Dale R. Corson, a nuclear physicist and Cornell University administrator who was instrumental in defusing a potentially explosive standoff with armed student militants in 1969, then brought relative peace to the campus as the university's president during the 1970s, died on Sunday in Ithaca, N.Y. He was 97.
His son David confirmed the death.
Dr. Corson, who had been provost since 1963, was named acting president in 1969 after the resignation of James A. Perkins, who had been roundly criticized as having been too lenient with the protesters.
Though Dr. Corson and Dr. Perkins had been in full agreement during the crisis, the university's trustees chose Dr. Corson because of his proven ability to connect with students and faculty across the political spectrum, colleagues said.
"He had contacts among the militants, as well as the respect of faculty and administrators," said Elaine Engst, the Cornell archivist. "He brought the temperature down."
As provost, Dr. Corson had invited incoming freshmen to drop by anytime to talk, and many did, including several of the 100 or so students who later occupied Willard Straight Hall on April 19, 1969, demanding that a black studies program be established.
The occupation, one of many campus protests across the country, began after a cross was burned one night outside a black women's dormitory. The protesters refused to leave Straight Hall until the university agreed to set up the department. White fraternity members tried to take back the building and were repulsed, prompting the occupiers to arm themselves with weapons from a Sears, Roebuck store.
Meanwhile, hundreds of police officers from Rochester and Syracuse, summoned by the local police, were in downtown Ithaca, and some university officials were urging Dr. Perkins to call the authorities in.
Dr. Corson counseled against it, and many people involved said his credibility with both the militants and the hard-line faculty and administrators was crucial to Dr. Perkins's decision to resolve the crisis by giving the militants what they wanted.
A national uproar ensued. President Richard M. Nixon called the militants "ideological criminals." A photograph of armed students leaving the building was on the front page of The New York Times and the cover of Newsweek, under the headline "Universities Under the Gun."
Demonstrations and occupations about racial tensions and the war in Vietnam continued after Dr. Corson was officially named president in 1970. But Dr. Corson, who was willing to wade into crowds of angry protesters, was credited with keeping the protests from escalating out of control. He stepped down in 1977 and was chancellor until he retired in 1979 at 65…. Homer Meade, who was an occupier of Straight Hall and is now an executive for an educational services firm, said Dr. Corson had had an acute understanding of "how close we were to a Kent State," referring to the killing of four students by Ohio national guardsmen the next year.
"He knew a lot of us in that building, and he understood that people were ready to die that day," Mr. Meade said. He was one of a half dozen activists who remained in touch with Dr. Corson…. As dean of Cornell's College of Engineering, Dr. Corson helped start the university's Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, the largest radio telescope in the world at the time, and a particle accelerator on campus.
Dr. Corson probably had a deeper understanding of volatility than most. In the early 1950s, he belonged to a team of physicists credited with discovering the radioactive element astatine. Astatine is among the least stable elements on the periodic table….
Extracted from "Dale Corson, Cornell Administrator Who Helped Quell Protest, Dies at 97" (P. Vitello) published in The New York Times on April 5, 2012
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Dale R. Corson lived an exemplary life. His scientific achievements won him rare dual recognition in the form of the Arthur M. Beuche Award from the National Academy of Engineering and the Public Welfare Medal from the National Academy of Sciences. His bright mind, coupled with his reputation for humility and personal integrity, enabled him to deal with complex, politically charged matters, and these characteristics were vital to his success when he became president of Cornell University during a period of unprecedented campus turbulence. His habit of carefully recording details in his notebook during his physics experiments carried over to his leadership roles. When Dale made a commitment he kept it, down to the last detail.
As a child in rural Kansas, Dale was attracted to physics as both an intellectual pursuit and a career. He pursued that vision through the grim years of the Great Depression, earning degrees at the College of Emporia (AB), University of Kansas (MA), and University of California at Berkeley (PhD). As a postdoctoral fellow at Berkeley he participated in the creation and use of a particle accelerator.
Within two years of his PhD, he and associates Ken MacKenzie and Emilio Segrè had placed a new element, astatine (At), on the periodic table. As World War II engulfed Europe, Ernest Lawrence summoned Dale to join the MIT Radiation Lab to work on a top secret military project, development of airborne radar systems. Dale worked on operational deployment of radar technology, which played a crucial role in winning the war. He was assigned to continue that work as a military advisor in the newly built Pentagon.
From there he went to Los Alamos, where he led the creation of Sandia National Laboratory, now one of the largest of the US national laboratories. After the launch of Sputnik, he served on the National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics, which recommended the creation of NASA.
Dale was among a group of physicists, including Hans Bethe and Robert Wilson, to join the Cornell faculty after WWII. His first assignment was the design and early operation of the 300-MeV synchrotron, Cornell's first post-WWII electron accelerator. It was one of the first synchrotrons to operate successfully and a precursor to Cornell's famous Wilson Synchrotron Laboratory.
Dale became a full professor in 1952 and in 1956 chair of the physics department, with the support and confidence of both the nuclear and theoretical physicists and the low- temperature/solid state group. Three years later he became dean of engineering. Such rapid advancement can make people imperious, but Dale stayed true to his sensible Midwestern roots.
He was aware, for example, that some college faculty members questioned whether he even qualified as a "real" engineer—and he conceded the point. "There was no logic at all to my choice as the dean of the Engineering College," he said. "I was a last minute substitute after the prime candidate, whom I had helped recruit, withdrew." Dale became university provost in 1963, during the administration of James Perkins, and in that capacity he addressed a wide range of issues, from the library system to the Arecibo telescope in Puerto Rico. He also gathered the biological science programs, which were widely dispersed among multiple colleges, to form the Division of Biological Sciences, thereby fostering greater synergy among the departments at Cornell. President Perkins assigned Dale the task of increasing diversity at Cornell.
Against a backdrop of volatile national political debates over issues such as the Vietnam War and civil rights, Cornell rapidly increased its enrollment of students of color. These students brought with them a commitment to making their voices heard in the academic community and a sense of urgency about doing it—and they encountered faculty and other groups just as committed to changing the campus more gradually by consensus and leadership.
The rapidly heating climate led to the takeover in 1969 of Cornell's student union by African American students. President Perkins resigned shortly afterward. The task of settling the differences and restoring peace fell to Dale, first as interim president and then as president. He is widely credited with holding the campus together with his calm and capable leadership. In later years Dale would reflect on that period with wry good humor: "I was never actually inaugurated. Instead there was an investiture at commencement following my first year in office.… There were demonstrations and disruptions and two attempts to take over the microphone. [Professor] Morris Bishop made international news when he bent the [ceremonial university mace] jabbing the protestors in the ribs.
Those were the days!" It was Cornell's good fortune that the new president was a universally trusted leader. Dale patiently consulted with all sides and made it clear that he understood what was said. John Marcham, editor of the Cornell Alumni News, observed in July 1977 that Dale "was known…as someone who could figure out the real end result and price of carrying out a flowery educational principle. Not only had he thought it out in his head, but he probably also made note of it in the little notebook he always seemed to have with him.
As a consequence, when he said something was possible, members of the university community knew it was in fact possible.… [F]actions that distrusted one another would allow his administration the time to knit back together the fabric of a torn institution." Dale served Cornell as president from 1969 to 1977. During his tenure he was acutely aware of the need to balance the university's budget, even in a period of high inflation. The record shows that it was he who insisted on dispensing with a formal inauguration in favor of a much less costly investiture. Perhaps because of his own appreciation of the value of access to higher education, he worked hard to keep Cornell financially affordable.
He also nurtured fundamental programmatic changes, working with William Gordon to create Cornell's Center for Radio Physics and Space Research, with Don Greenberg to enter the emerging field of computer graphics, and with Henri Sack, Robert Sproull, and James Krumhansl to form what is now the Cornell Center for Materials Research, a highly successful and widely copied model for university-based multidisciplinary research. In addition, Dale provided institutional support for Africana studies, water resources, women's studies, and the humanities in general.
Dale retired from the presidency in 1977 but agreed to stay on as chancellor, much to the delight of his successor. The Cornell Medical College, located in New York City, was experiencing financial and administrative difficulties, and Dale concentrated on sorting them out, freeing the new president to focus on the Ithaca campus. Also during those two years he prepared a thoughtful analysis of long-term issues facing higher education.
