Bridging Divides : The Origins of the Beckman Institute at Illinois [1 ed.] 9780252090646, 9780252034848

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BRIDGING

DIVIDES

The Origins of the Beckman Institute at Illinois

Copyright © 2009. University of Illinois Press. All rights reserved.

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Theodore L. Brown Forewords by Stanley O. Ikenberry and Richard H. Herman

Bridging Divides : The Origins of the Beckman Institute at Illinois, University of Illinois Press, 2009. ProQuest

Copyright © 2009. University of Illinois Press. All rights reserved.

Bridging Divides

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................ Copyright © 2009. University of Illinois Press. All rights reserved.

Theodore L. Brown Forewords by Stanley O. Ikenberry and Richard H. Herman

University of Illinois Press  Urbana and Chicago

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Copyright © 2009. University of Illinois Press. All rights reserved.

Bridging Divides ....................... The Origins of the Beckman Institute at Illinois

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© 2009 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois All rights reserved Manufactured in the United States of America c  5  4  3  2  1

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∞ This book is printed on acid-free paper. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Brown, Theodore L. (Theodore Lawrence), 1928– Bridging Divides : the origins of the Beckman Institute at Illinois / Theodore L. Brown. p.  cm. Includes index. ISBN 978-0-252-03484-8 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology—History. 2. Research institutes—Illinois— History. 3. Science—Study and teaching (Higher)— Illinois—History. 4. Technology—Study and teaching (Higher)—Illinois—History. 5. Beckman, Arnold O. I. Title. Q183.U62B436   2009 507.2'077366—dc22   2009009424

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In memory of

Copyright © 2009. University of Illinois Press. All rights reserved.

Arnold and Mabel Beckman

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Contents

foreword . . . ix Copyright © 2009. University of Illinois Press. All rights reserved.

Stanley O. Ikenberry, President Emeritus

foreword . . . xiii

Richard H. Herman, Chancellor of the Urbana-Champaign Campus

preface . . . xvii

1. Forging the Proposal . . . 1

2. October 5, 1985: The Institute Is Born . . . 13 3. Building the Institute . . . 26

4. Choosing Programs . . . 36

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5. The Institute Goes Public . . . 47

6. Bringing the Institute to Life . . . 57

7. The Beckman Foundation: Arnold’s Last Years . . . 72 appendix 1 Letters of Appointment of Faculty Committees to Prepare Proposals . . . 79 appendix 2 Letters of Appointment of Program, Administrative and Steering Committees . . . 86 appendix 3 Instructions for Proposal Submission . . . 102

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index . . . 105

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Foreword

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Stanley O. Ikenberry

N

o single event in recent decades had a greater impact on the University of Illinois than the creation of the Beckman Institute. At the center was Ted Brown, who is uniquely qualified to capture the drama surrounding one of the most innovative academic creations of the era. In recounting the history, Ted does not disclose how important it was to Dr. Arnold Beckman and to me that he serve as the institute’s founding director. No single person is indispensable; but still, absent Ted’s continuity of vision and extensive knowledge of the culture and capabilities of the campus, it is possible that the Beckman Institute might never have happened. Happily, Ted did serve, the Beckman Institute did happen, and we are now able to chronicle the remarkable journey. The other crucial actor, of course, was Arnold Beckman. Arnold was the most consequential, thoughtful, selfless, demanding, generous, and

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purposeful philanthropist I have ever known. He had grown up in a quite different America, in the humblest of circumstances, and yet went on to achieve remarkable and richly deserved academic and commercial fame. Still, over the years, he never lost his love of Illinois; of Cullom, his hometown; of the rich farmland he knew as a youngster; and of the university. As Ted helps us understand, over the years those roots actually deepened. While it was incredibly exciting at the time, we now more fully understand how pivotal the Beckman Institute has been for the University of Illinois. Arnold’s gift came during our first major capital campaign and shaped philanthropy at Illinois for years to come. The size—$40 million—at the time was the largest gift to any public university in the United States. And yet it was not so much the sheer size of the gift from Arnold and Mabel as it was the depth of generosity and sense of purpose with which it was given. In many respects the Beckman Institute evolved from the scientific and technological strengths and culture of the Urbana-Champaign campus. In other ways, however, it changed the campus profoundly. Interdisciplinary collaboration and the capacity to attract exciting new faculty talent had long been a part of the Illinois tradition, but the Beckman Institute made a profound difference that endures today. The physical face of the campus was changed as well, in part because of the size of the institute, but also because the Beckman gift forced us to rethink and replan the North Campus, which eventually led to a major updating and rethinking of the architecture and design for the entire campus. The relationship between the university, the people of Illinois, and state government changed as well. For alumni and friends, the excitement of the Beckman Institute was contagious. It lifted aspirations and expectations as well as spirits. Arnold’s demand that the State of Illinois match his gift, at least in part, was pivotal. The $10 million state match for the Beckman gift created a precedent of public-private partnership that served as a model for creative arrangements time and again in the years that followed. As Ted recounts, incredible effort and creativity went into the initial conceptualization of the institute, its focus, and the outcomes that could be expected to flow from it. Arnold and Mabel Beckman were intensely

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interested and followed the evolution of the proposal at every step. At key points, my wife Judy and I traveled to California to review our planning with the Beckmans. At the end of one visit, and perhaps sensing my apprehension, Mabel turned to me in confidence and whispered, “Don’t worry; Stan. I have read all of the proposals. Illinois is best.” The accomplishments of the Beckman Institute over the last twenty years suggest Mabel may have been right. Moreover, the excitement and promise of that era must not be lost. Bridging Divides: The Origins of the Beckman Institute at Illinois is a wonderfully told account of an important moment in Illinois history.

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Stanley O. Ikenberry was president of the University of Illinois during 1979–95. He is one of the longest-serving presidents in the history of the university. He also served as president of the American Council on Education during 1996–2001. He is currently Regent Professor and President Emeritus on the Urbana-Champaign campus.

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Foreword

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Chancellor Richard H. Herman

T

here is a good reason that leaders of this institution continually point to the Beckman Institute as a successful research model. Many parties played a role in shaping Arnold Beckman’s generous gift into a lasting legacy. The foreword by Stan Ikenberry and Ted Brown’s account convey just how remarkable an accomplishment the formation of the institute was. I want to expand on their words to capture the dynamic of the way things work at Beckman and the influence that this has had on the way we do research, on this campus and elsewhere. It is hard to go to any research university today and not hear the word interdisciplinary when campus leaders discuss addressing society’s needs. Yet interdisciplinary research was not always thought of as important and it even was once perceived as a threat to the status of disciplines (read also,

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departments) through the lowering of interdepartmental and intercollege barriers. To some extent, on this campus, our excellent Coordinated Science Laboratory can be viewed as a precursor of the institute. But the Beckman and its first two directors, Ted Brown and then Jiri Jonas, took the issue on directly, much to the benefit of science and the campus. The many obstacles they encountered could not have been easy for them to deal with. Ten years ago, when I came here as provost, stories of these difficulties still abounded. Today, we continue to tweak the details, but it is clear that the institute is an unqualified success. Intellectual themes were identified; the requirements for being at the Beckman were not just ability but also a willingness to work in an interdisciplinary spirit. Continued self-examination was the word of the day, as exemplified by the choice of a savvy external advisory board that provided timely and meaningful advice. All of this raised expectations and performance that, together with a stunning physical environment, helped us attract wonderful faculty members to many departments on our campus. When Jiri Jonas retired as director after a term of eight years, I appointed Pierre Wiltzius as director. All three of the institute’s directors have contributed in different ways to shaping it, but they held one thing in common: excellence as a primary standard. All acted according to one of Arnold Beckman’s dicta: “There is no satisfactory substitute for excellence.” The Beckman model of interdisciplinary research had a profound positive effect on the willingness of faculty to work across the formerly impermeable boundaries of departments and colleges. This has been much to the benefit of our faculty and, most important, of our students. The synergy and sense of possibility is quite stunning. When we contemplated other areas of thematic research, the Beckman Institute served as a model for our Institute for Genomic Biology, directed by Harris Lewin. Some of the old difficulties remained as we established the guiding principles for this new institute, but the success of the Beckman model pushed and inspired us to overcome them. As to my comment about Beckman’s broader influence, I think the science speaks for itself. But I am moved to recount a story from the time I served on the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Advisory Committee to the Division of Mathematical and Physical Sciences (MPS). At the time Bill Harris directed the division.

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The idea of centers really began in the late 1980s at NSF. A presentation from Jiri Jonas to the advisory committee helped solidify a move at NSF to direct funds to multidisciplinary research and to centers supporting such work. The Beckman Institute and the Max Planck Institutes in Germany were thought of as models of this kind of work. Harris, with a lot of support from the advisory committee, made the decision to sequester a certain amount of MPS resources for multidisciplinary research, a significant decision in less-than-heady financial times. All this boded well for the nation’s research and, without question, the Beckman model had a good deal of influence on that seminal decision. Because of the Beckman model, Illinois has an atmosphere of collaborative fertilization envied by the world. Researchers know that when they come here to do their most important work they have more chances for scientific serendipity than elsewhere. Recently, Professor Donna Cox, who holds joint appointments in the School of Art and Design and the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, and has for many years been active in the Beckman Institute, captured perfectly the spirit of the Beckman interdisciplinary model when she said Where else on the planet could I, . . . as an artist, . . . collapse billions of years into seconds and paint with a multimillion color palette to tell stories . . . of networking, . . . of digital museums, . . . of awesome tornadoes, . . . or dance with avatars in virtual performances that span the globe? Where else on the planet—other than the intellectual community here at Urbana-Champaign, Illinois?

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Where else indeed?

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Preface

A

rnold and Mabel Beckman’s $40 million gift to the University of Illinois for creation of the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology at UrbanaChampaign was an extraordinary event in the history of the  university. By a wide margin, it was the largest single gift ever to the university, and in fact represented the largest gift made to any public university till that time. This book is a look back at the origins of the Beckman Institute, partly in celebration of the first twenty years of its operation. I tell the story from a personal perspective; for many years I virtually lived and breathed the Beckman Institute project. But because I do not fully trust my memory, my limited records, or my freedom from biased recall after more than twenty years, I have asked others to read and comment on my drafts. Many additions and other changes have been made in response to the suggestions I have received. That said, I

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take full responsibility for any errors that may be found—including, I’m sure, some errors of omission. The old saw that every success has a thousand fathers applies to the Beckman Institute, and in this instance it is literally true of the many, if not quite a thousand, who have contributed in one way or another to making the institute what it has become. Among them, the contributions of Professors Karl Hess and Bill Greenough stand out. Their leadership and dedication, from the outset and through many years that followed, were indispensable, and I will be forever grateful to them. I am indebted to Patricia Beckman, Audrey Brown, Paul Dixon, Ned Goldwasser, Bill Greenough, Karl Hess, Stanley Ikenberry, Steve McGaughey, Sarah Wasserman, and Mort Weir for reading and commenting on draft versions. Pierre Wiltzius, director of the Beckman Institute, and Chancellor Richard Herman have generously supported the publication. I want to thank Joan Catapano, editor in chief at the University of Illinois Press, for seeing this project through to completion and all others at the University of Illinois Press who helped produce this attractive book.

