FILE: C:\User-Nathan\Data\WP Documents\NateBio Part II Chapter VI.wpd
I took the physical chemistry qualifying exam soon after I returned to the campus after the year-end holidays. This time I passed it with a decent grade. The semester end by the end of January. In February, I registered for the Spring Session and my academic program consisted of which were a continuation of the pre-research seminar, synthetic organic chemistry, chemistry of the steroids, and the chemistry of colloids courses.
I began going to classes when I was notified that I was not accepted to continue my pursuit for the Ph.D. degree. I went to see the acting head of the chemistry department to ask why I was rejected. My course grades and my qualifying exam grades were fairly good. Besides all that Dr. Dawson was willing to accept to work for the degree under his guidance. The answer was that this was a departmental decision. I then went to See Dr. Mary Caldwell, my faculty advisor and she thought that she could arrange for me to work for the advanced degree in the field of nutrition. This did not appeal to me as I was intent on becoming a biochemist. I withdrew from Columbia University February 13, 1947. I was awarded the A.M. degree June 3, 1947. I did not go to the graduation exercisers.
The New York University (NYU) medical school biochemistry department was in a building across the street from Bellevue Hospital. It was on First Avenue and I believe East 26th Street. At that time, in Manhattan, there were IRT subway lines on elevated tracks, so to go to NYU I had to change trains at East 42nd Street and take the elevated Third Avenue train to a station near 26th Street.
I made an appointment to see Dr. Severo Ochoa, M.D. and we discussed the possiblity of my working with him as a graduate student. He suggested that I would have to major in pharmacology. I was also old that there were no funds available for his graduate students. Being that I did not think that I would like to major in pharmacology and that there were no funds to help us financially, the interview ended. Subsequently, Dr. Ochoa and Arthur Kornberg were the winners of the 1959 Nobel Laureate in Medicine for their discovery of the mechanisms in the biological synthesis of ribonucleic acid and deoxiribonucleic acid.
I then went to see Dr. R. Keith Cannan, the head of the biochemistry department. I was offered a job as the keeper of the storeroom where I would make up solutions for the medical students taking biochemistry and making sure that other laboratory equipment was available. I cannot di recall the salary for this work, but as a university employee I was able to register as a graduate student. So, it was sometime in February that I went to work. I was also registered for a laboratory methods in biochemistry course. I was subjected to criticisms by some of the graduate students of Dr. Cannan in that he would keep students for many, many years before being awarded the Ph.D. degree. After a while I was not sure that I cared for the setup. Possibly that was the first sign of a psychological crisis that would occur subsequently. About two or three months after I started working in the biochemistry department, I quit.
While at NYU I learned that disabled veterans could continue their education with financial support through Public Law 16. Being that I had about a year and half support by he GI Bill, I applied for coverage by the public law because one would be supported until a goal was met. I was asked what my goal was and I said something like I wanted to work for a Ph.D. degree in biochemistry so that I could teach at the university level. I was ordered to take two exams; they were some sort of psychological survey and a chemistry test. The chemistry test was at the high school level and here I was with a A.M. in chemistry. I remember having difficulty with one question as I had more knowledge about the subject than I would been expected to have at the high school level. I got a good grade in the psychological survey and I was told that I would be a good salesman. That was far from my mind. I had a grade of 100% in the chemistry test. My application was then rejected because I ws told that one can teach at a university with a Master’s degree (so they thought).
I learned something from my father. When as a youngster I wanted things my father would say paying his bills on time is his priority. If anything is left, then perhaps we can indulge in getting something that was not really essential. Galla and I merged our bank accounts quickly. I am happy to say that Galla and I saw eye to eye and we always managed to live within our income If we couldn’t afford it, we did not get it. Perhaps at times there was temptation to break this unspoken pact, but caution always prevailed.
We didn’t have much money, but we could get by. Galla kept on working at the New York City Board of Health. We would visit relatives during weekends. We played bridge with Galla’s parents. Occasionally we visited friends. I introduced Galla to some of my high school gang when Milly and Norman Ludwig threw a party for us. Gordon Levin teased Galla enough that she did not care for him. Other former friends of mine did not seem very impressive. In pursuing my goals, I changed and somehow I was not at home with my past environment. All in all, we were a young married couple who were a bit unsettled as I was uncertain about my future. I was disappointed about leaving Columbia University but I had high hopes that the job and my graduate work at NYU would work out.