From 1982 to 1994 he served on several National Academy/ National Research Council committees. He was inaugural chair of the Government-University-Industry Research Roundtable, which promoted communication among national leaders, and he helped organize a workshop on international higher education exchanges between the United States and Japan. In the early 1980s he headed a panel on Scientific Communication and National Security that averted restrictions on the publication of unclassified university research. NAS President Frank Press said of Dale's service, "The nation is in your debt."
Dale enjoyed excellent health and was mentally alert to the end of his nearly 98 years, facts that he attributed to good family genetics. He was married to Nellie Griswold Corson for more than 73 years and together they raised four talented and accomplished children. In their senior years Dale and Nellie lived in Kendal at Ithaca, a continuing care facility that Dale had helped to establish and which is adorned by many of his professional-quality photographs. Dale also continued to meet with colleagues from the campus, staying closely in touch with the university to which he devoted his life.
~ Frank H.T. Rhodes and J. Robert Cooke
Submitted by the National Academy of Engineering Home Secretary
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Dale R. Corson, a nuclear physicist who died last week, is best remembered as the Cornell University President who peacefully led his campus through the turmoil and upheaval of the Vietnam era. But he also played an influential role in deliberations over the role of secrecy in scientific research.
Dr. Corson chaired a 1982 committee of the National Academy of Sciences that produced a landmark study entitled "Scientific Communication and National Security," which became known as the Corson Report.
In sober and measured tones, the Corson Report pushed back against calls for increased secrecy in government-funded science:
"Current proponents of stricter controls advocate a strategy of security through secrecy. In the view of the Panel security by accomplishment may have more to offer as a general national strategy. The long-term security of the United States depends in large part on its economic, technical, scientific, and intellectual vitality, which in turn depends on the vigorous research and development effort that openness helps to nurture… Controls on scientific communication could adversely affect U.S. research institutions and could be inconsistent with both the utilitarian and philosophical values of an open society."
President Reagan cited Dr. Corson in National Security Decision Directive 189, "National Policy on the Transfer of Scientific, Technical and Engineering Information," which seemed to affirm that fundamental research should remain unrestricted to the maximum extent possible. In fact, however, that directive imperfectly reflected the input of the Corson Report, noted Harold C. Relyea in his book "Silencing Science: National Security Controls and Scientific Communication."
Still, many of the issues identified by Dr. Corson and his colleagues, and the concerns they expressed, remain current today and have not reached an unequivocal resolution, as evidenced most recently by the latest U.S. government policy on dual use biological research.
From "Dale Corson and Scientific Freedom"
Posted by Steven Aftergood on the Federation of American Scientists blog, April 6, 2012
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Dale Raymond Corson, Cornell University's eighth president, a physicist and an engineer, died March 31 of congestive heart failure at his home at Kendal at Ithaca. He was 97.
A professor of physics emeritus at Cornell, Corson was a polymath whose achievements in physics and engineering date to 1940, when he discovered astatine, element 85 in the periodic table of the elements. During World War II he helped introduce the use of radar into military operations.
But his finest moments came as Cornell's president from 1969 to 1977. Modest and mild-mannered, he led Cornell through the era of student protest against the Vietnam War and for civil rights and restored the university to stability.
"Dale Corson guided Cornell through one of its most difficult periods with extraordinary wisdom and grace," said Cornell President David J. Skorton. "His love for this university was exemplary, and I feel privileged to have had him as a mentor and friend."
After the peak of campus student activism and a wave of faculty resignations, Corson calmly and resolutely poised the university for a new period of growth, then guided it through the economic recession of the 1970s.
"What Dale did here from 1969 to 1977 was to rebuild the university from the inside, with the indispensable help of many alumni," said Walter LaFeber, a Tisch Distinguished University Professor and former chair of the history department. "There probably was not a worse job in higher education in the United States in the spring of 1969 than the presidency of Cornell, and it could have gotten a lot worse. But people pulled together, and that was because of Dale."
Professor Emeritus J. Robert Cooke, former dean of the university faculty, recalled Corson's "wise and unpretentious" leadership, and his "integrity and competence" that inspired abiding respect from many.
"Dale is one of the truly great persons of Cornell's history, as evidenced by his humanity, his respect for the opinions of others, his scientific achievements, his wisdom in guiding the university through its most difficult period, and for the great breadth and wisdom of his leadership in so many diverse realms of his life," Cooke said.
Corson was born in Pittsburg, Kan., April 5, 1914. He earned an A.B. at the College of Emporia (1934) and an M.A. at the University of Kansas (1935). His Ph.D. in physics was awarded by the University of California-Berkeley in 1938, when nuclear physics was in its golden age. As a postdoctoral fellow working under physicist Ernest Lawrence, Corson discovered astatine, and with two associates worked out its physical and chemical properties.
He was a staff member at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Radiation Laboratory from 1941 to 1943. He lived in London during part of the Blitz while helping adapt his work on radar for the British Royal Air Force. At MIT, he played a key role on the Anglo-American research team that perfected the use of airborne radar. Corson later served as a technical adviser at U.S. Army Air Corps headquarters in Washington, D.C., where he consulted on radar deployment in Europe and the Pacific.
At the end of the war he worked at Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory, directing the establishment of the Sandia National Laboratory. For this and other wartime service, Corson received a Presidential Certificate of Merit in 1948.
In 1946 Corson joined the Cornell faculty as an assistant professor of physics. He was appointed associate professor (1947), full professor (1952), Department of Physics chair (1956) and became dean of the College of Engineering in 1959. He served as provost from 1963 to 1969, president from 1969 to 1977, and served as chancellor -- a senior officer of the university -- from 1977 to 1979.
After Corson's service as chancellor, the Cornell Board of Trustees passed a resolution stating, in part: "[Corson's] fundamental human kindness, combined with foresight, steadfastness and quiet humor has set an example of unpretentious effectiveness that has captured the meaning of Cornell for us all."
Corson helped design Cornell's first high-energy electron synchrotron facility, and he played a leadership role in establishing the university's eminence in materials science, computer graphics and multidisciplinary research. In recent years he designed and guided the construction of an elegant and accurate sundial on Cornell's engineering quad.
He was instrumental in the formation of Cornell's Center for Radiophysics and Space Research, and he helped create the Science, Technology and Society Program. He also promoted the Division of Biological Sciences (one of its buildings is Corson Hall). He and his administration developed or revitalized new approaches to teaching and research in geology, history, Africana studies, medieval studies, water resources and women's studies at Cornell.
A quiet man who was much admired for his personal integrity, serious scholarship and accomplishments in his many areas of interest, Corson spent two decades after stepping down from the Cornell presidency chairing major national study groups on such subjects as U.S.-Japanese scientific relations, the introduction of modern science and technology into China, and the balance between national security and open inquiry in academic research. At the National Academy of Sciences, he founded the Government-University-Industry Research Roundtable to promote exchange among leaders.
Corson devoted much time to thinking about and lecturing about the future of the research university. He helped found the life care retirement community Kendal at Ithaca by serving as chair of the committee that developed it. In this role he worked with community leaders and legislators to change state laws that impeded the creation of such communities. He was also an enthusiastic and skilled photographer.
Corson received the Public Welfare Medal from the National Academy of Sciences and the Arthur M. Beuche Award from the National Academy of Engineering, two of the nation's highest honors in science and engineering. He received honorary degrees from Columbia University, Hamilton College, Elmira College, the University of Rochester and Wilkes University. He was also honored by all his alma maters.
Corson was devoted to and beloved by his family. He is survived by his wife of 73 years, the former Nellie E. Griswold, and their four children: David (Carolyn Corson) of Ithaca; Bruce (Mary Wyman) of Sebastopol, Calif.; Richard (Shirl Dorfman) of Phoenix, Ariz.; and Janet (Jon Corson-Rikert) of Ithaca. He also leaves six grandchildren and six great-grandchildren.
A celebration of Corson's life is being planned, and details will be announced at a later date.
Memorial contributions can be made to the Dale R. Corson Memorial Fund to support student health and well-being at Cornell University, or to a charity of your choice.