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Forging the Proposal

O

ur story begins quite a long time back.* Arnold Beckman was born in the small town of Cullom, Illinois, about seventy miles north of Urbana-Champaign. He grew up there and in Bloomington, Illinois, where he was a student at the laboratory high school associated with what was then Illinois Normal University. After military service as a marine in World War I, during which he met his future bride, Mabel Meinzer, Arnold attended the University of Illinois and received a BS degree in chemical engineering in 1921 and an MS degree in physical chemistry in 1922. He had a very successful career at Illinois as a student. After marrying Mabel and working two years at Bell Laboratories in New Jersey, he went on to receive his PhD at the * Arnold Beckman’s biography, Arnold Beckman: One Hundred Years of Excellence, by Arnold Thackray and Minor Myers Jr. and published by the Chemical Heritage Foundation, is an excellent source of more information on his remarkable life.

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California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and become a member of the faculty there. In 1939 he left Caltech to found the company that eventually became Beckman Instruments, arguably the greatest scientific instrument manufacturer of the twentieth century. Arnold Beckman was an inventor par excellence. His initial instrumental invention was a pH meter that was the first to incorporate detection and measurement functions into a simple, robust, and accurate device, one that also for the first time included the use of electronic amplification of signals. The Beckman DU spectrophotometer, another classic instrument, appeared in 1941; it revolutionized the measurement of light signals from samples and was of vital importance in war research during World War II. Arnold Beckman became a very successful businessman and public servant. He was a leader in the affairs of Caltech; indeed, he served as chairperson of the board of trustees of that institution from 1964 to 1974. In addition, he and Mabel made many financial contributions to Caltech. He was also active in public affairs in the state of California. Although he had spent nearly all his time in California after graduating from the University of Illinois, Arnold never lost touch with his Illinois roots— particularly with Cullom, his birthplace, and the University of Illinois. He became a member of the University of Illinois Foundation in 1962 and was within a short time a member of the President’s Council. In 1980 he was a member of the Illinois Cabinet, the national governing board of the Campaign for Illinois, the university’s first major university-wide fund drive. I first met Dr. and Mrs. Beckman in 1978, during the fall University of Illinois Foundation meeting. My spouse Audrey and I were invited to go to dinner with the Beckmans after the opening reception. I was at the time not an administrator, simply a chemistry faculty member appointed to the Campus Research Board, which operated under the leadership of the dean of the graduate school to make awards of funds and other forms of support for faculty research. As a mere faculty member, I was not aware that the Beckmans were being asked to make a leadership gift to get the Campaign for Illinois off the ground. They eventually made a gift of $2.5 million in Beckman stock and 2,000 acres of valuable farmland in the Cullom area, to be used to support the activities of the Campus Research Board. The Beckmans insisted on a match of $5 million from

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other sources, and so the total endowment from which funds could be drawn was worth $10 million. The income on that amount represented a big boost in the monies available for support of faculty research. As it happened, I was appointed vice chancellor for research and dean of the Graduate College in the fall of 1980, just as the Beckman gift was announced. I was therefore in the enviable position of being able to take advantage of the new resources that the Beckman gift represented. We established Beckman Fellowships for junior faculty in the Center for Advanced Study. The fellowships provided release time for a semester for not-yet-tenured faculty to devote themselves more intensively to their research activities. For more senior faculty, a select number of research grants were labeled Beckman Research Awards. In addition, we established the annual Arnold O. Beckman Lecture on Science and Innovation, with Dr. Beckman as the first lecturer. That series has brought many outstanding figures to the campus. Beckman Instruments merged with SmithKline, a pharmaceutical company, in 1982, creating SmithKline Beckman. Because Dr. Beckman was on the board of the merged company, he attended board meetings at company headquarters in Philadelphia. It was not inconvenient for him to stop off at Urbana-Champaign on many of his board-related trips. He particularly enjoyed meeting with faculty who were doing interesting research, and we made sure that he spent time in laboratories and offices of the Beckman Fellows and those receiving Beckman Research Awards. He also met on occasion with the professors in the Center for Advanced Study. His visits provided opportunities for him to become better acquainted with the university’s president, Stanley Ikenberry, Vice President Mort Weir, John Cribbet (chancellor of the Urbana-Champaign campus at the time), and other campus administrators, including me. One aspect of the Beckman Research Awards merits mention here for what it tells of Arnold Beckman’s capacity for evaluating new ideas. When he and Mabel established the endowment for support of research board activities, they might have had in mind just scientifically oriented research, though they imposed no restrictions of that kind. But the research board was charged with support of faculty scholarship generally. From the beginning, the research board designated outstanding proposals from faculty in the social sciences and humanities for Beckman Research Awards. As an illustration, the Graduate College annual report for 1986

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mentions Beckman Research Awards to several scientists, but also to Charles Capwell, an ethnomusicologist; James R. Barrett, a historian; Marianne Kalinke, a professor of Germanic languages and literature; and William Schoedel, a professor of classics. The fact that the Beckman name was associated with highly visible awards to faculty outside the sciences helped to establish goodwill among faculty as the Beckman Institute project came into being.

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The Proposal Is Born On a cold morning in early 1983 John Cribbet, Ned Goldwasser (vice chancellor for academic affairs, the chief academic officer under the chancellor), and I crossed Wright Street for a meeting in Mort Weir’s office at the Henry Administration Building with Mort (vice president for academic affairs under President Ikenberry) and Lewis Barron, the executive director of the University of Illinois Foundation, the quasiindependent fundraising arm of the university. Lew wanted to talk about how the university might improve its strategy for attracting major gifts from wealthy alumni and friends. The problem, as Lew described it, was that public universities were expected to count on the state of Illinois for the resources to build major facilities or initiate major new programs. In contrast, private universities regularly appealed to their alumni and friends for major gifts; they were the private university’s major source of such support. In fact, however, the University of Illinois could not aspire to be a first-class research institution if it were to depend solely on the state for support of new initiatives. While the federal government funded major facilities, there were significant constraints on the fields eligible for such support, and they were not available except at certain times. Lew suggested that the university should develop a new strategy for attracting private support. What was needed, in his view, were ideas for sweeping, imaginative new projects that would move the campus to the forefront in promising research areas, and which were of such a scope and character that the state would almost certainly not provide funding for them. To interest a potential private donor we would need to come up with ideas that would fit this mold: facilities and programs that went beyond the normal frame of university organizational structure. No names of potential donors were mentioned at this meeting. Lew was insistent

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that this was a matter of giving the foundation materials it might employ as opportunities arose. After the meeting in Mort’s office, John, Ned, and I held discussions in our Troika meetings. The Troika label was used to identify our regular meetings to discuss issues that any one of the three of us might want to raise for general discussion and advice. Established by John, the Troika was a vehicle for open and freewheeling discussions of any and all matters of campus administration. Over periods of an hour or two the talk ranged over a gamut of issues: faculty affairs, campus policies of all sorts, relations among administrators, dealings with the president and his staff, budgetary matters, and so on. The arrangement was wonderfully cordial and collegial, and it contributed immensely to our collective effectiveness. We decided that inasmuch as the initiative would be centered on research, it would be appropriate for me, as vice chancellor for research to, as John liked to say, “take the laboring oar,” reporting frequently in Troika. Discussions of the proposed initiative were held with Dan Drucker and Bill Prokasy, deans of the colleges of Engineering and Liberal Arts and Sciences, respectively. The faculty of these two colleges would be most heavily involved as we proceeded. Keeping in mind that our proposal should be ambitious, and of a scope spanning traditional departmental or even college boundaries, we came to think increasingly in terms of a facility that would support broadly based multidisciplinary activities. We decided that we could most effectively move forward by drawing on the expertise of a group of faculty, drawn largely from both the physical sciences and engineering and the life and behavioral sciences. I prepared a draft letter of charge and circulated it to John, Ned, Dan, Bill, and Ross Martin (associate dean of engineering). John, Ned, and I also met with a group of professors in the Center for Advanced Study to obtain their reactions. My notes indicate comments from David Pines (physics), Nelson Leonard (chemistry), John Bardeen (physics and electrical engineering), Nick Holonyak (physics and electrical engineering), Hans Frauenfelder (physics), Don Burkholder (mathematics), Ralph Wolfe (microbiology), Michio Suzuki (mathematics), and Gregorio Weber (biochemistry). Center professors mentioned several institutes and centers around the world as possible models, but none had the scope we envisioned for the new initiative.

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Many good ideas and questions on physical and administrative arrangements came forth; concerns were raised over whether a broadly based entity would be able to attract the interest and allegiance of faculty. Armed with a good bit of advice, I came to the conclusion that we should appoint two committees, and John and Ned concurred. I then proceeded to polish up the letters that would go to them. The next task was to select the membership of the committees, and—most important— the chairpersons. As a result of my membership on the Campus Research Board for several years prior to my appointment as vice chancellor for research and dean of the Graduate College, and more than two years of experience in those administrative roles, I had acquired a broad acquaintance with faculty members in departments across the campus. After consulting with Deans Drucker and Prokasy, I had tentative lists of candidates for committee members. My next task was to convince two particular people that they should chair these committees. Greg Stillman, a professor in electrical and computer engineering, was very highly regarded for his research accomplishments and was well liked. I made an appointment to see him in his office. I made my pitch that this would be an opportunity to start something really important, and at the least an opportunity to contribute to a greater sense of community and collegiality among the faculty. To my great pleasure, after mulling it over for a few days, Greg accepted the chairmanship. Next I approached Bill Greenough, from the Department of Psychology. Bill’s work involved physiological studies of learning and memory, using rats and other laboratory animals in his work. Bill already had a reputation for advocating cross-disciplinary work. For example, he was jointly appointed in physiology and biophysics and headed a campuswide program in neuroscience. I recall that we met for lunch in the Illini Union Ballroom, the locale at that time of many informal faculty gatherings. Bill was understandably concerned about the drain on his time that such a commitment would represent, but he couldn’t resist the allure of such a challenge. I had my two chairpersons, and with their help we refined the list of other faculty members who would be involved. I also assigned two staff personnel from the Graduate College to act as executive secretaries for the committees: Elaine Copeland for the Greenough Committee and Harvey Stapleton for the Stillman committee. The letters appointing the two committees went out in early May

