Professor Joel H.
Hildebrand
From the California Monthly's, Our Distinguished Faculty
By Robert A. Nisbet, Associate Professor of Sociology and
Social Institutions
1951
A university is a as diverse in its members as
it is in its pursuits. There are men whose distinction comes primarily from
the study or the laboratory; others whose renown is won in the classroom or
lecture hall; still others whose major contribution comes from their
administrative activities. But anyone who looks at the nearly forty years
which Joel Hildebrand has devoted to the University of California is hard put
indeed to decide in which of these areas his finest achievements lie.
Consider him as research scientist. He is a
member of the National Academy of Science, perhaps the highest professional
recognition that can come to an American scientist. His experimental work in
solubility, to name but the principal field of his researches has brought him
honors on two continents. In 1944, he was chosen by the Physical Society in
London to deliver the Guthrie Lecture in the Royal Institution, and was
elected, in the same year, Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.
He had already been awarded, in 1939, the William H. Nichols Medal by the New
York section of the American Chemical Society for his work in the solubility
of non-electrolytes. He has held editorial positions on various chemistry
journals. Nor is he without honor in his own university. He was elected
Faculty Research Lecturer for the year 1935 by the Academic Senate, the
greatest research honor that the University can pay one of its own. And in
1939 the degree of D.Sc. was conferred upon him by his Alma Mater, the
University of Pennsylvania.
Consider him also as teacher. The reception of
his Remsen Lecture, "A Philosophy of Teaching" at Johns Hopkins
University in 1949 made evident the national esteem in which his teaching is
held. But there are many thousands of alumni who do not need to be told of his
excellence in this wise. Their recollections of Chemistry 1A-B are brightened
by the memory of vivid lectures and dramatic demonstrations in the mysteries
of chemistry, of enlivening digressions in the realms of art, music, and
mountaineering. This introductory course is undoubtedly Joel's greatest love
in the University. And well it might be. For out of this course have come many
majors and graduate students whose own later work has helped give the college
of chemistry at Berkeley a reputation that is surpassed by no other scientific
college in the world. There are indeed professors on our own faculty, in
various fields, who can look back with appreciation upon this course.
With all regard for his introductory course,
one cannot skip lightly over his graduate teaching, for here too he has left
permanent imprint. He has had many collaborators in research publications
among graduate students, more than a few of whom are now holding
professorships and other important positions in the field of chemistry.
The qualities which go into fine teaching are
beyond count or measure. But two are unmistakable. The first is genuine love
of communication; the second is a continuing capacity for seeing one's subject
not as a set of results already achieved, but as exciting problems to be
solved. On the testimony of students old and new, Joel Hildebrand's teaching
shines with both of these qualities. Prizing communication as an art and as
the highest obligation of the teacher, he has worked tirelessly to improve the
techniques which are its vehicles. He knows too how lifeless even the greatest
of achievements of science can seem to young minds when they are separated
from science as method, from science as spirit of inquiry. Only as method and
spirit can there be awakened in young minds that urge to discovery which keeps
a discipline alive and growing.
There are the achievements, in research
and teaching, which lie at the heart of a university, and they can be exceeded
by no others. They are the achievements in which Joel Hildebrand rightly takes
greatest pride. But outstanding as they are, his career cannot be encompassed
by them. For no record of the University during the past thirty years would be
complete without consideration of him also as an administrator.
Three times he has served as dean; first as
dean of men, later as dean of the college of letters and science, and at the
present time, as dean of the college of chemistry. Twice he has been elected
to the vice-chairmanship of the Academic Senate, the highest elective position
in this body. He has served on virtually every important senate and
administrative committee in the University. It is fair to say that no member
of the faculty now living has contributed more, in love and insight, to the
welfare of the University. By no means least among his administrative
contributions is the considerable number of younger men he has brought
directly into administrative work and to whom he has communicated some of his
own sense of devotion to the University. His conception of the University has
not been narrow. Physical scientist though he is, he has nevertheless brought
both sympathy and understanding to the problems of the humanities and the
social sciences. He has never stood upon age of office in the performance of
his administrative duties, nor has he allowed the formal powers of his office
to be a substitute for personal initiative and influence.
These are University achievements. What of his
life outside the University? Here too there is richness and diversity. From
the first World War he emerged as a lieutenant colonel, having entered the
army as captain. During that war he served as commandant of the Gas School and
Experimental Field in France, and received the Distinguished Service Medal for
his efforts. In the second World War he served as scientific officer for the
OSRD, attached to the American Embassy in London. From the British government
he received the King's medal for Service in the Cause of Freedom for his
contributions to the Allied cause.