Information from Cornell University
Biographical information compiled by Starfishin [#48860385]
His son David confirmed the death.
Dr. Corson, who had been provost since 1963, was named acting president in 1969 after the resignation of James A. Perkins, who had been roundly criticized as having been too lenient with the protesters.
Though Dr. Corson and Dr. Perkins had been in full agreement during the crisis, the university's trustees chose Dr. Corson because of his proven ability to connect with students and faculty across the political spectrum, colleagues said.
"He had contacts among the militants, as well as the respect of faculty and administrators," said Elaine Engst, the Cornell archivist. "He brought the temperature down."
As provost, Dr. Corson had invited incoming freshmen to drop by anytime to talk, and many did, including several of the 100 or so students who later occupied Willard Straight Hall on April 19, 1969, demanding that a black studies program be established.
The occupation, one of many campus protests across the country, began after a cross was burned one night outside a black women's dormitory. The protesters refused to leave Straight Hall until the university agreed to set up the department. White fraternity members tried to take back the building and were repulsed, prompting the occupiers to arm themselves with weapons from a Sears, Roebuck store.
Meanwhile, hundreds of police officers from Rochester and Syracuse, summoned by the local police, were in downtown Ithaca, and some university officials were urging Dr. Perkins to call the authorities in.
Dr. Corson counseled against it, and many people involved said his credibility with both the militants and the hard-line faculty and administrators was crucial to Dr. Perkins's decision to resolve the crisis by giving the militants what they wanted.
A national uproar ensued. President Richard M. Nixon called the militants "ideological criminals." A photograph of armed students leaving the building was on the front page of The New York Times and the cover of Newsweek, under the headline "Universities Under the Gun."
Demonstrations and occupations about racial tensions and the war in Vietnam continued after Dr. Corson was officially named president in 1970. But Dr. Corson, who was willing to wade into crowds of angry protesters, was credited with keeping the protests from escalating out of control. He stepped down in 1977 and was chancellor until he retired in 1979 at 65…. Homer Meade, who was an occupier of Straight Hall and is now an executive for an educational services firm, said Dr. Corson had had an acute understanding of "how close we were to a Kent State," referring to the killing of four students by Ohio national guardsmen the next year.
"He knew a lot of us in that building, and he understood that people were ready to die that day," Mr. Meade said. He was one of a half dozen activists who remained in touch with Dr. Corson…. As dean of Cornell's College of Engineering, Dr. Corson helped start the university's Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, the largest radio telescope in the world at the time, and a particle accelerator on campus.
Dr. Corson probably had a deeper understanding of volatility than most. In the early 1950s, he belonged to a team of physicists credited with discovering the radioactive element astatine. Astatine is among the least stable elements on the periodic table….
Extracted from "Dale Corson, Cornell Administrator Who Helped Quell Protest, Dies at 97" (P. Vitello) published in The New York Times on April 5, 2012
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Dale R. Corson lived an exemplary life. His scientific achievements won him rare dual recognition in the form of the Arthur M. Beuche Award from the National Academy of Engineering and the Public Welfare Medal from the National Academy of Sciences. His bright mind, coupled with his reputation for humility and personal integrity, enabled him to deal with complex, politically charged matters, and these characteristics were vital to his success when he became president of Cornell University during a period of unprecedented campus turbulence. His habit of carefully recording details in his notebook during his physics experiments carried over to his leadership roles. When Dale made a commitment he kept it, down to the last detail.
As a child in rural Kansas, Dale was attracted to physics as both an intellectual pursuit and a career. He pursued that vision through the grim years of the Great Depression, earning degrees at the College of Emporia (AB), University of Kansas (MA), and University of California at Berkeley (PhD). As a postdoctoral fellow at Berkeley he participated in the creation and use of a particle accelerator.
Within two years of his PhD, he and associates Ken MacKenzie and Emilio Segrè had placed a new element, astatine (At), on the periodic table. As World War II engulfed Europe, Ernest Lawrence summoned Dale to join the MIT Radiation Lab to work on a top secret military project, development of airborne radar systems. Dale worked on operational deployment of radar technology, which played a crucial role in winning the war. He was assigned to continue that work as a military advisor in the newly built Pentagon.
From there he went to Los Alamos, where he led the creation of Sandia National Laboratory, now one of the largest of the US national laboratories. After the launch of Sputnik, he served on the National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics, which recommended the creation of NASA.
Dale was among a group of physicists, including Hans Bethe and Robert Wilson, to join the Cornell faculty after WWII. His first assignment was the design and early operation of the 300-MeV synchrotron, Cornell's first post-WWII electron accelerator. It was one of the first synchrotrons to operate successfully and a precursor to Cornell's famous Wilson Synchrotron Laboratory.
Dale became a full professor in 1952 and in 1956 chair of the physics department, with the support and confidence of both the nuclear and theoretical physicists and the low- temperature/solid state group. Three years later he became dean of engineering. Such rapid advancement can make people imperious, but Dale stayed true to his sensible Midwestern roots.
He was aware, for example, that some college faculty members questioned whether he even qualified as a "real" engineer—and he conceded the point. "There was no logic at all to my choice as the dean of the Engineering College," he said. "I was a last minute substitute after the prime candidate, whom I had helped recruit, withdrew." Dale became university provost in 1963, during the administration of James Perkins, and in that capacity he addressed a wide range of issues, from the library system to the Arecibo telescope in Puerto Rico. He also gathered the biological science programs, which were widely dispersed among multiple colleges, to form the Division of Biological Sciences, thereby fostering greater synergy among the departments at Cornell. President Perkins assigned Dale the task of increasing diversity at Cornell.
Against a backdrop of volatile national political debates over issues such as the Vietnam War and civil rights, Cornell rapidly increased its enrollment of students of color. These students brought with them a commitment to making their voices heard in the academic community and a sense of urgency about doing it—and they encountered faculty and other groups just as committed to changing the campus more gradually by consensus and leadership.
The rapidly heating climate led to the takeover in 1969 of Cornell's student union by African American students. President Perkins resigned shortly afterward. The task of settling the differences and restoring peace fell to Dale, first as interim president and then as president. He is widely credited with holding the campus together with his calm and capable leadership. In later years Dale would reflect on that period with wry good humor: "I was never actually inaugurated. Instead there was an investiture at commencement following my first year in office.… There were demonstrations and disruptions and two attempts to take over the microphone. [Professor] Morris Bishop made international news when he bent the [ceremonial university mace] jabbing the protestors in the ribs.
Those were the days!" It was Cornell's good fortune that the new president was a universally trusted leader. Dale patiently consulted with all sides and made it clear that he understood what was said. John Marcham, editor of the Cornell Alumni News, observed in July 1977 that Dale "was known…as someone who could figure out the real end result and price of carrying out a flowery educational principle. Not only had he thought it out in his head, but he probably also made note of it in the little notebook he always seemed to have with him.
As a consequence, when he said something was possible, members of the university community knew it was in fact possible.… [F]actions that distrusted one another would allow his administration the time to knit back together the fabric of a torn institution." Dale served Cornell as president from 1969 to 1977. During his tenure he was acutely aware of the need to balance the university's budget, even in a period of high inflation. The record shows that it was he who insisted on dispensing with a formal inauguration in favor of a much less costly investiture. Perhaps because of his own appreciation of the value of access to higher education, he worked hard to keep Cornell financially affordable.
He also nurtured fundamental programmatic changes, working with William Gordon to create Cornell's Center for Radio Physics and Space Research, with Don Greenberg to enter the emerging field of computer graphics, and with Henri Sack, Robert Sproull, and James Krumhansl to form what is now the Cornell Center for Materials Research, a highly successful and widely copied model for university-based multidisciplinary research. In addition, Dale provided institutional support for Africana studies, water resources, women's studies, and the humanities in general.
Dale retired from the presidency in 1977 but agreed to stay on as chancellor, much to the delight of his successor. The Cornell Medical College, located in New York City, was experiencing financial and administrative difficulties, and Dale concentrated on sorting them out, freeing the new president to focus on the Ithaca campus. Also during those two years he prepared a thoughtful analysis of long-term issues facing higher education.
