1894)

[2] Ber. 6, 1210 (1873); 13, 1706 (1880); 42, 3233 (1909); Ann. 208, 355 (1881); 269, 46 (1892); Ann. chim. phys. (6) 9, 145 (1886); Bull. soc. chim. (2) 36, 19 (1881).

[3] Ann. 192, 93 (1878).

[4] Compt. rend. 94, 1428 (1882).

[5] Ann. 269, 18 (1892).

[6] Ber. 43, 3533 (1910).