His extramural activities in peace time are too
numerous to list. I select from them a few which will perhaps illustrate the
range of his living. Early he became an enthusiastic mountaineer, and there
are few who know more of the delights and mysteries of the Sierra in both
summer and winter. He is a past President of the Sierra Club. It was during
his presidency that the campaign was won to establish the Kings Canyon Nation
park. When he was beyond his fortieth year he took up skiing, and even now at
the age of sixty-nine he can be found in the dead of winter gliding down the
snowy slopes of the high Sierra. In 1936 he served as manager of the U.S.
Olympic Ski team. He is co-author of a book, Ski Mountaineering. He is
a skillful photographer, a lover of music, particularly Bach, a sought-after
public speaker who has appeared before the most varied audiences. Nor would
one wish to omit mention here of his mastery of the limerick of every sort,
and I mean every.
Finally it would be a grievous error of
omission if no mention were made of Joel's family, for of all his devotions in
life none equals this. In 1908 he married Emily Alexander, and from that happy
and fruitful union have come three sons and a daughter, all graduates of U.C.,
all members of both Phi Beta Kappa and Sigma Xi, and, three of them now
engaged in making their own careers in the scientific world. Truly the
scientist is greater than his monographs.
It is not easy to find a single word which
captures the personal qualities that go into such diversity and excellence of
attainment as have been cited here. Long ago a perceptive observer of
the world said that the real division of mankind is not between the
inexperienced and the experienced but between the inexperiencing and
the experiencing. I think this word, experiencing, comes close to the
nature of his mind. Certainly no one who has been brought, either as
student colleague, or friend into contact with the ever widening range of his
activities and interests and who has observed the immense zest which lies
behind them will doubt that Joel has an experiencing mind, that for him,
experience is a process that never congeals.
He came to the University of California as an
assistant professor in 1913, at the age of 32, to become one of that
distinguished group of young scientist who, under the late Dean Gilbert Lewis,
were to raise the department of chemistry to the eminence that it now holds in
the international world of science. He had already attracted attention by his
scientific publications in the seven years that followed his doctorate at the
University of Pennsylvania. He had gone to the University of Berlin to study
under Nernst and had brought back much of the ranging spirit of inquiry and
tireless devotion to knowledge that gave German science its matchless
reputation at the beginning of his century.
Wherever he might have gone from his post of
instructor at Pennsylvania he would have won recognition as a teacher and
scientist. His are energies and aptitudes which would not have been denied.
But one likes to think that of all possible choices, Berkeley was the happiest
he could have made. For the University of California in 1913 was, like Joel
himself, at the very beginning of the development which was to make it the
first of the State universities to reach parity with the older, greater,
private universities of the nation. In a true sense he and the University have
grown together.
This growth has not been merely parallel. From
the first he made a place for himself among a group of scholars and scientists
whose own unshakable conception of what a university should be has proved
resistant to every effort, well or ill-intentioned, to diminish its status as
a center of teaching and learning. He was among the most active and courageous
members of the faculty who, in 1920, set themselves against certain unwise
tendencies of University administration and out of whose
"revolution" came the present form of the Academic Senate. The
University of California is almost unique in the academic world in the extent
of organized faculty participation in the matters of administration ---
appointments, promotions, courses, research policy, degrees, etc. --- which
are the very essence of a university's welfare. The University of California
is perhaps the most democratically organized university in the United States.
In this development Joel had had a conspicuously influential position. No one
has more insistently driven home the truth that the idea of a university is
carried by its faculty, and unless the channels of faculty government are kept
open the idea of the university must become weak and sterile. Over a period of
many years he has spoken for, and fought for, the dignity of the academic
profession, for the necessity of its influence in councils of University
government. He has never hesitated to speak out when convinced that the
University was in danger of deviating from its appointed course. He has had
the courage of words when words were needed and he has had the courage of
silence when he felt that by speaking out he could only harm the unity of the
University. Outstanding as have been his contributions as teacher and
scientist, his activities as citizen of the academic community are, I think,
the ones for which the University will be longest in his debt.
__________
Nisbet, Robert A. "Our Distinguished Faculty:
Professor Joel H. Hildebrand." California
Monthly. Vol. LXI, Alumni Publication,
University of California, No.
7 (March 1951),
pp. 5, 26-28.
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