From 1982 to 1994 he served on several National Academy/ National Research Council committees. He was inaugural chair of the Government-University-Industry Research Roundtable, which promoted communication among national leaders, and he helped organize a workshop on international higher education exchanges between the United States and Japan. In the early 1980s he headed a panel on Scientific Communication and National Security that averted restrictions on the publication of unclassified university research. NAS President Frank Press said of Dale's service, "The nation is in your debt."
Dale enjoyed excellent health and was mentally alert to the end of his nearly 98 years, facts that he attributed to good family genetics. He was married to Nellie Griswold Corson for more than 73 years and together they raised four talented and accomplished children. In their senior years Dale and Nellie lived in Kendal at Ithaca, a continuing care facility that Dale had helped to establish and which is adorned by many of his professional-quality photographs. Dale also continued to meet with colleagues from the campus, staying closely in touch with the university to which he devoted his life.
~ Frank H.T. Rhodes and J. Robert Cooke
Submitted by the National Academy of Engineering Home Secretary
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Dale R. Corson, a nuclear physicist who died last week, is best remembered as the Cornell University President who peacefully led his campus through the turmoil and upheaval of the Vietnam era. But he also played an influential role in deliberations over the role of secrecy in scientific research.
Dr. Corson chaired a 1982 committee of the National Academy of Sciences that produced a landmark study entitled "Scientific Communication and National Security," which became known as the Corson Report.
In sober and measured tones, the Corson Report pushed back against calls for increased secrecy in government-funded science:
"Current proponents of stricter controls advocate a strategy of security through secrecy. In the view of the Panel security by accomplishment may have more to offer as a general national strategy. The long-term security of the United States depends in large part on its economic, technical, scientific, and intellectual vitality, which in turn depends on the vigorous research and development effort that openness helps to nurture… Controls on scientific communication could adversely affect U.S. research institutions and could be inconsistent with both the utilitarian and philosophical values of an open society."
President Reagan cited Dr. Corson in National Security Decision Directive 189, "National Policy on the Transfer of Scientific, Technical and Engineering Information," which seemed to affirm that fundamental research should remain unrestricted to the maximum extent possible. In fact, however, that directive imperfectly reflected the input of the Corson Report, noted Harold C. Relyea in his book "Silencing Science: National Security Controls and Scientific Communication."
Still, many of the issues identified by Dr. Corson and his colleagues, and the concerns they expressed, remain current today and have not reached an unequivocal resolution, as evidenced most recently by the latest U.S. government policy on dual use biological research.
From "Dale Corson and Scientific Freedom"
Posted by Steven Aftergood on the Federation of American Scientists blog, April 6, 2012
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Dale Raymond Corson, Cornell University's eighth president, a physicist and an engineer, died March 31 of congestive heart failure at his home at Kendal at Ithaca. He was 97.
A professor of physics emeritus at Cornell, Corson was a polymath whose achievements in physics and engineering date to 1940, when he discovered astatine, element 85 in the periodic table of the elements. During World War II he helped introduce the use of radar into military operations.
But his finest moments came as Cornell's president from 1969 to 1977. Modest and mild-mannered, he led Cornell through the era of student protest against the Vietnam War and for civil rights and restored the university to stability.
"Dale Corson guided Cornell through one of its most difficult periods with extraordinary wisdom and grace," said Cornell President David J. Skorton. "His love for this university was exemplary, and I feel privileged to have had him as a mentor and friend."
After the peak of campus student activism and a wave of faculty resignations, Corson calmly and resolutely poised the university for a new period of growth, then guided it through the economic recession of the 1970s.
"What Dale did here from 1969 to 1977 was to rebuild the university from the inside, with the indispensable help of many alumni," said Walter LaFeber, a Tisch Distinguished University Professor and former chair of the history department. "There probably was not a worse job in higher education in the United States in the spring of 1969 than the presidency of Cornell, and it could have gotten a lot worse. But people pulled together, and that was because of Dale."
Professor Emeritus J. Robert Cooke, former dean of the university faculty, recalled Corson's "wise and unpretentious" leadership, and his "integrity and competence" that inspired abiding respect from many.
"Dale is one of the truly great persons of Cornell's history, as evidenced by his humanity, his respect for the opinions of others, his scientific achievements, his wisdom in guiding the university through its most difficult period, and for the great breadth and wisdom of his leadership in so many diverse realms of his life," Cooke said.
Corson was born in Pittsburg, Kan., April 5, 1914. He earned an A.B. at the College of Emporia (1934) and an M.A. at the University of Kansas (1935). His Ph.D. in physics was awarded by the University of California-Berkeley in 1938, when nuclear physics was in its golden age. As a postdoctoral fellow working under physicist Ernest Lawrence, Corson discovered astatine, and with two associates worked out its physical and chemical properties.
He was a staff member at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Radiation Laboratory from 1941 to 1943. He lived in London during part of the Blitz while helping adapt his work on radar for the British Royal Air Force. At MIT, he played a key role on the Anglo-American research team that perfected the use of airborne radar. Corson later served as a technical adviser at U.S. Army Air Corps headquarters in Washington, D.C., where he consulted on radar deployment in Europe and the Pacific.
At the end of the war he worked at Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory, directing the establishment of the Sandia National Laboratory. For this and other wartime service, Corson received a Presidential Certificate of Merit in 1948.
In 1946 Corson joined the Cornell faculty as an assistant professor of physics. He was appointed associate professor (1947), full professor (1952), Department of Physics chair (1956) and became dean of the College of Engineering in 1959. He served as provost from 1963 to 1969, president from 1969 to 1977, and served as chancellor -- a senior officer of the university -- from 1977 to 1979.
After Corson's service as chancellor, the Cornell Board of Trustees passed a resolution stating, in part: "[Corson's] fundamental human kindness, combined with foresight, steadfastness and quiet humor has set an example of unpretentious effectiveness that has captured the meaning of Cornell for us all."
Corson helped design Cornell's first high-energy electron synchrotron facility, and he played a leadership role in establishing the university's eminence in materials science, computer graphics and multidisciplinary research. In recent years he designed and guided the construction of an elegant and accurate sundial on Cornell's engineering quad.
He was instrumental in the formation of Cornell's Center for Radiophysics and Space Research, and he helped create the Science, Technology and Society Program. He also promoted the Division of Biological Sciences (one of its buildings is Corson Hall). He and his administration developed or revitalized new approaches to teaching and research in geology, history, Africana studies, medieval studies, water resources and women's studies at Cornell.
A quiet man who was much admired for his personal integrity, serious scholarship and accomplishments in his many areas of interest, Corson spent two decades after stepping down from the Cornell presidency chairing major national study groups on such subjects as U.S.-Japanese scientific relations, the introduction of modern science and technology into China, and the balance between national security and open inquiry in academic research. At the National Academy of Sciences, he founded the Government-University-Industry Research Roundtable to promote exchange among leaders.
Corson devoted much time to thinking about and lecturing about the future of the research university. He helped found the life care retirement community Kendal at Ithaca by serving as chair of the committee that developed it. In this role he worked with community leaders and legislators to change state laws that impeded the creation of such communities. He was also an enthusiastic and skilled photographer.
Corson received the Public Welfare Medal from the National Academy of Sciences and the Arthur M. Beuche Award from the National Academy of Engineering, two of the nation's highest honors in science and engineering. He received honorary degrees from Columbia University, Hamilton College, Elmira College, the University of Rochester and Wilkes University. He was also honored by all his alma maters.
Corson was devoted to and beloved by his family. He is survived by his wife of 73 years, the former Nellie E. Griswold, and their four children: David (Carolyn Corson) of Ithaca; Bruce (Mary Wyman) of Sebastopol, Calif.; Richard (Shirl Dorfman) of Phoenix, Ariz.; and Janet (Jon Corson-Rikert) of Ithaca. He also leaves six grandchildren and six great-grandchildren.
A celebration of Corson's life is being planned, and details will be announced at a later date.
Memorial contributions can be made to the Dale R. Corson Memorial Fund to support student health and well-being at Cornell University, or to a charity of your choice.
Information from Cornell University
Biographical information compiled by Starfishin [#48860385]
Dale R. Corson, a nuclear physicist and Cornell University administrator who was instrumental in defusing a potentially explosive standoff with armed student militants in 1969, then brought relative peace to the campus as the university's president during the 1970s, died on Sunday in Ithaca, N.Y. He was 97.
