Class Valedictorian
John E. Baldwin '59 will deliver the valedictory address at Dartmouth's 190th Commencement this month . . . but this brief statement in itself does not turn many heads. It is simply accepted with a nodding smile, for each year someone receives the honor. We congratulate, we listen . . . and we nod another year by; but this valedictorian is a very unusual sort of person. Recent press releases call him a scholar-athlete. True, but there is more.
John Baldwin came to Dartmouth from Oak Park and River Forest High School in Illinois. He came as a Daniel Webster Scholar, the highest honor the College gives entering freshmen. He has taken the responsibility of this award very seriously and his scholastic achievements have been brilliant. Perhaps the finest of these was winning the Charles Lathrop Parsons Scholarship, given by the American Chemical Society. The name, except to men in the field of chemistry, means little; the value of the scholarship is secondary. It is the terms of the award that should be stressed. A distinguished chemist is asked to name a college senior from any institution in the nation for the award. This year's recipient was chosen by the eminent chemist, Dr. Roger Adams, professor emeritus of chemistry at the University of Illinois. He picked one man, John Baldwin.
For John, here is another masterful challenge, as was the Webster Scholarship when he entered Dartmouth. Next year as he begins his studies for a Ph.D. at California Institute of Technology, he will generally be regarded as the top student chemist of 1959. We are sure he is, and certain that the challenge will be met.
The other things that John Baldwin has done at Dartmouth are equally important. First, he was a junior Phi Bete. As a freshman he won his numerals in three sports, football, lacrosse and track. Later, after a serious knee operation in his sophomore year, he won two varsity letters in lacrosse. Green Key is no small load to fit into a heavy academic and athletic schedule, and John served as president of that honorary and service society. He is also a member of Casque and Gauntlet, Beta Theta Pi, and has played rugby.
Other press releases from Hanover record that John has been a member of the Dartmouth ski team. Actually all his skiing for the squad took place this past winter. Starting on the assumption that he needed more exercise, he went to Coach Al Merrill and asked if he might be allowed to work out with the team in the cross-country events. Though all of John's previous skiing experience had been of the Alpine variety, and he had never competed, Coach Merrill agreed. John never won any meets but he was never the last man in either. Coach Merrill found this neophyte adding points to the Dartmouth score and at the end of the season, John had gotten his exercise; the coach had lost a fine cross-country man.
The summers have also been interesting and unusual. Before coming to Dartmouth, John worked on a slum clearance project during a hot Chicago summer. Then one summer vacation was spent in Hanover working on research projects under the Hitchcock Foundation. These programs were geared not so much to produce results as they were to give a student experience in research. Last year he worked at the Argonne National Laboratories in Chicago, and this summer he will be busy at the Eli Lilly Co. in Indianapolis, in a training program that will take him into some research in the antibiotic field.
John's immediate goal is of course his Ph.D. degree from Cal. Tech. in three or four years. Another goal involves his interest in languages. Where he has found the time, one will never know, but John has taken French, German and Russian courses at Dartmouth as well as several courses in English literature and humanities. By the time he finishes his Ph.D. work, he hopes to have an adequate command of these three languages.
On his future beyond that, John can only state his hopes. Foremost is his desire that his life be, as he says, "healthy" — healthy in that he not become too "narrow" by burying himself in his technical vocation. At Dartmouth John Baldwin's career has been varied, full, and often astounding. We are sure he has laid the cornerstone toward a life and a career that will be equally fine.
John Baldwin '59