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1983. Appendix 1 is a copy of the letter to the Greenough committee, followed by the first page of the closely similar letter that went to the Stillman committee. It is worth pointing out a few key elements of the letter. First, we asked the committee members to visualize a new physical facility, and at the same time, to define a new organizational form appropriate to it. The initiative was to draw upon existing strengths of the campus and be directed toward areas of study that had great potential for growth. At the same time, the emphasis in the letter is not upon disciplinary orientations, but rather on multidisciplinarity. The figure of “up to $20 million” was mentioned as a starting point for the committee in considering the size of the proposal. In meetings with the committees at intervals over the next few months, I emphasized that the potential for interesting a donor in such an initiative lay in creating a compelling new idea, one that could greatly enhance the campus’s research capabilities and open new opportunities. No mention was made at this stage of a particular individual to whom a proposal might be directed. The idea was to create something that could be used by university administration and the UI Foundation as opportunities developed. Of course, my remarks did not prevent widespread speculation over whom a proposal might be presented to. Over the course of the summer, Greg Stillman became ill and was unable to continue his role as chairperson of the committee for physical sciences and engineering. After making inquiries about a replacement, I was referred to Karl Hess, a professor of electrical and computer engineering, with a joint appointment in physics. Karl had first come to the Urbana campus from Austria as a postdoctoral research associate with the illustrious John Bardeen and had quickly demonstrated extraordinary creativity in theoretical work. He was thus appointed to the faculty and quickly rose in the ranks to full professorship. Karl found the initiative intriguing and accepted the chair responsibility. During the summer I met with both committees on a few occasions, mostly to clarify our intent in formulating the initiative and to encourage the faculty to keep at the difficult work. They were, after all, being asked to imagine some sort of interdisciplinary entity with only the vaguest of guidelines. A few faculty members dropped out after a while, figuring that the chances of the effort eventually coming to something were slim, and they had better ways to spend their time. That the committees kept

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at the work was due in large measure to the enthusiasm and leadership of Karl and Bill. They kept people involved and did the major share of the hard work of formulating the materials into proposals. Eventually, under Bill and Karl’s leadership, each committee submitted a substantial report. The Greenough committee report was titled “Overview of a Center for Biology, Behavior, and Cognition.” The Hess committee proposed the formation of a “Center for Materials Science, Computers, and Computation.” By this time the imaginations of many faculty members and administrators had been aroused, and we received several “uncommissioned” proposals for centers built around one theme or another. There was, for example, a proposal to establish an institute for quantitative biology, another to form a research center for management and manufacturing systems research. While these and others were regarded with interest to learn what elements might be included in a final product, the two appointed committee reports formed the major foundation for what went forward. The two proposals were distributed to all the administrators who had previously been involved. In addition, Ned and I met once again with the center professors to get their reactions to the proposals. It would be fair to say that the reactions were mixed. It was not easy to imagine what kind of enterprise could be made from the fairly general ideas and structures proposed. Armed with the reactions of everyone with whom the documents had been shared, Mort Weir and I met at times during the winter and spring of the 1983–84 academic year to produce an overview document that would somehow capture the spirit in broad outlines of the two proposals from the committees. After a time we saw that the two reports contemplated conceptually similar structures of research programs: from those that dealt with the most basic, molecular level research at one extreme through studies of systems of increasing complexity and scale, to eventually deal with systems at a macroscopic level. That is, there was a parallelism in the two sets of proposed research foci. Mort was the contact person with the foundation people who were preparing a final version of a proposal that would incorporate the elements of the two faculty committee proposals, as “blended” by Mort and me. In the course of working together, we came up with a diagrammatic way, which was largely Mort’s idea, shown as figure 1, of representing the

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Figure 1. A diagrammatic representation of the research programs in the proposed “Intelligence” Beckman Institute. Information Cognitive Sciences Science

Computer Neuroscience Sciences Large-Scale Cell Biology Integration and Systems Solid State Molecular Life Materials Sciences Materials Science, Biology, Behavior, Computers, and Computation and Cognition

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The Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology

conceptual structure of the proposal. It proved to be an excellent way of capturing the spirit of the new venture. By the time we were ready to submit the proposal to the University of Illinois Foundation, John Cribbet had stepped down as chancellor and was succeeded by Thomas Everhart. He of course wanted to be briefed on the initiative and made suggestions as we moved forward. He also thoroughly reviewed and amended a draft of the proposal before it left the foundation. As the diagram shows, the proposed institute would consist of two major divisions, the Center for Materials Science, Computers, and Computation, and the Center for Biology, Behavior, and Cognition. Each center in turn would be made up of research efforts that focused on systems at various degrees of complexity. At the simplest level, the research efforts were concerned with matter at the molecular scale. At the next level up, the systems under study would be more complex: from molecules to cells on the life science side, from the physics of individual devices to integrated devices and systems containing many parts on the physical sciences side. At the level above this, there would be a concern with communications between neurons and with neuronal organization on the biological sciences side, and with the organizations and program-

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ming of computers on the other. At the highest level, there were cognition, behavior, and language on the one side, information systems and networking on the other. A truly multidisciplinary organization would involve communications between research scholars up and down these structures, but also horizontally: for example, between neuronal systems in animals and signal processing in computer devices. As a general term to describe the overall theme of the proposed new entity, we chose intelligence, by which we meant organized knowledge. The proposal to establish an institute for advanced science and technology was put into a final form by the foundation and submitted to Arnold Beckman by President Stanley Ikenberry, Lew Barron, and Mort Weir during a luncheon in the Illini Union. Arnold had been invited to campus for the specific purpose of discussing the proposal. Mort Weir recalls that there were no dollar figures mentioned in the proposal. Arnold looked it over and said, “You’re talking about $50 million here.” He was right on. The letter formally conveying the proposal was addressed to Arnold at his home address, 107 Shorecliff Road, Corona Del Mar, California, on October 19, 1984. That it was addressed to Dr. Beckman’s home is significant; although they had established a foundation, Arnold and Mabel Beckman’s philanthropic activities were centered largely in their home, and it was the foundation’s mailing address. It was there that they discussed the many proposals they received, and there that they made their decisions. They were assisted with the administrative chores by Arnold’s secretary, Jane Guilarte, who worked for him for thirty-five years. A long time passed, during which we at the campus level heard very little. As we learned later, Stan Ikenberry, Lew Barron, Mort Weir, Tom Everhart, and even Illinois governor James Thompson were in touch with the Beckmans. The university had asked for $50 million to build the proposed institute. It was an unheard-of amount for a public institution to request of a private donor, at least in Dr. Beckman’s experience. As always, he asked what magnitude of matching contribution the university and the State of Illinois were prepared to make. I’m sure that many conversations over these questions took place and that the Beckmans used the occasions of their visits to campus during the 1984–85 academic year to further evaluate the University of Illinois. It was my responsibility and that of my faculty colleagues to ensure their confidence in the quality and vitality of Illinois as a research institution.

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In the summer of 1985, Dr. Beckman indicated that he was prepared to take our proposal to the board of his foundation for evaluation. He indicated, however, that he needed a more substantive statement of the research programs that would operate in the institute, and of the relations between them. I received a call from Mort Weir that Dr. Beckman wanted the more comprehensive statement. He needed a supplemental proposal, and it had to be done soon. I had plans for a vacation to begin in a few days. To write a draft of the supplemental proposal, I gathered together all the documents from the activities of the two committees and the subsequent work in drafting the foundation’s proposal and went to work. At intervals I called upon various faculty members who were available; because it was summer, many were away at conferences or on vacation. With the advice and assistance of several faculty members who responded on short notice, I was able to produce a draft that, after a few revisions by Tom Everhart, Sarah Wasserman (assistant vice chancellor for research), and Mort Weir, formed the proposal that Stan Ikenberry sent to the Beckmans on July 26, 1985. In the supplementary proposal, we made the case that the University of Illinois had established an outstanding record of supporting interdisciplinary research. It helped that UIUC had recently been designated as recipient of one of four major supercomputer center grants, establishing it as the home of the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA). Paul Lauterbur, famous for his invention of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), had recently joined the UIUC faculty. But the university faced a crisis in identifying the facilities available to support the multidisciplinary research of which it was capable. We again described our vision for the new institute, using the diagram in figure 1, and then spelled out some of the content of the individual research efforts envisioned for each of the two centers. The document was specific in stating the numbers of faculty, graduate students, and postdoctoral fellows the institute would support, and the administrative and support personnel who would be needed. It described the types of spaces that might be needed, conferencing and seminar rooms, specialized research support spaces such as animal facilities, clean rooms, shops, and service facilities. The descriptions and estimates were of course only educated guesses, but they formed the basis of our cost accounting. The proposal requested a

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total of $50 million, of which $44 million would go toward construction of the building and $6 million toward movable equipment, land acquisition, and utilities. As a match for the $50 million requested of the Beckmans, the university and State of Illinois pledged an annual contribution of $5 million to cover all costs of maintenance and operation and a minimum of $2 million annually to “stimulate new areas of research and development, and to open up new scientific frontiers within the Institute.” As the president said in his letter to the Beckmans, “Our plan is that the University and State of Illinois contribution will match or surpass the initial $50 million grant awarded before the end of the first ten year period of operation, with the plan for it to continue in perpetuity.” Thus did the public university and the people of Illinois promise to discharge their responsibility for matching the Beckmans’ gift. When I returned from vacation I learned that it appeared that the Beckmans would accept our proposal; not just in part, which I half-expected might be their response, but to the extent of $40 million, with the understanding that there would be an additional $10 million in matching funds from the state. The news was to be embargoed until the formal announcement in October, but I had to tell Karl Hess and Bill Greenough. I think the three of us shared a feeling bordering on delirium. One hoped that something like this might happen, but it seemed almost too good to be true. At the same time, we were struck with the realization that we had hardly begun to have a workable plan for the new institute.

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October 5, 1985: The Institute Is Born

T

 he Beckman gift was announced on Saturday, October 5, 1985, during the fall meeting of the University of Illinois Foundation. The announcement was made at a meeting in the auditorium of the College of Law. Stan Ikenberry began with a general announcement of the $40 million gift. He was followed by Governor James Thompson, who announced his intent to recommend to the state legislature a special $10 million appropriation in the fall legislative session specifically directed toward costs associated with the construction of the new institute. The groundwork for this commitment had been laid by Stan Ikenberry in several calls to legislative leaders. The governor also reiterated the state’s commitment to funding the continuing operating costs associated with the new institute and to supplying funds in support of programs.

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Figure 2.  Arnold Beckman, Governor James Thompson, and Nina Shepherd, president of the University of Illinois Board of Trustees, at the October 6, 1985, announcement of the Beckman gift. (The Champaign-Urbana News-Gazette, October 6, 1985, page A1). Photo courtesy of John Foreman.