His son David confirmed the death.
Dr. Corson, who had been provost since 1963, was named acting president in 1969 after the resignation of James A. Perkins, who had been roundly criticized as having been too lenient with the protesters.
Though Dr. Corson and Dr. Perkins had been in full agreement during the crisis, the university's trustees chose Dr. Corson because of his proven ability to connect with students and faculty across the political spectrum, colleagues said.
"He had contacts among the militants, as well as the respect of faculty and administrators," said Elaine Engst, the Cornell archivist. "He brought the temperature down."
As provost, Dr. Corson had invited incoming freshmen to drop by anytime to talk, and many did, including several of the 100 or so students who later occupied Willard Straight Hall on April 19, 1969, demanding that a black studies program be established.
The occupation, one of many campus protests across the country, began after a cross was burned one night outside a black women's dormitory. The protesters refused to leave Straight Hall until the university agreed to set up the department. White fraternity members tried to take back the building and were repulsed, prompting the occupiers to arm themselves with weapons from a Sears, Roebuck store.
Meanwhile, hundreds of police officers from Rochester and Syracuse, summoned by the local police, were in downtown Ithaca, and some university officials were urging Dr. Perkins to call the authorities in.
Dr. Corson counseled against it, and many people involved said his credibility with both the militants and the hard-line faculty and administrators was crucial to Dr. Perkins's decision to resolve the crisis by giving the militants what they wanted.
A national uproar ensued. President Richard M. Nixon called the militants "ideological criminals." A photograph of armed students leaving the building was on the front page of The New York Times and the cover of Newsweek, under the headline "Universities Under the Gun."
Demonstrations and occupations about racial tensions and the war in Vietnam continued after Dr. Corson was officially named president in 1970. But Dr. Corson, who was willing to wade into crowds of angry protesters, was credited with keeping the protests from escalating out of control. He stepped down in 1977 and was chancellor until he retired in 1979 at 65…. Homer Meade, who was an occupier of Straight Hall and is now an executive for an educational services firm, said Dr. Corson had had an acute understanding of "how close we were to a Kent State," referring to the killing of four students by Ohio national guardsmen the next year.
"He knew a lot of us in that building, and he understood that people were ready to die that day," Mr. Meade said. He was one of a half dozen activists who remained in touch with Dr. Corson…. As dean of Cornell's College of Engineering, Dr. Corson helped start the university's Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, the largest radio telescope in the world at the time, and a particle accelerator on campus.
Dr. Corson probably had a deeper understanding of volatility than most. In the early 1950s, he belonged to a team of physicists credited with discovering the radioactive element astatine. Astatine is among the least stable elements on the periodic table….
Extracted from "Dale Corson, Cornell Administrator Who Helped Quell Protest, Dies at 97" (P. Vitello) published in The New York Times on April 5, 2012
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Dale R. Corson lived an exemplary life. His scientific achievements won him rare dual recognition in the form of the Arthur M. Beuche Award from the National Academy of Engineering and the Public Welfare Medal from the National Academy of Sciences. His bright mind, coupled with his reputation for humility and personal integrity, enabled him to deal with complex, politically charged matters, and these characteristics were vital to his success when he became president of Cornell University during a period of unprecedented campus turbulence. His habit of carefully recording details in his notebook during his physics experiments carried over to his leadership roles. When Dale made a commitment he kept it, down to the last detail.
As a child in rural Kansas, Dale was attracted to physics as both an intellectual pursuit and a career. He pursued that vision through the grim years of the Great Depression, earning degrees at the College of Emporia (AB), University of Kansas (MA), and University of California at Berkeley (PhD). As a postdoctoral fellow at Berkeley he participated in the creation and use of a particle accelerator.
Within two years of his PhD, he and associates Ken MacKenzie and Emilio Segrè had placed a new element, astatine (At), on the periodic table. As World War II engulfed Europe, Ernest Lawrence summoned Dale to join the MIT Radiation Lab to work on a top secret military project, development of airborne radar systems. Dale worked on operational deployment of radar technology, which played a crucial role in winning the war. He was assigned to continue that work as a military advisor in the newly built Pentagon.
From there he went to Los Alamos, where he led the creation of Sandia National Laboratory, now one of the largest of the US national laboratories. After the launch of Sputnik, he served on the National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics, which recommended the creation of NASA.
Dale was among a group of physicists, including Hans Bethe and Robert Wilson, to join the Cornell faculty after WWII. His first assignment was the design and early operation of the 300-MeV synchrotron, Cornell's first post-WWII electron accelerator. It was one of the first synchrotrons to operate successfully and a precursor to Cornell's famous Wilson Synchrotron Laboratory.
Dale became a full professor in 1952 and in 1956 chair of the physics department, with the support and confidence of both the nuclear and theoretical physicists and the low- temperature/solid state group. Three years later he became dean of engineering. Such rapid advancement can make people imperious, but Dale stayed true to his sensible Midwestern roots.
He was aware, for example, that some college faculty members questioned whether he even qualified as a "real" engineer—and he conceded the point. "There was no logic at all to my choice as the dean of the Engineering College," he said. "I was a last minute substitute after the prime candidate, whom I had helped recruit, withdrew." Dale became university provost in 1963, during the administration of James Perkins, and in that capacity he addressed a wide range of issues, from the library system to the Arecibo telescope in Puerto Rico. He also gathered the biological science programs, which were widely dispersed among multiple colleges, to form the Division of Biological Sciences, thereby fostering greater synergy among the departments at Cornell. President Perkins assigned Dale the task of increasing diversity at Cornell.
Against a backdrop of volatile national political debates over issues such as the Vietnam War and civil rights, Cornell rapidly increased its enrollment of students of color. These students brought with them a commitment to making their voices heard in the academic community and a sense of urgency about doing it—and they encountered faculty and other groups just as committed to changing the campus more gradually by consensus and leadership.
The rapidly heating climate led to the takeover in 1969 of Cornell's student union by African American students. President Perkins resigned shortly afterward. The task of settling the differences and restoring peace fell to Dale, first as interim president and then as president. He is widely credited with holding the campus together with his calm and capable leadership. In later years Dale would reflect on that period with wry good humor: "I was never actually inaugurated. Instead there was an investiture at commencement following my first year in office.… There were demonstrations and disruptions and two attempts to take over the microphone. [Professor] Morris Bishop made international news when he bent the [ceremonial university mace] jabbing the protestors in the ribs.
Those were the days!" It was Cornell's good fortune that the new president was a universally trusted leader. Dale patiently consulted with all sides and made it clear that he understood what was said. John Marcham, editor of the Cornell Alumni News, observed in July 1977 that Dale "was known…as someone who could figure out the real end result and price of carrying out a flowery educational principle. Not only had he thought it out in his head, but he probably also made note of it in the little notebook he always seemed to have with him.
As a consequence, when he said something was possible, members of the university community knew it was in fact possible.… [F]actions that distrusted one another would allow his administration the time to knit back together the fabric of a torn institution." Dale served Cornell as president from 1969 to 1977. During his tenure he was acutely aware of the need to balance the university's budget, even in a period of high inflation. The record shows that it was he who insisted on dispensing with a formal inauguration in favor of a much less costly investiture. Perhaps because of his own appreciation of the value of access to higher education, he worked hard to keep Cornell financially affordable.
He also nurtured fundamental programmatic changes, working with William Gordon to create Cornell's Center for Radio Physics and Space Research, with Don Greenberg to enter the emerging field of computer graphics, and with Henri Sack, Robert Sproull, and James Krumhansl to form what is now the Cornell Center for Materials Research, a highly successful and widely copied model for university-based multidisciplinary research. In addition, Dale provided institutional support for Africana studies, water resources, women's studies, and the humanities in general.
Dale retired from the presidency in 1977 but agreed to stay on as chancellor, much to the delight of his successor. The Cornell Medical College, located in New York City, was experiencing financial and administrative difficulties, and Dale concentrated on sorting them out, freeing the new president to focus on the Ithaca campus. Also during those two years he prepared a thoughtful analysis of long-term issues facing higher education.