Of course Galla and I spent some time furnishing our apartment. It would have been more convenient for us to live in Manhattan, but apartments were at a premium and difficult to get a new one. We were lucky to have what we had. Galla and I had the same tastes in furniture and we did end up with a couch that was light gray. We bought a card table made of oak and it is remembered as being very nice, but in our next move we left the table behind. Galla’s father built some cabinets for us. We had fir plywood cut to our specifications and it was on a Saturday that Monroe put together several simple cabinets. He was a trained carpenter and still envy that cut wood with a hand sawThen we painted the cabinets. Later on, I made a number of cabinets that were of the same construction as we had in Astoria. I was not a good carpenter back in those days. An attempt to make a table for myself in New Guinea end up with three legs and none were of the same length. I did construct a simple bookcase. Looking back at my ability as a carpenter at that time can be said to be amusing. I was dumb enough to get a hack saw which is used to cut metal and I used it to cut wood.. It amazed me what stuffing plastic wood or putty into nail holes and coats of paint can hide.
Leaving NYU sometime in the month of May left me at loose ends. I learned that in my attempt to find a real job that there were few opportunities for one with a Master of Arts degree and wanting to work in the field of biochemistry. In an interview at some nutrition company I was asked how determine a chloride salt in a solution. I had done many analyses for chlorides in the past, but I was blank. The interview ended abruptly. Actually I still wanted to go back to graduate school We decided that if I did not connect with a graduate school, we would go the fall American Chemical Society national meeting to look for a job through their employment set-up.
I think that I still have a guilty conscience in that I was lazy for most of the summer. I did look for something here and there, but not whole-heartedly. I would wake up late in the mornings that summer. Galla would call me from her office those mornings. I did do somemaketing and I was able to prepare dinners at times, so I was a bit helpful. We ate out once in a while and two restaurants come to mind, Toffenetti and Lindy’s. Lindy’s was famous for cheesecake. We once over heard a conversation from another table where it was asked of a man that being he had agirl friend for 20 years, when was he going to get married. Damon Runyon’s publications deal with New York City characters and in particular, people who ate in lindy’s.
Being a fan of the New York Giants baseball team, I often went to a ball game at the old Polo Grounds. Occasionally I would be joined at a ball game by Adolph (Dolph) Amster as he was also wondering what to do as he did not make it at Columbia University. During the Spring Session Dolph I became good friends. At first, Dolph was kidded for wearing a lapel pin which indicated that he had won a silver star medal. It turned that Dolph was a second Lieutenant in the infantry and one eye was shot out two weeks after going into action in France. Dolph eventually left Columbia Universitry to enter the graduate school at Ohio State University (OSU). He earned his Ph.D., in physical chemistry at OSU and eventually ended up working in the Washington, D.C. area when we were living in Alexandria, Virginia. He got married and we were shocked when he wrote from OSU that his wife died.
While visiting Norman in his research laboratory at the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons Biochemistry Department, he mentioned the Dr. DeWitt Stettn was going to leace to join the Harvard University medical school Biochemistry Department. Being that I knew Dr. Stetten I approached him about the possibility of me becoming his first graduate student. After some conversation, Dr. Stetten let me know that this would be acceptable if I was admiited to the graduate school.
Galla took several days off and we went to Boston. On the first evening in Boston we met cousin Hilda and her husband Bernard Kaplan at a hotel bar. We had some drinks and then parted. That was the last time I saw Hilda. On some occasions when I was in Boston, I would call Hilda and we would converse, but I never was invited to visit. The last time I called Hilda, I learned that her father, Uncle Isaac died. On a trip to Boston much later, I found that Hilda had disappeared from the Boston telephone directory listings..
