Engineering in the Limelight

The 100th anniversary of the Thayer School of Engineering was celebrated late in September with a threeday Centenary Convocation which brought some 350 men and women to the campus, from as far away as Texas and parts of Canada.

Its aim was "to stimulate a searching discussion of the future by engineers, scientists, social scientists, and human ists,... to gain insights into the world's social, environmental, and technological needs of the next hundred years."

The conference opened September 23 with a joint Convocation marking the start of the 202nd academic year of the College and the 101st year of the Thayer School. President Kemeny and Thayer Dean David V. Ragone addressed members of the Dartmouth community and visitors gathered for the Centennial at ceremonies in Webster Hall. President Kemeny conferred an honorary Doctorate of Engineering on Dr. Vannevar Bush, retired president of the Carnegie Institution, with the following citation extolling his distinction and accomplishments in scientific fields:

As the Thayer School of Engineering opens its second century, it is fitting that we honor an engineer who played a decisive role in shaping the events of the last half century.

Son of a New England minister and grandson of a whaling sea captain, you demonstrated that science and technology can be effectively enlisted in the Nation's service. After graduating from Tufts and M.I.T., you first served your country during World War I. Between the wars you embarked on a distinguished academic career at M.I.T., leading to the position of Vice President and Dean of Engineering. Among your many creative achievements was the construction of the famous differential analyzer through which you prophesied the coming of the modern computer.

You were called to Washington as President of the Carnegie Institution just as a new world war threatened the survival of the free world. As Director of the Office of Scientific Research and Development and personal scientific adviser to Presidents Roosevelt and Truman, you had a decisive influence on the outcome of the war.

One of the busiest of human beings, you found time to develop an archer's superbow, raise turkeys, play the flute, design glass fishing rods, listen to birds sing, and contemplate the fundamental question of the role of the scientist in society.

Your talents for administration and leadership are truly remarkable. Your ability to understand and work with people, combined with your superior scientific competence, has placed you in front row center of men who use technology to solve man's problems. Dartmouth is proud to welcome you into her fellowship by awarding you her honorary Doctorate of Engineering.

During the next two days, eight distinguished speakers examined the roles that science, education, government, business, and industry must play to meet the environmental and technological needs of the coming century.

The Friday morning session was chaired by James H. Wakelin Jr. '32, a member and former chairman of the Thayer School Board of Overseers, who is U. S. Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Science and Technology. The speakers were science fiction writer Isaac Asimov; John Raider Piatt, Associate Director of the University of Michigan Mental Health Research Institute; and Anthony J. Wiener, Chairman of the Research Management Council of the Hudson Institute.

Franklin Smallwood '51, Professor of Public Affairs and Government at Dartmouth, was chairman of the Friday afternoon session. Speakers were Daniel Callahan, Director of the Insti tute of Society, Ethics, and Life Sciences at Hastings Center; Roger R. D. Revelle, Professor of Population Policy and Director of the Center of Population Studies at Harvard's School of Public Health; and Paul N. Ylvisaker, Professor at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton.

Donald N. Frey, a member of the Thayer Board of Overseers and board chairman of the Bell and Howell Corporation, and J. Herbert Hollomon, consultant to the President and the Provost of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, spoke at the final session Saturday morning. The chairman was Myron Tribus, Adjunct Professor and former Dean of the Thayer School, who is Senior Vice President for Research and Engineering of the Xerox Corporation.

The look was to the past at Friday evening's banquet at Alumni Hall, when William P. Kimball '28, Emeritus Professor and former Dean of the Thayer School, provided a touch of history and nostalgia as he discussed the School's first 100 years. Dean Ragone presided at the program.

President Kemeny, conferring Dartmouth's honorary Doctorate of Science uponDr. Vannevar Bush, praised him as one of the nation's remarkable men and as ascientist who has used technology to solve man s problems.