From 1982 to 1994 he served on several National Academy/ National Research Council committees. He was inaugural chair of the Government-University-Industry Research Roundtable, which promoted communication among national leaders, and he helped organize a workshop on international higher education exchanges between the United States and Japan. In the early 1980s he headed a panel on Scientific Communication and National Security that averted restrictions on the publication of unclassified university research. NAS President Frank Press said of Dale's service, "The nation is in your debt."
Dale enjoyed excellent health and was mentally alert to the end of his nearly 98 years, facts that he attributed to good family genetics. He was married to Nellie Griswold Corson for more than 73 years and together they raised four talented and accomplished children. In their senior years Dale and Nellie lived in Kendal at Ithaca, a continuing care facility that Dale had helped to establish and which is adorned by many of his professional-quality photographs. Dale also continued to meet with colleagues from the campus, staying closely in touch with the university to which he devoted his life.
~ Frank H.T. Rhodes and J. Robert Cooke
Submitted by the National Academy of Engineering Home Secretary
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Dale R. Corson, a nuclear physicist who died last week, is best remembered as the Cornell University President who peacefully led his campus through the turmoil and upheaval of the Vietnam era. But he also played an influential role in deliberations over the role of secrecy in scientific research.
Dr. Corson chaired a 1982 committee of the National Academy of Sciences that produced a landmark study entitled "Scientific Communication and National Security," which became known as the Corson Report.
In sober and measured tones, the Corson Report pushed back against calls for increased secrecy in government-funded science:
"Current proponents of stricter controls advocate a strategy of security through secrecy. In the view of the Panel security by accomplishment may have more to offer as a general national strategy. The long-term security of the United States depends in large part on its economic, technical, scientific, and intellectual vitality, which in turn depends on the vigorous research and development effort that openness helps to nurture… Controls on scientific communication could adversely affect U.S. research institutions and could be inconsistent with both the utilitarian and philosophical values of an open society."
President Reagan cited Dr. Corson in National Security Decision Directive 189, "National Policy on the Transfer of Scientific, Technical and Engineering Information," which seemed to affirm that fundamental research should remain unrestricted to the maximum extent possible. In fact, however, that directive imperfectly reflected the input of the Corson Report, noted Harold C. Relyea in his book "Silencing Science: National Security Controls and Scientific Communication."
Still, many of the issues identified by Dr. Corson and his colleagues, and the concerns they expressed, remain current today and have not reached an unequivocal resolution, as evidenced most recently by the latest U.S. government policy on dual use biological research.
From "Dale Corson and Scientific Freedom"
Posted by Steven Aftergood on the Federation of American Scientists blog, April 6, 2012
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Dale Raymond Corson, Cornell University's eighth president, a physicist and an engineer, died March 31 of congestive heart failure at his home at Kendal at Ithaca. He was 97.
A professor of physics emeritus at Cornell, Corson was a polymath whose achievements in physics and engineering date to 1940, when he discovered astatine, element 85 in the periodic table of the elements. During World War II he helped introduce the use of radar into military operations.
But his finest moments came as Cornell's president from 1969 to 1977. Modest and mild-mannered, he led Cornell through the era of student protest against the Vietnam War and for civil rights and restored the university to stability.
"Dale Corson guided Cornell through one of its most difficult periods with extraordinary wisdom and grace," said Cornell President David J. Skorton. "His love for this university was exemplary, and I feel privileged to have had him as a mentor and friend."
After the peak of campus student activism and a wave of faculty resignations, Corson calmly and resolutely poised the university for a new period of growth, then guided it through the economic recession of the 1970s.
"What Dale did here from 1969 to 1977 was to rebuild the university from the inside, with the indispensable help of many alumni," said Walter LaFeber, a Tisch Distinguished University Professor and former chair of the history department. "There probably was not a worse job in higher education in the United States in the spring of 1969 than the presidency of Cornell, and it could have gotten a lot worse. But people pulled together, and that was because of Dale."
Professor Emeritus J. Robert Cooke, former dean of the university faculty, recalled Corson's "wise and unpretentious" leadership, and his "integrity and competence" that inspired abiding respect from many.
"Dale is one of the truly great persons of Cornell's history, as evidenced by his humanity, his respect for the opinions of others, his scientific achievements, his wisdom in guiding the university through its most difficult period, and for the great breadth and wisdom of his leadership in so many diverse realms of his life," Cooke said.
Corson was born in Pittsburg, Kan., April 5, 1914. He earned an A.B. at the College of Emporia (1934) and an M.A. at the University of Kansas (1935). His Ph.D. in physics was awarded by the University of California-Berkeley in 1938, when nuclear physics was in its golden age. As a postdoctoral fellow working under physicist Ernest Lawrence, Corson discovered astatine, and with two associates worked out its physical and chemical properties.
He was a staff member at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Radiation Laboratory from 1941 to 1943. He lived in London during part of the Blitz while helping adapt his work on radar for the British Royal Air Force. At MIT, he played a key role on the Anglo-American research team that perfected the use of airborne radar. Corson later served as a technical adviser at U.S. Army Air Corps headquarters in Washington, D.C., where he consulted on radar deployment in Europe and the Pacific.
At the end of the war he worked at Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory, directing the establishment of the Sandia National Laboratory. For this and other wartime service, Corson received a Presidential Certificate of Merit in 1948.
In 1946 Corson joined the Cornell faculty as an assistant professor of physics. He was appointed associate professor (1947), full professor (1952), Department of Physics chair (1956) and became dean of the College of Engineering in 1959. He served as provost from 1963 to 1969, president from 1969 to 1977, and served as chancellor -- a senior officer of the university -- from 1977 to 1979.
After Corson's service as chancellor, the Cornell Board of Trustees passed a resolution stating, in part: "[Corson's] fundamental human kindness, combined with foresight, steadfastness and quiet humor has set an example of unpretentious effectiveness that has captured the meaning of Cornell for us all."
Corson helped design Cornell's first high-energy electron synchrotron facility, and he played a leadership role in establishing the university's eminence in materials science, computer graphics and multidisciplinary research. In recent years he designed and guided the construction of an elegant and accurate sundial on Cornell's engineering quad.
He was instrumental in the formation of Cornell's Center for Radiophysics and Space Research, and he helped create the Science, Technology and Society Program. He also promoted the Division of Biological Sciences (one of its buildings is Corson Hall). He and his administration developed or revitalized new approaches to teaching and research in geology, history, Africana studies, medieval studies, water resources and women's studies at Cornell.
A quiet man who was much admired for his personal integrity, serious scholarship and accomplishments in his many areas of interest, Corson spent two decades after stepping down from the Cornell presidency chairing major national study groups on such subjects as U.S.-Japanese scientific relations, the introduction of modern science and technology into China, and the balance between national security and open inquiry in academic research. At the National Academy of Sciences, he founded the Government-University-Industry Research Roundtable to promote exchange among leaders.
Corson devoted much time to thinking about and lecturing about the future of the research university. He helped found the life care retirement community Kendal at Ithaca by serving as chair of the committee that developed it. In this role he worked with community leaders and legislators to change state laws that impeded the creation of such communities. He was also an enthusiastic and skilled photographer.
Corson received the Public Welfare Medal from the National Academy of Sciences and the Arthur M. Beuche Award from the National Academy of Engineering, two of the nation's highest honors in science and engineering. He received honorary degrees from Columbia University, Hamilton College, Elmira College, the University of Rochester and Wilkes University. He was also honored by all his alma maters.
Corson was devoted to and beloved by his family. He is survived by his wife of 73 years, the former Nellie E. Griswold, and their four children: David (Carolyn Corson) of Ithaca; Bruce (Mary Wyman) of Sebastopol, Calif.; Richard (Shirl Dorfman) of Phoenix, Ariz.; and Janet (Jon Corson-Rikert) of Ithaca. He also leaves six grandchildren and six great-grandchildren.
A celebration of Corson's life is being planned, and details will be announced at a later date.
Memorial contributions can be made to the Dale R. Corson Memorial Fund to support student health and well-being at Cornell University, or to a charity of your choice.
Information from Cornell University
Biographical information compiled by Starfishin [#48860385]
His son David confirmed the death.