Others who spoke at the announcement event were Tom Everhart, Mort Weir, Karl, Bill, I, and of course Arnold Beckman himself (figure 2). The local paper, the Champaign-Urbana News-Gazette, had a big feature on the news in the Sunday morning paper on October 6. There were questions about what was going to go on in this very large new institute, how it was going to relate to the rest of the university, and where it would be located. It was my task at the announcement event to explain the proposed organizational structure of the institute. To do that I displayed a viewgraph of the “intelligence diagram” shown in figure 1. In part I said We conceive of the institute as consisting of two centers: one for materials science, computers, and computations and another for biology, behavior, and cognition. Each center is organized in terms of the research programs within it in a hierarchical manner, extending from research at the atomic and molecular level through systems of increasing complexity. The idea is that there is a real relationship, a real basis for productive interaction between research programs which extend from artificial systems invented by man to natural systems found in the biological world. At the level of greatest complexity, the emphasis is on the nature of intelligence, whether

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human or machine intelligence. With such an organizational structure, we can keep our eye on major questions which are now so complex we cannot hope to answer them: What is the nature of the human brain? How can we design a computer that is more human in its mode of operation, or closely interactive with its human creator? In the more immediate future, the institute is organized to address broad, important interdisciplinary questions across a wide range of sciences.

This general description of the institute’s aims and character became a general response to the many questions we received from the press and other sources. “Intelligence” became a kind of logo for the Beckman Institute. In the weeks leading up to the October 5 announcement, considerable thought went into how we might move forward with the Beckman Institute project. We faced many substantial challenges. Although we had general ideas of what the institute was to be like, we had no detailed plans for the construction or other details of what would be a very large facility. During discussions in Troika we determined that we would need to appoint several committees. Accordingly, I drafted letters that went out from Tom Everhart’s office, dated October 8, 1985, appointing a steering committee, which I was to chair, with Ned Goldwasser, Karl Hess, Bill Greenough, Bill Prokasy, and Mac Van Valkenburg, then dean of engineering, as members. Tom appointed two program committees, one with Karl Hess as chair for the Materials Science, Computers, and Computation Center, and the other with Bill Greenough as chair for the Biology, Behavior, and Cognition Center. The chancellor also appointed an administrative committee under the chairmanship of Ned Goldwasser to consider an appropriate administrative structure for the institute and its administrative relationships to other campus units. The appointment letters for these committees are shown in appendix 2. The letters reflected the complexity of the challenges that lay ahead. We had yet to fully define the programmatic nature of the institute, to impart to it a kind of personality. In addition, and coupled with many questions of intellectual content, there was a host of practical issues relating to offices, appointments, transportation, grant administration, and so on. We were truly embarking on a long and difficult path. Because I had been involved from the beginning in the evolution of the proposal, and

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by this time knew Arnold and Mabel Beckman quite well, I became the de facto day-to-day administrator of the Beckman Institute project.

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Preconstruction Activities From the time of the announcement forward, things happened in a terrific rush. It had already been decided that the institute would be located on the north end of the campus, along University Avenue. The corner of University Avenue and Wright Street was the location of the university’s first building, purchased by the trustees and remodeled when the university first opened its doors in 1868 as the Illinois Industrial University. The decision to locate the Beckman Institute at the northern extremity of the campus prompted an extensive reevaluation of the entire North Campus area. The university employed the planning firm of Sasaki and Associates of Watertown, Massachusetts, to develop a new master plan for the North Campus area. The university had already acquired some property to the east of what was to be the site of the Beckman Institute. But it did not own property immediately to the east, extending to Mathews Avenue, that would be needed for the Beckman Institute site. More on that aspect of the story later. The Beckmans were eager to see the planning and construction of the Beckman Institute move along as rapidly as possible. Within a few days of the announcement, a small group of administrators who would be involved in carrying the project forward met with the Beckmans to discuss the university’s plans. Our first task would be to select an architectural firm. I recall Mort Weir saying that we could probably have an architect selected by the end of the calendar year. Arnold Beckman countered, “How about December 10th?” So, December 10 it was to be. A committee was quickly established under the leadership of Fred Green, director of the Office of Capital Programs. About twenty firms were invited to express interest in the project, and seventeen responded. From that list, a group of six firms was chosen for visits from the selection committee, which consisted of a few people from the Office of Capital Programs, two faculty members, and me. In a whirlwind tour we visited Seattle; Philadelphia; Chicago; Madison, Wisconsin; Detroit; and Houston over the course of just a few weeks. Two firms—Smith, Hinchman and Grylls (SH&G) of Detroit and a large firm headquartered in Houston—were

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chosen to make final presentations to the president, chancellor, and others in Urbana-Champaign. The final architectural selection committee meetings were held in early December in a hall in the architecture building. The SH&G presentation, led by Noel Fagerlund and Andy Vazzano, was very well done, and we quickly reached the decision to hire them. SH&G proposed not only to do the architectural design of the Beckman Institute, but to provide the programming as well. (I should note that before a building can be designed architecturally, it is necessary to have a program, a detailed statement of the kinds of activities that will be carried out in the building, the sorts of spaces that will be required—laboratories, offices, etc.—and the relationships of the various kinds of spaces to one another. None of this was in hand as we began this process.) Thus it came to pass that by December 10, 1985, the university had chosen the firm that would do the programming and architectural design. We had met Dr. Beckman’s suggested deadline. While these activities were in progress, further teambuilding was taking place. Paul Dixon, an architect in the office of capital programs, transferred from the medical school campus in Rockford, Illinois, to take on the job of project architect. Paul had had long experience on the Urbana campus and was happy for the chance to return. The Beckman Institute project was to be his final project before retiring, and what a swan song it would be! Paul joined the architect selection committee when he came on board in time to participate in a couple of the trips to the architectural firms. Because the Beckman Institute project would be funded almost entirely with privately donated funds, it would be possible to forgo the usual arrangements with the State of Illinois Office of Capital Management and instead have an outside construction management firm on the project. Paul and Fred Green chose Turner Construction Company as our construction management firm, and the decision was later made official by the board of trustees. Programming began almost immediately. Under the leadership of Andy Vazzano, SH&G brought to the campus technical experts in the various disciplines: electrical, plumbing, air handling, networking, and so on, to determine how the building should be designed. The difficulty for us was that we had not yet made decisions about just which faculty and which research groups would actually occupy space in the Beckman

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Institute, nor did we wish to do so at this early stage. We therefore asked faculty members with experience in the various disciplines that we expected to be represented in the Beckman Institute to help us design the spaces as they would like to have them in the Beckman Institute if their research activities were to be centered there. Discussions in meetings of the two programming committees under the leadership of Karl Hess and Bill Greenough were moving toward identifying which groups of faculty would be the most likely first occupants of the institute. Thus our ideas of which faculty to involve in the programming activities with SH&G personnel were becoming sharper. The programming process involved long discussions and questionand-answer periods between SH&G personnel and faculty. It became evident that we needed space for the programming work. The university therefore rented vacant space on the second floor of the Johnstowne Center, a rambling collection of office spaces and shops just off the campus on Daniels Street. One of the rented rooms became the new office of the incipient Beckman Institute. Another, larger space, fitted with many chairs and long tables, became the scene of meetings between SH&G personnel, faculty, and other university personnel. The meetings went on at all hours, often into the late evening. We not only needed to know what the requirements of the various kinds of spaces—chemistry laboratories, animal facilities, human subject interview spaces, instrumentation rooms, office environments, faculty offices—were to be, we also needed to establish some sense of which research groups should be adjacent to particular others. To add to the complexity of the problems before us, we also had to keep in mind the dictum that there was to be no “tenure” in the Beckman Institute. In a progress report to Arnold Beckman dated early February 1986, I wrote, “In all of this planning we are keeping in mind the goal of making the Institute a truly flexible, responsive facility. We are doing all we can to avoid a building that is too closely tailored to the wishes of those who may first occupy it.” While policies on turnover of programs had yet to be worked out, it was made clear that in the course of time, individual faculty research groups would come and go. The institute thus had to be designed in a generic way insofar as possible, with an eye toward the potential for altering the activities occurring in any particular space.

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While attending to these matters, I was also continuing as vice chancellor for research and dean of the Graduate College. It became evident that I needed to begin building staff. Our first Beckman Institute employee was Margarita Ham, a bright young faculty spouse who was looking for something interesting to do. Margarita had a master’s in business administration and was clearly very good at managing a great complexity of details. We installed some used university furnishings and a few new pieces of office equipment in our Johnstowne Center office, and she was in business. As soon as he got himself settled in his new position as project architect, Paul Dixon advised me to hire someone who could help with the day-to-day decisions over technical issues related to construction. Luckily, Bruce Marshall, who was a staff member in the biochemistry department, was looking for a new challenge, and he agreed to join our small team. Bruce seemed to know a lot about nearly everything connected with construction. He worked closely with Paul and the SH&G personnel working on the programming, and as the project moved forward, he was the principal contact person with the Turner Construction team. As the programming phase wound down, our attention turned toward the architectural design of the building. Bill, Karl, and I worked with Paul Dixon to hammer out a tentative list of the kinds of space desired, and how much of each. Architectural design was the domain of Ralph Youngren, the chief architect at SH&G. Ralph had been responsible for many notable building designs, including science and engineering facilities. He had met with Stan Ikenberry, Mort Weir, and Tom Everhart to get some feeling for the sort of character they thought the building should have. Stan was adamant that it should be consistent with campus architecture in general. In a memo on the topic, he wrote, “The facility wants to have warmth and humanness, therefore materials such as wood, water and plants should be incorporated. It does not want to have ‘HiTech’ or ‘Spaceship’ qualities.” I think Stan was afraid that Ralph would present us with a modernistic steel-and-glass structure that would be out of keeping with the overall feeling of the campus’s architecture. He need not have worried. When I first walked into Ralph’s office in Detroit, I noticed that he had placed a huge number of color photographs on the walls: pictures of window details, entryways, brick patterns, and so on

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from many of the campus’s landmark structures, with special attention to those of the north campus, all photographed by Ralph during trips to campus. His aim was to design a strikingly new building that would fit comfortably into the campus by honoring its traditions. The building would have to accommodate a very wide range of spaces, including wet chemistry and biology laboratories; computer spaces; animal facilities; office spaces for faculty, graduate students, and other research personnel; office spaces for administrative personnel; a sizable lecture hall; and several other rooms that would accommodate groups of various sizes for seminars and meetings. Further, a great deal of attention was given to features that would promote interactions between people: a cafeteria; an atrium space for casual meetings, receptions, and other public events; small, casual gathering spaces where a few people could meet, such as those Ralph designed for the bridges that cross the atrium. Allocating space and other resources for a cafeteria proved to be controversial, but Bill, Karl, and I felt that it would prove to be a good investment in promoting interdisciplinary interactions, as has indeed proved to be the case. Offices in the institute for faculty were to be clustered together and close to spaces fitted with modular office furniture that would be used by students and postdoctoral and other research personnel. The desks for researchers working in laboratories were not to be in the laboratories themselves, but in large rooms across the halls from the laboratories that would have modular office furniture. The use of modular office environments in large, open rooms made it possible to plan for a larger number of people than could otherwise be accommodated within the budget for the building. Many faculty at first resisted the innovation of modular furnishings with the objection that the noise levels and absence of privacy would be unacceptable. To assuage some of their concerns, we had model environments constructed in an available space for their inspection. In the event, the modular office environments have worked out very well; when changes are needed, they can be made at more reasonable cost than can be achieved when moving fixed walls and doors. Computer networking was to be a strong feature of the building. Networking closets were located at intervals throughout. On the laboratory side, cables would be carried by trays high along corridor walls, an idea