The following morning, I went to see the head of the biochemistry department . I mentioned that Dr. Stetten was willing to take me on as a graduate student under his guidance. When asked about other interests, I mentioned that protein structure was one of them. The head of the department suggested that I see Dr. Edwin J. Cohn, a professor of Physical Chemistry at the Harvard Medical School. Dr. Cohn brought together a large interdisciplinary group of remarkably talented doctors and scientists to study the blood proteins of human plasma and to develop new systems for blood separation. Blood fractionation techniques were developed tht are credited with saving thousands of lives on the battlefields of World War II. Before I saw Dr. Cohn, I had a conversation with a prominent member of this department. A research project of interest was discussed and I seemed to be acceptable for continuing graduate studies. Then I was taken to see Dr. Cohn. After some questioning, Dr. Cohn looked at my transcript from Columbia and remarked something to the effect that Columbia University gave me a Master’s degree with a C in my record. The interview ended shortly with a rejection.
I was disheartened and to this day, I do not know why I did not go back to the medical school biochemistry department. Trying for graduate work at MIT did enter my mind, but I just gave up. We went home.
Some friends suggested that I should try for entry back into graduate school at Temple University, in Philadelphia. I was told that Sidney Weinhouse, Ph.D, was an up and coming biochemist, a faculty member at the Temple University Medical School Biochemistry Department. I was able to arrange for an interview and I was acceptable for continuing my graduate studies. However, at this time there would be no financial support beside the GI Bill. I told Dr. Weinhouse that I would let him know what my decision was shortly. After all, I had to consult with my wife about making this move.
While considering this opportunity, I received a telegram from P.J. Elving, at Purdue University, that my letter of application for continuing my graduate studies with him was accepted and that I would have a teaching assistantship for the first year. During the summer I kept looking at the employment opportunities section of the weekly ACS Chemical and Engineering News. The industrial employment ads all seemed to seek candidates with Ph.D. degrees in chemistry and the ads by colleges and universities requested a Ph.D. degree. Early in August an ad from the Purdue University chemistry department was by P.J. Elving, Ph.D., who was on the faculty in the analytical chemistry area. The ad stated that P.J. Elving had a grant for supporting a graduate student interested in the field of polarography. All I knew about Purdue University at that time was that Rachel B., my Columbia University classmate, left to go there. I had a taste of polarography when in my physical chemistry laboratory course I did an experiment with the Fisher Elecdropode. The polarographic method of chemical analysis was invented, in 1925, by Professor Jaroslav Heyrovsky, of Czechoslovakia. The method is based on the interpretation of the current-voltage curves that are obtained when solutions of electroreducible or electrooxidizable substances are electrolyzed in a cell in which one electrode consists pf mercury falling dropwisw from a very fine bore capillary glass tube. From the unique characteristics of such current-voltage curves both the species and concentrations of of the electroreducible or electrooxidizable present in the solution can be determined. This field of electrochemistry was far from the field of biochemistry, but I was grasping at straws with my overwhelming desire to earn the Ph.D. degree. I applied.
Galla and I discussed our next step. With a teaching assistantship that was offered and the GI Bill stipends we could get along while in graduate school. While the biochemistry work at Temple University was tempting, the lack of financial support made it less desirable. I accepted the offer from Dr. Elving. The next step was to plan our exit from Astoria and to migrate to West lafayette, Indiana. We had new furniture which would be expensive to transport to Indiana, especially as we did not know where we would be living. Since apartments in New York City were difficult to find, we approached our neighbor in the next apartment and we offered to give up our apartment to their son-in-law, a dentist, and daughter who were living with them. We would arrange this deal if they bought our furniture and this was agreeable.
The next step was to consult with the landlord to arrange this deal. When we brought up the purpose of this request the landlord immediately told me that I was not a legitimate tenant. I pointed out that this was an apartment rented ny my father and that I had this address since the 1930s when we occupied an apartment in his building. We also had been paying the monthly rent on time. We also pointed out that being New York City had a law that did not permit him to raise our rent and that the rent could be increased by 15% for a new occupant, that it would be to his advantage to allow this deal we made. If he refused, then, I would go to Temple University as a weekly commuter and not leave the apartment. The landlord then told us that if we had my fathers permission to leave the apartment, it would be OK as long as we did not overcharge for our furniture.
Arrangements were made quickly We would sell our furniture and sadly, it included that very nice card table made of oak. I had to leave quickly for the beginning of the semester at Purdue University. Galla would remain in the apartment for about a month to follow through on the arrangements and give notice that she was leaving her employer.