Alumni News from Reed Magazine, March 2018

Home Away from Home, the March 2018 issue of the Reed magazine, focuses on the newest, large construction project to hit campus. Located at the north end of the “bouncy bridge” and rising several stories into the sky, Reed’s newest dormitory building is already taking shape summer with completion scheduled for 2019. The cover article (p. 20) explains the special features that went into the building’s design, and calls attention to the fact that the new dorm will make on-campus housing available to nearly 80% of the current student body, a status that has not been achieved since the 1920’s (see graph p. 26-7).

The impact of chemist and musician Prof. Virginia Hancock ’62 [music 1990-2016] never fails to amaze. The latest Reedie to win the coveted Jim Kahan Music Performance Summer Fellowship, established by Jim Kahan ’64 in Ginny’s honor, is history major Henry DeMarais ’18 (p. 9).

Sadly, there isn’t any other news about current chemistry students or alumni in this issue so I will just call blog readers’ attention to the entry that constitutes the entirety of Class Notes, 2012-17: “It’s a jungle out there. Keep in touch!

In Memoriam told us the stories of two recently deceased Reed chemists.

  • Thomas Kirsch ’57 passed away on October 22, 2017 in Palo Alto, California. Tom was born in London, then moved to Los Angeles at the age of 4, where his parents helped found the C.G. Jung Institute (the Kirsch-Jung connection was always a close one; Carl Jung had sent Tom’s parents a congratulatory note after his birth). Tom and his mother consulted the I Ching to choose between UC Berkeley and Reed when it came time to select a college. The academic environment of “no grades” Reed was, initially at least, a challenging one for the 17-year-old freshman. Tom was constantly checking his class standing because he was determined to become a doctor and in those days there was a quota for the number of Jewish students that medical schools would accept. He majored in chemistry and wrote his thesis, “Determination of the Michaelis-Menten constant for hyalurondase”, with Prof. Marsh Cronyn ’40 [chemistry 1952-89]. Professional training in medicine and Jungian analysis followed, whereupon Tom devoted himself to work as a clinician and as an international exponent of analytical psychology. The latter was reflected in his service asĀ  president of the International Association of Analytical Psychology from 1989-95, and his extensive writing on dreams, Jung, and the analytic process, including two books titled, The Jungians and A Jungian Life, respectively. Tom is survived by his wife, a sister, and two children.
  • Allen Silverstone ’65 passed away on November 19, 2017 in Jersey City, New Jersey. Allen was born in Chicago, a background that figured in one of his recollections of Reed as a college with an “ideal of learning (making knowledge your own), and the patience of assorted faculty with this crazy kid from industrial Chicago.” An “inveterate social-deviant troublemaker with a sense of humor about it”, Allen majored in chemistry at Reed and wrote his thesis, “The Synthesis and Reactions of a [Beta]-aryl Ether Lignin Model Compound”, with Prof. Marsh Cronyn ’40 [chemistry 1952-89]. Graduate studies led to a PhD from MIT, and a career in immunotoxicology that included postdoctoral fellowships at U. Edinburgh and MIT, and research + teaching at MIT, Sloan-Kettering, and SUNY-Upstate Medical University. Allen also served as an advisor to EPA Superfund committees, and was a lifelong crusader for civil rights, economic justice, public health and education in the Northeast. Allen is survived by his son, David.

 

 

 

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