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adapted from a Motorola research facility in Urbana. On the office side, computer cabling would be distributed by use of so-called hollow floors, with panels that could be lifted out to provide access. To become more acquainted with the use of this feature, a small group of us visited a few buildings in Chicago that incorporated access flooring in their design. While we had begun to have a much better grasp of the kinds of spaces we needed to plan for, we lacked a key ingredient for moving ahead with architectural design: We were not sure of just how much of each kind of space to plan for and how to fit it together to make a coherent design. The two program committees chaired by Bill and Karl had enabled us to focus on a set of research program topical areas and support spaces that were prime candidates for inclusion in the Beckman Institute:

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Engineering networks, very large-scale integration, parallel computation National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) Artificial intelligence, engineering psychology, cognitive sciences Physical sciences, microelectronics, molecular structure Cell biology Brain activity, plasticity Animal support facilities

Faculty from each of these broad areas of activity had contributed to the programming activity led by Andy Vazzano and his SH&G personnel. But within each there was considerable scope for variance in the sorts of specialized space that would be needed and the ratio of “dry” research space to “wet” space (the term “wet” refers to chemical and biological sciences laboratories outfitted with fume hoods, laboratory benches, nitrogen gas outlets, and the like). The requests that had been made for space far exceeded the capacity of the Beckman Institute, large as it was to be. Karl, Bill, and I worked together to reduce the square footage allocations of the various kinds of space to accommodate the parameters of the Beckman Institute, aiming toward a figure of about 150,000 net assignable square feet; that is, the actual area of the occupied spaces, not including corridors and all other public spaces. In doing so, we had to keep in mind that wet laboratory space is much more costly per square foot than office or dry laboratory space. We had to stay within a

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strict budget. Eventually we came up with the following square footage allocations to various types of space:

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Closed office Open office Wet laboratories Scientific support spaces Special instrumentation Animal support Central and seminar rooms

33,000 30,600 26,300 18,800 13,500 7,300 21,000

Whether the Beckman Institute would have a library, and of what sort, became a controversial issue. Many faculty members, including those who would be spending full-time hours there, insisted that it would be vital to have ready access to the journals of their disciplines. The great range of disciplines to be represented in the Beckman Institute, however, would have made it unfeasible to duplicate departmental library holdings. I proposed that the library have no journals whatever, only basic reference materials and state-of-the-art access to electronic databases, other information sources, and a fast copying service. After much discussion, a compromise was reached: The institute would subscribe to a small number of key journals, perhaps on the order of thirty or so, representing the most salient disciplinary areas. In addition, the institute would provide a copying service, in which undergraduate student employees would fill requests to copy articles from the literature. Copying requests would be fulfilled typically within twenty-four hours. This plan entailed areas for the librarian, workstation carrels, and reading tables without committing a large amount of precious square footage. The money saved on journal subscriptions would cover the costs of copying. (As it turned out, once researchers caught onto the system, it became very popular. The library was staffed by a librarian who worked closely with Bill Mischo, chief librarian of the Engineering Library. Later, as technologies changed and the availability of databases and search materials evolved, Bill was very helpful in shifting the emphasis in the Beckman Institute Library. Today, advances in science journal publishing have brought us to the point where there is no longer a need for any library space in the institute.) Armed with all the information we could provide at the time, the architects could proceed to design a building that incorporated the fea-

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tures mentioned earlier. Most of our contacts with Ralph and his colleagues in design involved trips to Detroit. For this purpose, the few of us who went back and forth (Paul, Bruce, and I and often someone from the university physical plant staff ) flew in one of the six-passenger twin-engine Piper Aztecs of the University of Illinois fleet. The flight into Detroit’s downtown airport took a couple of hours. We went up in the morning and returned in late afternoon. Because the planes had no copilot, we liked to have Bruce sitting in the seat next to the pilot. We figured that in an emergency Bruce, who had a pilot’s license, could take over. Fortunately, no such occasion arose. After a few months of intense activity, SH&G was ready to present a proposed design to the senior administrators. Approval of Ralph Youngren’s striking design, with elegant features such as a Flemish bond pattern for the brickwork, a copper roof over the two major wings, a vaulting atrium space with a glass ceiling, the striking tower with elegant meeting spaces on each level that fronts the building, and a fresh overall application of metal and stone, came quickly. Next came the difficult task of accommodating the various spaces within the overall design and determining what size of building could be built within the allocated budget. There was to be no question of cost overruns on this project. Funds had to be allocated for the programming, for architectural and construction management fees, and for acquisition of needed land not already owned by the university. What was left would be the construction budget. Here is where Turner Construction Management first came into the picture. It was their responsibility to look for suppliers of the necessary materials and to provide the most accurate estimates possible of all cost factors, including materials and labor. The building would be constructed by many subcontractors. Turner was responsible for identifying them, assessing the adequacy of their skills to the task, and ensuring adherence to the construction documents and monitoring quality at all stages during construction. Emil Konrath headed up the onsite Turner group, which also included Peter Mitnik, who looked over financials, and Julie Chrispin, the office administrator. Close cooperation between construction management, architects, and university personnel was essential. Paul Dixon played an important role in these processes; I recall particularly the difficulties in finding a manufacturer for the nearly 1 million bricks the building would require. Paul Dixon, Ralph Youngren,

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and Emil Konrath made several trips to the brick supplier in Streator, Illinois; to a stone quarry in Bloomington, Indiana; to a granite quarry in Cold Springs, Minnesota; and to a metal specialty shop in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, that made the railings for the atrium walkways. They were sticklers for getting things right. Meanwhile, the Beckman Administrative Committee, under the chairmanship of Ned Goldwasser, was considering how the Beckman Institute should be organized administratively and how it should relate to the rest of the campus. Their report, issued in May 1986, first took up the matter of the institute’s director. They wrote A person of the quality we are seeking for the position of Director will be attracted primarily by the challenge of molding and guiding the Beckman Institute program. Although it has been necessary for some planning to occur in order to initiate work on the design of the building, the details of the Institute program should take shape and should be refined only after the Director is appointed.

With respect to the institute’s place on campus, the report read as follows:

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The Beckman Institute will be an integral part of the academic organization of the UIUC campus. Its administrative position will be analogous to that of a college in that the Director of the Institute will report to the Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs and will be a member of the Council of Deans and Directors. Since the major function of the Beckman Institute will be research, the Institute Director, as in the case of deans, will also have a reporting line to the Vice Chancellor for Research.

With respect to governance, the Beckman Administrative Committee proposed that the director be advised by an external advisory committee, a program advisory committee, and a coordinating committee. The membership of the External Advisory Committee was to consist of worldclass scholars drawn from outside the University of Illinois and would represent fields of study relevant to the aims of the Beckman Institute. The Program Advisory Committee would be appointed by the director in consultation with the vice chancellor for research. At least eight persons on the Program Advisory Committee were to be members of the UIUC faculty and participants in institute programs. The Coordinating

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Committee, appointed by the vice chancellor for academic affairs, would consist of the executive officers of the academic units with strong ties to the institute. It would meet with the director at least twice each year to discuss significant issues relating the interactions between the institute and the rest of the campus. The committee called for the participants in the Beckman Institute to be selected by the director. Faculty would normally receive “rolling appointments” in the institute two to five years in duration, and the appointments were to be reviewed annually to consider extension of the designated term. There would be no limits on extensions or reappointments. The report read, “The concept of ‘rolling appointments’ is intended to open the door to an extended term of participation, but not lock the Director, a priori, into any fixed policy regarding short-term or long-term appointments.” The report went on to recommend that no tenure or tenure-track appointments solely in the institute be made. In other words, all faculty participating in the institute would have their academic appointments and salary lines in departments and would have all the rights, privileges, and obligations of such departmental membership. Space in the institute would be assigned by the director. Faculty members might participate in the institute as full-time residents, which would mean that their offices and all, or nearly all, their research activities would be conducted there. They would, however, continue to have teaching and committee responsibilities in their home departments. Other faculty might have part-time presences in the institute, dividing their time between research activities in the institute and their home departments. At a still lower level of participation, faculty members might have affiliate appointments, which could involve their participation in one or more programs in the institute but without an assignment of research space.

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Building the Institute

T

 he groundbreaking ceremony took place in October 1986 during the University of Illinois Foundation’s annual meeting (figure 3), one year after the announcement of the gift. The Beckmans were of course present, as was Stan Ikenberry, Tom Everhart, and other notables, including Governor James Thompson, who arrived late but made up for it by telling of his role in courting the Beckmans. The ceremony was symbolic; preparation of some contract documents was still in progress, and the earliest construction contracts would not be awarded for another month. The fences surrounding the site were soon up, however, and digging began before the end of the year. All this activity brought back to the fore the issue of land acquisition. The university needed to acquire all the property that lay between Mathews Avenue and Romine Street, which lay a short block to the

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Figure 3.  President Stanley Ikenberry, Nina Shepherd, and Arnold and Mabel Beckman at the groundbreaking ceremony, October 10, 1986. (The Champaign-Urbana News-Gazette, October 11, 1986, page A1.) [An accompanying story by J. Philip Bloomer appears on the same page.] Photo courtesy of John Foreman.

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Bill Greenough on the Groundbreaking Ceremony At the groundbreaking ceremony I was seated next to Mort Weir. It was a beautiful fall day, and despite the rather drab physical setting—the former Illini baseball field—there was a shared feeling of a moment of great importance to the future of the university. There were speeches from the university president, the governor, and others, but the press really wanted to hear from Arnold Beckman. After much encouragement, Arnold got up in response to the question of what the institute was all about. His reply quelled any doubts about whether he had carefully read and understood the proposal. In somewhere between three and five minutes Arnold described interdisciplinary research, gave some examples about what sorts of interdisciplinary research would characterize the Beckman Institute, and made several rather grand predictions about the kind of work that might emerge. (Understandably, they were a bit more chemistry-oriented than what came to be the institute’s actual work.) As he finished, Mort, my former department head, said to me, “Amazing. He’s in his eighties and can give a speech like that. I’d love to be able to do that at his age. . . . Of course I can’t now, so I really have to work on it!”

