Biographical Memoirs Volume 87 (2005) / Chapter Skim
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Harrison Shull
Harrison Shull
Pages 332-353
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He later showed a gift for administration as a chief academic officer of several major educational institutions. He was born into a family of highly achieving scholars and scientists; a hefty book titled Shull Genealogy was a proud part of his early personal library.
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of the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California.
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Berkeley was an exciting place then as always: Seaborg and others had been discovering the transuranium elements, and a large nuclear research laboratory was growing on the hills above the campus. William Giauque had developed a world-renowned cryogenic research program; Gilbert Lewis had turned to molecular excited-state researches; and Melvin Calvin was using isotopes to trace biochemical processes in living organisms.
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From page 336... ...
Harrison Shull's Ph.D. thesis attempted to do this for the triplet electronic states of benzene, and for the lowest triplet state this could be done by an analysis of the vibrational spectrum of the phosphorescence (which Lewis and Kasha had characterized as a triplet-singlet transition)
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From page 337... ...
work came to a conclusion, almost simultaneously each of the three remaining members of the group (Shull, McClure, and Kasha) had succeeded, the laboratory humor resonating with "the triplet state has worked again." In considering his next move Harrison thought that the postwar climate for financing scientific research might be unfavorable for an experimentalist, who would require expensive equipment.
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His research topics at Iowa included papers that he wrote on the comparison of transition probability calculations using dipolelength versus dipole-velocity operators, which give different results due to the use of approximate wave functions. An important calculation for that time was the all-electron self
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A year earlier, Iowa had tried to hire Walter Moore (author of a landmark text in physical chemistry and later of a definitive biography of Erwin Schrödinger) , but Walter elected to accept an offer from Indiana University instead.
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The Chemistry Department at Indiana was a vibrant place with Harrison Shull, Walter Moore, Vernon ("Jack") Shiner Jr., Henry Mahler, Frank Gard, Felix Haurowitz, and others there during the period of their tenure.
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Indiana University is famous for its Music Department. Harrison's interest in music was evident during his Berkeley days, when he and McClure would go to hear the Thursday night performance of the San Francisco Symphony orchestra.
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Low's idea was to make Rensselaer into a major research university, and the new position seemed to be an attractive challenge, which Harry quickly accepted in the fall of 1979. Harrison spent only three years at Rennselaer but was influential in wisely and gently nudging its faculty members toward a higher level of academic achievement and in rewarding them with a better scheme of salary increases.
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Admiral Ralph West, superintendent of the school, wrote a penetrating evaluation of Shull's performance in these years, and it seems to apply to all of Shull's academic administrative positions, so we quote from it here. Harrison was an experienced academic administrator who was very effective in generating change to strengthen the school's educational capabilities.
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From page 344... ...
While Harrison outwardly appeared to be a kindly grandfather figure, his incisive method of leadership ensured a detailed knowledge of and impact on all issues associated with instruction, faculty and educational support. He had unusual strengths in the area of informational technology and was able to ensure smart decisions were made concerning computer services and equipment as well as library support.
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This flurry of key papers profoundly changed the way people approached the electronic structure problem. Before these papers, the problem had been approached using qualitative reasoning or semi-empirical explanations for spectra and bonding.
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The Naval Studies Board was created by the National Academy of Sciences at the request of the Navy Department in 1974 to be a source of independent, long-range scientific and technical planning advice for the Navy and Marine Corps. Shull was one of several people who worked with Admiral Zumwalt, chief of Naval Operations, and Philip Handler, president of the National Academy of Sciences to organize the Naval Studies Board and then served on it for six years, and again for six years after his retirement in 1995.
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From page 347... ...
Shull wrote an article on this plan for the 1978 National Research Council annual report. Some appointments to other National Academy of Sciences endeavors were the Committee on Science and Public Policy (1957-1974)
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; Lionel Goodman, Klaus Ruedenberg (Iowa) ; Stanley Hagstrom (Iowa and Indiana)
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. Details of Harrison's father's part in the development of hybrid corn appear in the recently published book Mendel in the Kitchen by Nina Fedoroff and Nancy Marie Brown (Joseph Henry Press, Washington, D.C., 2004, pp.
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17:295-303. 1950 Theoretical computations of transition probabilities for electronic spectra of C2 and N2 .
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Ross. On the application of the molecu lar orbital method to the spectra of substituted aromatic hydro carbons.
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Quantum chemistry.
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H A R R I S O N S H U L L 353 1978 The Ph.D. employment cycle -- Damping the swings.
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