Dr. Corson, who had been provost since 1963, was named acting president in 1969 after the resignation of James A. Perkins, who had been roundly criticized as having been too lenient with the protesters.
Though Dr. Corson and Dr. Perkins had been in full agreement during the crisis, the university's trustees chose Dr. Corson because of his proven ability to connect with students and faculty across the political spectrum, colleagues said.
"He had contacts among the militants, as well as the respect of faculty and administrators," said Elaine Engst, the Cornell archivist. "He brought the temperature down."
As provost, Dr. Corson had invited incoming freshmen to drop by anytime to talk, and many did, including several of the 100 or so students who later occupied Willard Straight Hall on April 19, 1969, demanding that a black studies program be established.
The occupation, one of many campus protests across the country, began after a cross was burned one night outside a black women's dormitory. The protesters refused to leave Straight Hall until the university agreed to set up the department. White fraternity members tried to take back the building and were repulsed, prompting the occupiers to arm themselves with weapons from a Sears, Roebuck store.
Meanwhile, hundreds of police officers from Rochester and Syracuse, summoned by the local police, were in downtown Ithaca, and some university officials were urging Dr. Perkins to call the authorities in.
Dr. Corson counseled against it, and many people involved said his credibility with both the militants and the hard-line faculty and administrators was crucial to Dr. Perkins's decision to resolve the crisis by giving the militants what they wanted.
A national uproar ensued. President Richard M. Nixon called the militants "ideological criminals." A photograph of armed students leaving the building was on the front page of The New York Times and the cover of Newsweek, under the headline "Universities Under the Gun."
Demonstrations and occupations about racial tensions and the war in Vietnam continued after Dr. Corson was officially named president in 1970. But Dr. Corson, who was willing to wade into crowds of angry protesters, was credited with keeping the protests from escalating out of control. He stepped down in 1977 and was chancellor until he retired in 1979 at 65…. Homer Meade, who was an occupier of Straight Hall and is now an executive for an educational services firm, said Dr. Corson had had an acute understanding of "how close we were to a Kent State," referring to the killing of four students by Ohio national guardsmen the next year.
"He knew a lot of us in that building, and he understood that people were ready to die that day," Mr. Meade said. He was one of a half dozen activists who remained in touch with Dr. Corson…. As dean of Cornell's College of Engineering, Dr. Corson helped start the university's Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, the largest radio telescope in the world at the time, and a particle accelerator on campus.
Dr. Corson probably had a deeper understanding of volatility than most. In the early 1950s, he belonged to a team of physicists credited with discovering the radioactive element astatine. Astatine is among the least stable elements on the periodic table….
Extracted from "Dale Corson, Cornell Administrator Who Helped Quell Protest, Dies at 97" (P. Vitello) published in The New York Times on April 5, 2012
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Dale R. Corson lived an exemplary life. His scientific achievements won him rare dual recognition in the form of the Arthur M. Beuche Award from the National Academy of Engineering and the Public Welfare Medal from the National Academy of Sciences. His bright mind, coupled with his reputation for humility and personal integrity, enabled him to deal with complex, politically charged matters, and these characteristics were vital to his success when he became president of Cornell University during a period of unprecedented campus turbulence. His habit of carefully recording details in his notebook during his physics experiments carried over to his leadership roles. When Dale made a commitment he kept it, down to the last detail.
As a child in rural Kansas, Dale was attracted to physics as both an intellectual pursuit and a career. He pursued that vision through the grim years of the Great Depression, earning degrees at the College of Emporia (AB), University of Kansas (MA), and University of California at Berkeley (PhD). As a postdoctoral fellow at Berkeley he participated in the creation and use of a particle accelerator.
Within two years of his PhD, he and associates Ken MacKenzie and Emilio Segrè had placed a new element, astatine (At), on the periodic table. As World War II engulfed Europe, Ernest Lawrence summoned Dale to join the MIT Radiation Lab to work on a top secret military project, development of airborne radar systems. Dale worked on operational deployment of radar technology, which played a crucial role in winning the war. He was assigned to continue that work as a military advisor in the newly built Pentagon.
From there he went to Los Alamos, where he led the creation of Sandia National Laboratory, now one of the largest of the US national laboratories. After the launch of Sputnik, he served on the National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics, which recommended the creation of NASA.
Dale was among a group of physicists, including Hans Bethe and Robert Wilson, to join the Cornell faculty after WWII. His first assignment was the design and early operation of the 300-MeV synchrotron, Cornell's first post-WWII electron accelerator. It was one of the first synchrotrons to operate successfully and a precursor to Cornell's famous Wilson Synchrotron Laboratory.
Dale became a full professor in 1952 and in 1956 chair of the physics department, with the support and confidence of both the nuclear and theoretical physicists and the low- temperature/solid state group. Three years later he became dean of engineering. Such rapid advancement can make people imperious, but Dale stayed true to his sensible Midwestern roots.
He was aware, for example, that some college faculty members questioned whether he even qualified as a "real" engineer—and he conceded the point. "There was no logic at all to my choice as the dean of the Engineering College," he said. "I was a last minute substitute after the prime candidate, whom I had helped recruit, withdrew." Dale became university provost in 1963, during the administration of James Perkins, and in that capacity he addressed a wide range of issues, from the library system to the Arecibo telescope in Puerto Rico. He also gathered the biological science programs, which were widely dispersed among multiple colleges, to form the Division of Biological Sciences, thereby fostering greater synergy among the departments at Cornell. President Perkins assigned Dale the task of increasing diversity at Cornell.
Against a backdrop of volatile national political debates over issues such as the Vietnam War and civil rights, Cornell rapidly increased its enrollment of students of color. These students brought with them a commitment to making their voices heard in the academic community and a sense of urgency about doing it—and they encountered faculty and other groups just as committed to changing the campus more gradually by consensus and leadership.
The rapidly heating climate led to the takeover in 1969 of Cornell's student union by African American students. President Perkins resigned shortly afterward. The task of settling the differences and restoring peace fell to Dale, first as interim president and then as president. He is widely credited with holding the campus together with his calm and capable leadership. In later years Dale would reflect on that period with wry good humor: "I was never actually inaugurated. Instead there was an investiture at commencement following my first year in office.… There were demonstrations and disruptions and two attempts to take over the microphone. [Professor] Morris Bishop made international news when he bent the [ceremonial university mace] jabbing the protestors in the ribs.
Those were the days!" It was Cornell's good fortune that the new president was a universally trusted leader. Dale patiently consulted with all sides and made it clear that he understood what was said. John Marcham, editor of the Cornell Alumni News, observed in July 1977 that Dale "was known…as someone who could figure out the real end result and price of carrying out a flowery educational principle. Not only had he thought it out in his head, but he probably also made note of it in the little notebook he always seemed to have with him.
As a consequence, when he said something was possible, members of the university community knew it was in fact possible.… [F]actions that distrusted one another would allow his administration the time to knit back together the fabric of a torn institution." Dale served Cornell as president from 1969 to 1977. During his tenure he was acutely aware of the need to balance the university's budget, even in a period of high inflation. The record shows that it was he who insisted on dispensing with a formal inauguration in favor of a much less costly investiture. Perhaps because of his own appreciation of the value of access to higher education, he worked hard to keep Cornell financially affordable.
He also nurtured fundamental programmatic changes, working with William Gordon to create Cornell's Center for Radio Physics and Space Research, with Don Greenberg to enter the emerging field of computer graphics, and with Henri Sack, Robert Sproull, and James Krumhansl to form what is now the Cornell Center for Materials Research, a highly successful and widely copied model for university-based multidisciplinary research. In addition, Dale provided institutional support for Africana studies, water resources, women's studies, and the humanities in general.
Dale retired from the presidency in 1977 but agreed to stay on as chancellor, much to the delight of his successor. The Cornell Medical College, located in New York City, was experiencing financial and administrative difficulties, and Dale concentrated on sorting them out, freeing the new president to focus on the Ithaca campus. Also during those two years he prepared a thoughtful analysis of long-term issues facing higher education.