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west of Mathews. It also needed the land east of Mathews for parking and future growth. When negotiations with property owners reached an impasse, the university asked for and received “quick take” powers from the legislature. The bill, signed into law by Governor Thompson on July 29, 1986, provided that the university could take possession of land before, not after, a court determination of a just sale price, in those cases where landowners were unable to come to agreement with the university on a sale price. The justification for the measure was that any significant delays in acquiring the needed land would mean costly delays in the Beckman Institute construction and a failure to adhere to the construction schedule promised the Beckmans. It turned out that most property negotiations were settled, but four went to court. The owner of a gas station situated along University Avenue was awarded $400,000, the owners of the Strawberry Fields health food store received $175,000. The other two settlements involved small houses. The university spent about $3 million in acquiring property needed for the Beckman Institute project. One of the more piquant stories that arose during property acquisition concerned Frances Moreland, then sixty-three, whose home was at 402 North Romine, directly in the path of the Beckman Institute. Ms. Moreland did not wish to move, but if she had to move, she wanted to take her house with her. The university went to considerable lengths to help owners do just that; after all, it had no use for the private houses. The university also helped find suitable lots in the nearby neighborhoods north of University Avenue for those homeowners who wished to move their houses. A suitable lot was identified for Ms. Moreland’s house on North Coler Avenue, but the residents there complained about the prospect of having an older two-story house in their neighborhood of relatively new one-story ranch-style houses. After a further search, she purchased a suitable lot on North Mathews Avenue. In preparation for the move, Ms. Moreland had her furnace disconnected, but when the move was delayed, she was forced to live in the house with only an electric space heater and electric stove for heat during some cold days in the late fall of 1986. Finally the day of moving came, but then another problem arose. Because someone had failed to arrange for disconnecting some power lines, the house spent the night in the middle of Wright Street, halfway toward its destination. Ms. Moreland and her daughter spent that

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night in their car, keeping watch over her house. The temperatures dipped into the twenties, and they had to run the car periodically to keep warm. Sympathetic neighbors brought them coffee. The Champaign-Urbana News-Gazette reported it all, with pictures, as part of their continuing Beckman Institute coverage. One of the properties acquired by the university was a three-story apartment building just south of University Avenue and facing on Mathews Avenue. It was decided to keep the building in place temporarily and remodel it for use during construction. The insides were essentially redone, with new lighting, acoustic ceiling, tile flooring, office and meeting room arrangements, and bathroom facilities. The top floor was occupied by Paul Dixon as project architect, Turner Construction staff personnel who were on-site full time, and the staff of SH&G. The first floor was used for storage. The growing Beckman Institute staff and I were on the second floor. We had a large room for the many meetings dealing with programming and the administration of the institute. It was a wonderful arrangement. Bill and Karl came there for our frequent meetings. Bruce Marshall was in close contact with Turner and SH&G personnel, and I could confer easily and frequently with Paul Dixon and John Flynn, an architect whom SH&G assigned to be on-site full time. In short, there was close interaction between all parties to the enterprise. From our front stairs looking west, we had a great view of the construction site, which we visited frequently once building construction was underway. In the spring of 1985, before there was any hint of the forthcoming Beckman gift, I had informed Tom Everhart of my intention to step down as vice chancellor for research and graduate dean in August 1986. I would then have served for six years in administration; while it had been an immensely interesting and satisfying time, I wanted to return to research, teaching, and writing textbooks. The 1985–86 academic year proved to be a terrifically busy and exciting time, but it had not changed my hope to leave administration. In early 1986 a search committee under the chairmanship of Bill Prokasy, dean of Liberal Arts and Sciences, was established to identify candidates for the directorship of the institute. The expectation was that the university would identify an academic superstar for the position, which held so much promise as a new venture in which one could make a real imprint and accomplish something truly original.

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Responses to the opportunity were not as expected. The few outstanding scholars who looked at the position seriously worried about the fact that the entire project was as yet quite unformed. There was nothing in the way of a physical structure, and a host of questions were unsettled: How would the institute relate to the campus? How eagerly would faculty avail themselves of the opportunity? Wasn’t the scope of the programs envisaged for the institute impossibly broad? The institute would not be likely to have enough available space to meet the needs of a director with an active laboratory-based research program. Thus, a joint appointment in a department appropriate to the director’s research interests, with a commitment of laboratory space in the department, would be required. Such an arrangement might prove difficult to procure. Finally, how could someone from outside, without detailed knowledge of the campus, handle the complex negotiations with department heads and deans that would be necessary? These, I imagined, might be the sorts of impediments that would be on the minds of potential candidates. In any event, as the fall 1986 semester approached, and there was no sign of success in attracting a new director, I decided to postpone going back to the chemistry department and stayed on as interim director. Judith Liebman had succeeded me as vice chancellor for research and graduate dean, and I now had more time to spend in the office on Mathews Avenue. As the fall semester moved along, and I found myself totally immersed in managing the institute project, I began to feel that I should become a candidate for the directorship and formally submitted my candidacy to Bill Prokasy. Eventually I was offered the position and the appointment was approved by the board of trustees on March 12, 1987. As the excavation and placement of footings progressed, the great size of the Beckman Institute was brought home to us. The approved building design called for a gross area (that is, measured at the outside walls) of 313,000 square feet. It would be the largest building on campus except for the library with the library’s several additions over the years. Construction progress was reported at intervals in the Champaign-Urbana News-Gazette, and in IlliniWeek, the campus faculty/staff newspaper. Understandably, there was a great deal of interest in the institute not only in the campus community, but in Urbana-Champaign at large. I was invited to speak to Rotary Club luncheon meetings, chamber of com-

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merce groups, the Friday Forum at the University YMCA, and similar gatherings. The Beckman Institute project was not seen in an entirely favorable light in many parts of the campus. There was the feeling that its very size and the high priority accorded it would result in a siphoning of funds away from other campus initiatives. The university’s budget prospects for fiscal 1988 took a turn for the worse in early 1987 because of state budgetary woes. There was a widespread view that the Illinois Board of Higher Education, which made budget recommendations for all state higher education institutions, would specifically identify funds to support the operations and maintenance of the institute, but because the university’s bottom line would not be adjusted upward in light of them, or at least not fully adjusted, funds would have to come from other parts of the university’s budget. Our chances for success with the institute would hinge on how it was perceived by the faculty and at departmental and college administrative levels. We needed to do all we could to communicate with campus constituencies, not only to inform people, but to learn what we could do to make the institute work to their advantage, even if they were not to be directly involved there. To provide an opportunity for airing questions and concerns, and as a means of updating those interested in the progress of the project, I scheduled open forums for faculty and staff at three campus locations on March 25, March 27, and April 2, 1987. Most of the questions that came up dealt with relatively mundane matters such as planned provisions for parking near the institute and the amount of wet lab space in the building. I think that many who held negative views of the project stayed away. There would continue to be skeptics and naysayers in the years ahead. Once the foundations were laid, the steel framework rose rapidly. Completion of the steel framework was celebrated by the traditional topping-out ceremony, in which a small evergreen tree is appended to the top of the structure, in August 1987 (figure 4). Mort Weir’s son-inlaw at the time, David Gravely, was working on the job as an ironworker, and it was he who put into place the last piece of iron. The topping-out ceremony was very upbeat. Enthusiastic speeches were made; the project was moving along on schedule, and all the hurdles encountered to that point had been overcome. The various tradespeople, the architectural group, Turner construction management personnel, those of us involved

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from the university—everyone working on the project—felt a special pride in being involved in this great new venture. When Arnold and Mabel Beckman came to town that fall, the car carrying them could drive into the center of the space that would become the central atrium of the completed building. When Mabel stepped from the car and looked up at the vast construction space surrounding her, she clutched Arnold’s arm and said, “Oh, Arnie, what have we done?!” This first visit to the site brought home to her the magnitude of the facility their gift was making possible. The Beckmans were interested in every phase of the project as it moved forward. Arnold especially enjoyed hearing reports on construction progress. Representatives of the various trades were brought in to tell him how their work was going and what special challenges the building posed. Knowing that the legendary donor who had made this huge project possible was interested in their activities was a big boost to morale. The ironworkers had T-shirts printed that proudly stated, “The Ironworkers Built the Beckman Institute.” On the occasion of a later visit in 1988, one of the subjects that came up was the installation of the copper roof, then in progress. Arnold showed interest in how the copper sheets were joined to form a continuous, leak-free roof. After a short description of the process, he asked if he might see the craft performed. At that time there were temporary stairways in the atrium extending up to the fourth floor. Thus a small group of us hiked up the stairs to the fourth floor and out on a runway of sorts that gave access from which to view the work in progress on the roof over the laboratory side of the building. To appreciate what this says about Arnold’s stamina, one must keep in mind that the building has exceptionally large floor-to-floor heights to accommodate air handling and other utilities in overhead spaces. Arnold was eighty-eight years old at the time. The photograph in figure 5 was taken in the fifth floor tower room during one of Arnold’s visits as the building neared completion. By late 1987 the two program committees chaired by Bill and Karl had pretty much finished their work. The building had been defined; the kinds of spaces, their numbers, and their locations were largely fixed. It Figure 4.  The topping-out ceremony (Illinois Alumni News 66, No. 6 [Sept. 1987]), http://www.library.uiuc.edu/archives/archon/index.php?p=digitallibrary/ digitalcontent&id=3737 (accessed January 23, 2009). Photo courtesy of University of Illinois Archives. .

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Figure 5.  Arnold Beckman, Ted Brown, and Paul Dixon tour the top-floor tower room near completion of construction.

was now a matter of keeping track of costs and ensuring that we stayed within budget. It was Turner Construction’s job to keep assessing the costs and availability of materials and labor, to find the best possible products at the best prices, and to ensure that the skilled laborers needed were at hand. Some of the cost management required decisions on aspects of the construction that would not be visible. As an example, I recall one meeting in Detroit devoted to “value engineering” as it was euphemistically called. We needed to cut costs, and one place in which that could be accomplished was to change the particulars of the roof support structure. After an extended discussion of alternatives, we decided to change the design, saving a considerable amount of money, and putting us back within budget. As an example of the sort of quality-control problem that could arise, the bricklaying for the building, incorporating the Flemish bond pattern that Ralph Youngren had specified, proved to be quite a challenge. Because the job was so large, it was necessary to bring in additional

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bricklayers from outside the local area. Turner personnel had the responsibility of ensuring the quality of every bit of work done on the building. As they closely inspected the first bricklaying work, they found fault with the execution of the Flemish bond pattern and had it redone. Continuous attention to quality control on the part of Turner Construction, Paul Dixon, and the SH&G personnel ensured that the Beckman Institute would be a building of exceptional beauty. While there were many minor crises of one sort or another as construction progressed, the project was pretty much on time and within budget. It was time to turn more seriously to the selection of faculty and research programs that would become the institute’s first residents. We were about to discover that the really hard part of putting the Beckman Institute together was just beginning.

