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“Brooklyn Poly”: The First Major Teaching Center of X-ray Powder Diffraction
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 January 2013
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That very large famous and infamous borough of New York City, namesake of one of the country's most graceful bridges, Brooklyn, was perhaps the least likely of places for the development of a teaching center of international brilliance – and, at that, in the then little known field of X-ray diffraction. Such was the case, however. Where else, it has been asked, could a visiting lecturer on X-ray technique look out at his audience and, to his dismay, find in the front row, Paul P. Ewald, Herman Mark, Isidor Fankuchen and David Harker – respectively, a founding father of X-ray diffraction, a founding father of polymer chemistry, an entrepreneur par excellence in X-ray crystallography, and a major player in macromolecular (proteins) analysis. Only there at the Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute. It was unique in its time and function as the pre-eminent school of learning for the rapidly evolving practices of polymer science and X-ray diffraction.
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page 134 note * Lee Azaroff, a student at M.I.T. at the time had been trying to decide whether or not to study X-ray crystallography. His mentor, Martin Buerger, suggested that he take the summer course at Poly. Azaroff did and was greatly impressed by what he found, indeed it helped direct him toward his life's work. He notes of Post “ … he knew his equipment, he know how to make it sing all sorts of melodies … and “…he kept us in stitches all the time …”
page 134 note ** Fifty Years of X-Ray Diffraction, P.P. Ewald ed., 20. Published for the International Union of Crystallography. 1962.
page 134 note *** Robert Schwartz, was a classmate and colleague. He was a director of the IBM Research Laboratory at Fishkill, N.Y. at the time of his early, untimely death in 1964.
page 135 note + The inner glass tube was silvered on the inside and evacuated, a stream of dry air passed through the outer tube (which was at toom temperature).
page 135 note ++ Their arrival had been essential. One piece of the then existing equipment, for example, was a hold over from Fankuchen's early days, “Fankuchen had built an X-ray unit when he was working at Cornell, in the early thirties … nobody was going near it! it was a killer … nobody would touch it. It would spark. It was very dangerous. As a matter of fact, it wasn't used at all.”
page 135 note +++ Hugo Steinfink, University of Texas, personal communication. Steinfink further notes that Post has the gift of being able “to look at a powder pattern and index it by inspection …” (“Sometimes”, says Post).