From 1982 to 1994 he served on several National Academy/ National Research Council committees. He was inaugural chair of the Government-University-Industry Research Roundtable, which promoted communication among national leaders, and he helped organize a workshop on international higher education exchanges between the United States and Japan. In the early 1980s he headed a panel on Scientific Communication and National Security that averted restrictions on the publication of unclassified university research. NAS President Frank Press said of Dale's service, "The nation is in your debt."
Dale enjoyed excellent health and was mentally alert to the end of his nearly 98 years, facts that he attributed to good family genetics. He was married to Nellie Griswold Corson for more than 73 years and together they raised four talented and accomplished children. In their senior years Dale and Nellie lived in Kendal at Ithaca, a continuing care facility that Dale had helped to establish and which is adorned by many of his professional-quality photographs. Dale also continued to meet with colleagues from the campus, staying closely in touch with the university to which he devoted his life.
~ Frank H.T. Rhodes and J. Robert Cooke
Submitted by the National Academy of Engineering Home Secretary
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Dale R. Corson, a nuclear physicist who died last week, is best remembered as the Cornell University President who peacefully led his campus through the turmoil and upheaval of the Vietnam era. But he also played an influential role in deliberations over the role of secrecy in scientific research.
Dr. Corson chaired a 1982 committee of the National Academy of Sciences that produced a landmark study entitled "Scientific Communication and National Security," which became known as the Corson Report.
In sober and measured tones, the Corson Report pushed back against calls for increased secrecy in government-funded science:
"Current proponents of stricter controls advocate a strategy of security through secrecy. In the view of the Panel security by accomplishment may have more to offer as a general national strategy. The long-term security of the United States depends in large part on its economic, technical, scientific, and intellectual vitality, which in turn depends on the vigorous research and development effort that openness helps to nurture… Controls on scientific communication could adversely affect U.S. research institutions and could be inconsistent with both the utilitarian and philosophical values of an open society."
President Reagan cited Dr. Corson in National Security Decision Directive 189, "National Policy on the Transfer of Scientific, Technical and Engineering Information," which seemed to affirm that fundamental research should remain unrestricted to the maximum extent possible. In fact, however, that directive imperfectly reflected the input of the Corson Report, noted Harold C. Relyea in his book "Silencing Science: National Security Controls and Scientific Communication."
Still, many of the issues identified by Dr. Corson and his colleagues, and the concerns they expressed, remain current today and have not reached an unequivocal resolution, as evidenced most recently by the latest U.S. government policy on dual use biological research.
From "Dale Corson and Scientific Freedom"
Posted by Steven Aftergood on the Federation of American Scientists blog, April 6, 2012
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Dale Raymond Corson, Cornell University's eighth president, a physicist and an engineer, died March 31 of congestive heart failure at his home at Kendal at Ithaca. He was 97.
A professor of physics emeritus at Cornell, Corson was a polymath whose achievements in physics and engineering date to 1940, when he discovered astatine, element 85 in the periodic table of the elements. During World War II he helped introduce the use of radar into military operations.
But his finest moments came as Cornell's president from 1969 to 1977. Modest and mild-mannered, he led Cornell through the era of student protest against the Vietnam War and for civil rights and restored the university to stability.
"Dale Corson guided Cornell through one of its most difficult periods with extraordinary wisdom and grace," said Cornell President David J. Skorton. "His love for this university was exemplary, and I feel privileged to have had him as a mentor and friend."
After the peak of campus student activism and a wave of faculty resignations, Corson calmly and resolutely poised the university for a new period of growth, then guided it through the economic recession of the 1970s.
"What Dale did here from 1969 to 1977 was to rebuild the university from the inside, with the indispensable help of many alumni," said Walter LaFeber, a Tisch Distinguished University Professor and former chair of the history department. "There probably was not a worse job in higher education in the United States in the spring of 1969 than the presidency of Cornell, and it could have gotten a lot worse. But people pulled together, and that was because of Dale."
Professor Emeritus J. Robert Cooke, former dean of the university faculty, recalled Corson's "wise and unpretentious" leadership, and his "integrity and competence" that inspired abiding respect from many.
"Dale is one of the truly great persons of Cornell's history, as evidenced by his humanity, his respect for the opinions of others, his scientific achievements, his wisdom in guiding the university through its most difficult period, and for the great breadth and wisdom of his leadership in so many diverse realms of his life," Cooke said.
Corson was born in Pittsburg, Kan., April 5, 1914. He earned an A.B. at the College of Emporia (1934) and an M.A. at the University of Kansas (1935). His Ph.D. in physics was awarded by the University of California-Berkeley in 1938, when nuclear physics was in its golden age. As a postdoctoral fellow working under physicist Ernest Lawrence, Corson discovered astatine, and with two associates worked out its physical and chemical properties.
He was a staff member at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Radiation Laboratory from 1941 to 1943. He lived in London during part of the Blitz while helping adapt his work on radar for the British Royal Air Force. At MIT, he played a key role on the Anglo-American research team that perfected the use of airborne radar. Corson later served as a technical adviser at U.S. Army Air Corps headquarters in Washington, D.C., where he consulted on radar deployment in Europe and the Pacific.
At the end of the war he worked at Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory, directing the establishment of the Sandia National Laboratory. For this and other wartime service, Corson received a Presidential Certificate of Merit in 1948.
In 1946 Corson joined the Cornell faculty as an assistant professor of physics. He was appointed associate professor (1947), full professor (1952), Department of Physics chair (1956) and became dean of the College of Engineering in 1959. He served as provost from 1963 to 1969, president from 1969 to 1977, and served as chancellor -- a senior officer of the university -- from 1977 to 1979.
After Corson's service as chancellor, the Cornell Board of Trustees passed a resolution stating, in part: "[Corson's] fundamental human kindness, combined with foresight, steadfastness and quiet humor has set an example of unpretentious effectiveness that has captured the meaning of Cornell for us all."
Corson helped design Cornell's first high-energy electron synchrotron facility, and he played a leadership role in establishing the university's eminence in materials science, computer graphics and multidisciplinary research. In recent years he designed and guided the construction of an elegant and accurate sundial on Cornell's engineering quad.
He was instrumental in the formation of Cornell's Center for Radiophysics and Space Research, and he helped create the Science, Technology and Society Program. He also promoted the Division of Biological Sciences (one of its buildings is Corson Hall). He and his administration developed or revitalized new approaches to teaching and research in geology, history, Africana studies, medieval studies, water resources and women's studies at Cornell.
A quiet man who was much admired for his personal integrity, serious scholarship and accomplishments in his many areas of interest, Corson spent two decades after stepping down from the Cornell presidency chairing major national study groups on such subjects as U.S.-Japanese scientific relations, the introduction of modern science and technology into China, and the balance between national security and open inquiry in academic research. At the National Academy of Sciences, he founded the Government-University-Industry Research Roundtable to promote exchange among leaders.
Corson devoted much time to thinking about and lecturing about the future of the research university. He helped found the life care retirement community Kendal at Ithaca by serving as chair of the committee that developed it. In this role he worked with community leaders and legislators to change state laws that impeded the creation of such communities. He was also an enthusiastic and skilled photographer.
Corson received the Public Welfare Medal from the National Academy of Sciences and the Arthur M. Beuche Award from the National Academy of Engineering, two of the nation's highest honors in science and engineering. He received honorary degrees from Columbia University, Hamilton College, Elmira College, the University of Rochester and Wilkes University. He was also honored by all his alma maters.
Corson was devoted to and beloved by his family. He is survived by his wife of 73 years, the former Nellie E. Griswold, and their four children: David (Carolyn Corson) of Ithaca; Bruce (Mary Wyman) of Sebastopol, Calif.; Richard (Shirl Dorfman) of Phoenix, Ariz.; and Janet (Jon Corson-Rikert) of Ithaca. He also leaves six grandchildren and six great-grandchildren.
A celebration of Corson's life is being planned, and details will be announced at a later date.
Memorial contributions can be made to the Dale R. Corson Memorial Fund to support student health and well-being at Cornell University, or to a charity of your choice.
Information from Cornell University
Biographical information compiled by Starfishin [#48860385]
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CORSON
DALE RAYMOND NELLIE GRISWOLD
APRIL 5 1914 DEC. 27 1914
MARCH 31 2012 JAN. 23 2017
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The couple's names and dates are contained within an engraved outline of their beloved home state, Kansas
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