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Choosing Programs

I

n the fall of 1987, just two years after the announcement of the Beckman gift, we had made excellent progress on the design and construction of the Beckman Institute. The success or failure of the institute as a multidisciplinary research center would turn, however, on our ability to attract the participation of an outstanding faculty from the campus and elsewhere. The institute represented a marvelous opportunity for the campus to expand its presence in interdisciplinary research areas. The facilities would be outstanding, and the physical arrangements would greatly enhance the prospects for stimulating interactions between faculty who might otherwise have little opportunity to work together productively. Here, in a beautiful facility expressly designed to promote interdisciplinary work, researchers who had previously been scattered in units across campus would be able to work in close proximity. Further, the institute presented an unrivaled opportunity to attract new faculty

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with strongly interdisciplinary interests. It all seemed very promising, but we faced formidable challenges that many believed we would not be able to overcome. It had been decided that the Beckman Institute would be a campuslevel facility, reporting directly to campus administration and not part of any particular college. This meant that it would in some senses be in competition with colleges and departments for funds and for the loyalty of faculty members. As an example, financial concerns such as how the indirect cost return monies on external grants and contracts—that portion of the grant monies used to cover certain kinds of identifiable research costs—would be distributed between the Beckman Institute and departments and colleges arose almost immediately. Some department heads began to worry that faculty members with a strong presence in the Beckman Institute would lose interest in departmental affairs and might therefore not contribute as much as before. There was an additional, related concern that strong researchers who moved into the Beckman Institute would not be present in their home departments to set the tone for a strong research environment there. A different set of concerns arose in the minds of faculty members. If they were to move their research operations in whole or in part to the Beckman Institute, what would that do to their relations with colleagues in their home departments and with their department head? In moving to the Beckman Institute they might gain from newly productive interactions with certain other colleagues but lose valuable contact with faculty members from their home departments. Senior faculty members could possibly put aside some such concerns, but more junior faculty members who were as yet untenured might feel their tenure prospects jeopardized by being away from the home department environment. Faculty whose research efforts would be divided between their home departments and the Beckman Institute would need to pay attention to work in progress in two places, with an attendant loss of coherence if graduate students and other research personnel were split between two places. If we did not find ways to respond effectively to these and many similar concerns, the Beckman Institute could very well prove a failure. We realized that we were engaged in a bold and risky experiment, highly visible because of its unprecedented scale. As we moved forward, Karl, Bill, and I took advantage of every opportunity to address the concerns of faculty and

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administrators. However, many questions would remain unanswered until we had made decisions about who would be invited to move into the institute as its first residents. The programming committees chaired by Bill and Karl had been of tremendous assistance in determining the space program for the building. That process in itself went some way toward determining the kinds of research that would be conducted in the institute. Within the constraints of the building design we wanted the selection of research programs and faculty to participate in them to be as open a process as possible. After consulting with Bill and Karl, I addressed a letter in the spring of 1987 to deans, department heads, and directors and to many individual faculty, inviting them to submit proposals for research programs to be housed in the Beckman Institute. The letter indicated that we were looking for interdisciplinary research projects that would be enhanced by being located in the Beckman Institute and that would contribute positively to other Beckman Institute programs. We were seeking proposals from the physical sciences, engineering, and the life and behavioral sciences. A primary criterion would be that the program be related to the institute’s two major research thrusts: biology, behavior, and cognition; and materials science, computers, and computation. Other selection criteria were the likelihood that a given program would enhance cross-disciplinary efforts; the prospects for external funding of any special facilities and equipment necessary to the program; and the extent to which participation in the institute could be expected to strengthen the traditional departments. We provided a three-page proposal form, shown in appendix 3. During that time, the Beckman Institute acquired a working budget, and I was able in the fall of 1987 to invite Bill and Karl to become associate directors of the Beckman Institute, with half-time appointments. To my great pleasure, they both accepted. Ann Riley, whose assistance I had so much valued in the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research and Graduate College Dean, consented to move to the Beckman Institute staff as administrative secretary. I also appointed Sarah Wasserman, with whom I had worked in the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research, as associate director for administration. Bruce Marshall continued as assistant director for building operations, and Margarita Ham as assistant director for business affairs and development. Our initial staff was rounded out by the addition of Carolyn Percival, who assisted Sarah.

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As director, I was now in a position to appoint the Program Advisory Committee called for in the report of Ned Goldwasser’s Beckman Administrative Committee. This committee would be asked to evaluate the responses to the request for proposals and recommend which proposals might be selected for initial residency. After consulting with Bill, Karl, and Judith Liebman (the vice chancellor for research), the Program Advisory Committee members were appointed, as follows:

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William Greenough, Department of Psychology Karl Hess, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering Daniel Alpert, Director of the Program in Science, Technology, and Society Jordan Konisky, Department of Microbiology Douglas Medin, Department of Psychology Jerry L. Morgan, Department of Linguistics Franco P. Preparata, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering C. Ladd Prosser, Department of Physiology and Biophysics Larry L. Smarr, Director of the National Center for Supercomputing Applications Theodore L. Brown, Director of the Beckman Institute, chairperson

The committee membership was a mix of faculty members with various degrees of interest in being in the Beckman Institute as well as those who would not be involved. By late summer fifty-two proposals had been received. Every member of the Program Advisory Committee read each of the proposals and ranked it. Extensive discussions raised many questions about specific proposals. The questions were researched, and after discussions, the proposals were ranked again. Evaluation required several months, with plenty of competitiveness and contentiousness. Many found it difficult to come to terms with the sweeping range of programs under consideration. We had no clear precedents to follow. The Beckman Institute as conceived would be the largest and most broadly based interdisciplinary facility in an academic setting anywhere. How could psychologists and behavioral biologists coexist with electrical engineers and materials scientists? Questions of this kind forced us to think about just what we meant by the terms interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary. Without question, the institute itself would be multidisciplinary; that is, concerned with a broad

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range of disciplines. But if those carrying out research there were to simply pursue their individual discipline-centered research agendas, without significant interactions with other research groups, we would not have achieved anything interesting. The term multidisciplinary research usually refers to a collaborative effort among scientists to tackle a large-scale or complex research problem by combining diverse background knowledge and techniques. In that process, however, the individual researchers do not necessarily venture far outside their own disciplinary understandings. In a sense, multidisciplinary research is additive. We would almost certainly require that the Beckman Institute attain this level of interaction. But interdisciplinary research goes a step further; it is more integrative. The collaborating researchers work actively to understand the models and methods used by their collaborators and integrate them into their own understandings and skills. In the process, new fields of research may be created; for example, computational neuroscience, biophysics, human–computer interactions. Interdisciplinary research is demanding and sometimes slow going. The challenge was to create the environment and incentives that would encourage interdisciplinary collaborations. Bill, Karl, and I had a faith, perhaps naïve, that it could be done if we went about it in the right way. In spite of the difficulties, we made steady progress. By early April 1988 I was ready to announce the names of twenty-one research programs selected for initial occupancy: Artificial Intelligence (14 faculty) Cognitive Sciences (15 faculty) Visual Processing in Complex Systems (4 faculty) Cognitive Neurosciences (5 faculty) Neuronal Pattern Analysis (8 faculty) Complex Systems Research (3 faculty) Statistical Analysis of Learning Networks (3 faculty) Physical Theory and Computation (10 faculty) Prokaryote Genome Analysis (3 faculty) Bioarrays and Cellular Networks (1 faculty) Molecular Recognition (7 faculty) Tunneling Electron Microscopy and Low-Dimensional Materials (5 faculty) Materials Chemistry Approach to Submicron Structures (4 faculty)

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Nonlinear Phenomena in Biomechanical Systems (2 faculty) Engineering Networks (4 faculty) Concurrent Computation (4 faculty) Very Large Scale Integrated Systems, Computer Design (7 faculty) Computational Electronics and Theoretical Microelectronics (9 faculty) Signal Processing and Imaging (5 faculty) Decision Processes in Computerized Networks (2 faculty) National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA)

The faculty participating in each program were requesting full-time, part-time, or affiliate appointments. Each of the programs made requests for various kinds of spaces, such as offices for faculty, spaces for graduate students and other research personnel, and special rooms or laboratories: computer rooms, human subject study rooms, instrumentation rooms, and wet laboratories. The presence of the NCSA on the list of selected programs merits some comment. Larry Smarr, director of the NCSA, a well-regarded computational astronomer, had been involved at several stages during the development of the institute. The NCSA was one of four national supercomputing centers funded by the National Science Foundation, with a mandate to provide the most advanced high-speed computational resources to the academic scientific community. The computational heart of the NCSA was a state-of-the-art Cray supercomputer, located in a building on Springfield Avenue east of Goodwin Street. Another building a few blocks further west housed many NCSA staff as well as teaching spaces. The proposal from the NCSA was for the Beckman Institute to house the director and his immediate staff, a group of working research scientists with NCSA appointments, and researchers who would spend time in the Beckman Institute pursuing their individual research objectives while making use of NCSA intellectual and computational resources. The researchers might be faculty from the campus, from other institutions around the country, or from corporations that were members of the NCSA industrial affiliates program. The proposal that some of them would be from one of NCSA’s industrial partners raised special concerns; we were able to work out suitable conditions for their presence. One of Larry Smarr’s objectives was to build an environment for many kinds of computation, especially visualization, that would not require access to a Cray-level machine, based on the most advanced

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Karl Hess on the Program Selection Process The floor, the fireplace, sofa, chairs, and everything else in the family room were covered by fifty-two proposals. I had to get the proposals sorted into piles representing projects that I would recommend highly, not so highly, and not at all, and soon enough—at least before my spouse Sylvia would reclaim the family room. The problem was that while nearly all proposals were of high quality, the new institute had limited space. In developing a set of principles or views establishing priorities, I had talked to John Bardeen and had related to him the content of figure 1. He also had seen early versions of the proposal as a Center for Advanced Study professor. The word intelligence topping the figure did not sit well with Bardeen. “This is too general,” he told me. “If you just research intelligence you will get nowhere. We would not have gotten anywhere at Bell Laboratories if there would not have been the concrete idea around that one should use solids to replace the vacuum tubes.” “So what should I do?” I asked. “Group your interdisciplinary research around powerful ideas and machinery of the disciplines,” Bardeen said. This settled several things for the proposals on the silicon side. I knew that solids could be patterned much smaller than they actually were at the time. Nanostructure research seemed like a good underlying basis for the hierarchy from basic materials to device function, integrated systems to computation and information. Powerful machinery could include the new types of microscopes of the time—tunneling microscopes, atomic force microscopes, and the like—and there were proposals to that effect in the pile. Surface/interface chemistry was also needed. Altogether we had a substantial number of proposals related to nanostructures, projects within the field of my own expertise of electronic transport simulations among them. Computers clearly represented another type of powerful machine that would be helpful to all disciplines. I was influenced by Larry Smarr, with whom I had developed a proposal on supercomputing applications for a broad range of science and engineering topics. That proposal was funded by the National Science Foundation to form the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA). Certainly some combination of the efforts of the Beckman

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Institute and NCSA would open new horizons. I was determined to bring this combination into being. Integrated systems research and work on human–computer interactions as well as artificial intelligence generally formed another big pile of proposals that I wished to support. All these interests were exceeding the possibilities offered by the actual available office and laboratory space of the institute. This was great; there would not be a dearth of faculty who were interested in moving in and very capable of contributing to the silicon themes of figure 1. On the carbon side, Paul Lauterbur, a pioneer of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), had convinced me that his field was reaching out to both the nanostructure area and to large-scale computation. He had proposed to introduce nanostructures to change contrast and resolution in MRI images, and it was clear that advanced image processing by use of powerful computers could contribute significantly to the actual rendering of the images. Therefore I had decided to support all proposals related to topics of imaging in medicine. There were also several other areas of interest to me, such as neural networks and related computational problems, but I decided to be flexible in my support and adjust to Bill Greenough’s rankings of proposals relating to the carbon leg of figure 1.

servers available. Having those resources in the institute, along with the computational expertise embodied in the NCSA researchers who would be working in the institute, promised to significantly enhance the research environment for many Beckman Institute programs. But because many of the NCSA personnel would not themselves be pursuing interdisciplinary research, the prospect of NCSA’s occupying significant Beckman Institute space created tensions and concerns. Just how would NCSA couple with the research programs in the institute? What would be the rules for gaining access to the computational resources? How would the NCSA contribute to a vibrant interdisciplinary environment? In any event, we planned for the NCSA to occupy the entire fifth floor office area, as well as a significant portion of the fourth floor office space. A large room on the laboratory side and other space in the area was designated for installing advanced workstations. Shortly after we moved into the institute, Donna Cox (who is currently a professor in the

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School of Art and Design and director of the Advanced Visualization Laboratory at NCSA) made a conference presentation that caught the attention of Silicon Graphics founder Jim Clark. Not long after that the fourth-floor room in the laboratory wing was outfitted with twenty state-of-the-art Silicon Graphics computers, a gift obtained through Jim Clark’s good offices, establishing the Renaissance Experimental Laboratory. It proved to be a tremendous boon to the computationally oriented researchers in the institute. A sizable fourth floor space on the lab side was fitted with access flooring, and would house large computers owned by the NCSA, as well as large machines that other groups might acquire. Larry Smarr’s office was on the fifth floor. It was an expansive space, used partly as office and partly as meeting room. It had a particularly nice view to the south, looking over the new engineering campus. Some people wondered why the Beckman Institute director would choose to be on the first floor instead of being at the top, with a view. We reasoned, however, that the administrative spaces, including the director’s office and a nicely appointed director’s conference room, should be on the first floor, readily accessible to visitors as well as to those who worked in the building. Many questions on the arrangements for setting up the selected programs had to be postponed, because construction was still in progress. As the fall progressed, however, we engaged in serious negotiations with the various faculty groups that had been invited to become the institute’s first residents. Our negotiations were tempered by the views of the campus Office of Space Utilization that the institute should help to alleviate chronic shortages of faculty offices and other kinds of space across the campus. If faculty were to have a full-time presence in the Beckman Institute, which carried with it assignment of a faculty office, should they not surrender the office they currently held in their home department? What about faculty who would hold part-time positions? Our plan was that they would share an office with another part-time faculty member. We proposed to have a single office serve as a location for a group of affiliated faculty should the group request that. The amount of laboratory space available in the institute would not permit assigning a large amount of space to any one faculty member. We proposed that groups requiring laboratory facilities work out sharing arrangements, particularly for shared instrumentation. That seemed

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entirely consistent with the aim of bringing together people who were to work closely on shared interdisciplinary interests. Some faculty members found such arrangements unsatisfactory. They were accustomed to having individual offices and laboratory domains occupied exclusively by their research group members. It was just this sort of outlook that the Beckman Institute had been designed to discourage, by clustering faculty offices together and placing graduate students and other research personnel in relatively large, open spaces outfitted with modular office furniture. There was another underlying concern, residing in the clearly stated policy that there would be no “tenure” in the Beckman Institute. The rolling appointment plan spelled out by the Beckman Administrative Committee implied that the director could at any time inform a faculty member, or indeed an entire research group, that they were no longer welcome to stay in the institute, after which time they would have a period of a few years to arrange to move back to their home departments. This meant that a faculty member who had moved her office and all or a significant portion of her laboratory program to the institute would then have to find space back in the home department, a process that could be painful. In recognition of this, it was made clear in discussions with department heads that the Beckman Institute director would work with the college and department to facilitate such a return, including provision of financial assistance. Considerations such as these brought home to everyone that there would be some risks associated with involvement in the Beckman Institute. I pleaded with Bill Stallman, who directed the Office of Space Utilization, to grant us time to get the institute up and running before pursuing some of the space utilization issues, and he graciously agreed. For some of the groups, the negotiation process proceeded smoothly; there was a good match between what had been requested and what we could provide in the way of office and laboratory space. For some others, the fact that the entire group of faculty involved in the program would not be able to have full-time presences in the institute proved a stumbling block. In some cases we worked out arrangements in which a few faculty would be full-time and other members of the group would be part-time, with assigned shared offices. It was not clear whether such arrangements would lead to the kinds of interdisciplinary interactions we were hoping for. At this early stage we had a mixture of enthusiasm, even elation, at the prospects for what lay ahead on the part of some,

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and disappointment that things were not working out as expected on the part of others. In any case, our initial negotiations with the various faculty groups resulted in assignment of perhaps 80 percent of the available office and laboratory spaces, with the remainder being held to enable us to respond to new opportunities. Faculty groups began to move into the Beckman Institute in December 1988.

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The Institute Goes Public

A

s the site development moved ahead, the temporary quarters we had enjoyed in the converted apartment building had to go. Accordingly, we moved into basement space in the institute. A temporary entry was constructed on the north side,  where there would eventually be a stairway. The walls of the planned offices and laboratories in the part of the basement we occupied were in place, and we used these spaces as best we could for the various offices and meeting spaces. The quarters were a bit spartan. A ChampaignUrbana News-Gazette article of that period written by J. Philip Bloomer, who regularly wrote stories about the institute, began “Beneath naked iron girders, down dusty stairs and at the end of a dark corridor, the light of Arnold Beckman’s legacy is shining. Behind a plywood door Ted Brown is putting together a puzzle whose pieces represent some of the best minds on the University of Illinois campus.” Pretty atmospheric! In

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truth it was a bit like camping out, and we were having fun. The first time a mouse was discovered in a wastebasket when we came in one morning, it occasioned a bit of screaming and chasing about, but we soon became accustomed to such visitors. There was a lot of excitement in the air; the building was more or less on time, and completion of construction was expected by the end of the year. As the fall 1988 meeting of the University of Illinois Foundation approached, the construction had proceeded to the point where the atrium space was looking largely completed. Plans were laid to have some foundation activities in the institute. One of these was to be an unveiling of a statue of Arnold that was being created by Peter Fagan, a member of the faculty of Art and Design. Peter, a very well-known sculptor, had been commissioned by the university in 1987 to produce a life-size statue of Arnold for the circular main entryway to the building. To facilitate his work, Peter had been given a large, airy space in a wooden building on the Engineering campus. He began his work by interviewing Arnold at length and taking many pictures of him from all angles. Whenever Arnold visited Urbana-Champaign, we visited Peter’s studio to get a look at how he was progressing and to provide Peter with additional views and perspectives on Dr. Beckman. He had many black-and-white photographs of Dr. Beckman posted on bulletin boards. On one occasion Mabel accompanied us on our visit. At that stage Peter was well along on the clay model that would form the basis for the final mold. Mabel thought it looked very nice, but she commented that Arnold might have been made a bit too thick about the waist. At the time the pictures had been taken he was a bit heavier than he liked to be, or rather, than Mabel liked him to be. Peter assured her that he could easily remove a few pounds from Arnold’s weight. It was, after all, just clay. A dinner was held in the atrium of the Beckman Institute on October 6, 1988, for a select group of University of Illinois Foundation members. It was the first public affair in the institute, to be followed by many more over the years. Afterward, Peter Fagan’s statue of Arnold was unveiled, and many pictures were taken (figure 6). The sculpture was very well done; both Arnold and Mabel liked it. Mabel’s pride in her husband showed when the statue was unveiled. She turned to the person sitting alongside her and said, “That’s my Arnie!” On Saturday morning a buffet breakfast was served in the atrium for founda-

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Figure 6.  Arnold ­Beckman and President Stanley Ikenberry at the unveiling of Peter Fagan’s sculpture of Dr. Beckman.

tion meeting attendees, and a brief “Commemoration of the Opening of the Beckman Institute” was hosted by Mort Weir and me. We were getting close but were not yet ready to open the doors for occupancy by researchers. Arnold and Mabel’s visits to Urbana-Champaign were not entirely focused on the Beckman Institute. Arnold had been inducted into the Delta Upsilon (DU) fraternity during his undergraduate time at Illinois, and one of his slightly junior fraternity brothers, Seely Johnston, was not about to let him forget it. Seely, who graduated a couple of years after Arnold, was born and raised in Champaign and had become a well-established businessman and civic leader. Seely’s sporting goods store was the place to go for all sorts of sporting equipment. With a little prompting, one could also count on many stories from Seely on a variety of topics. When he became aware of my relationship with Arnold, and

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figured out that I was the person who organized Arnold’s schedule during his visits to Urbana-Champaign, Seely camped on my doorstep the moment he learned that Arnold might be coming to town. He wanted some of Arnold’s time for a visit to the DU house. When he came to see me, he often brought along thick scrapbooks with pictures of Arnold’s days at Illinois and told many stories of their times together. Arnold, it turned out, spent a good bit of time at Seely’s home in Champaign during his undergraduate days, receiving the benefit of Seely’s mother’s home cooking. In return, Arnold played the piano for her. Arnold had learned to play the piano as a youngster, playing largely by ear. He worked as the house pianist in a silent movie theater in Bloomington during his high school days and played in bands for extra money during his college career. Quite clearly, Arnold had been a hero in Seely’s book since those long-ago college days. On the occasion of the fall 1988 visit to campus, Arnold received the DU fraternity’s Alumnus of the Year award. Many of Arnold and Mabel’s visits to Urbana-Champaign included a trip to Cullom, Arnold’s hometown. During the fall 1988 visit, Stan Ikenberry made the president’s car and chauffeur available to take them to Cullom, as he had done on other occasions. Arnold had relatives still living there, and he kept in touch with Gerald and Marian Harms, who tenant-farmed the land that Arnold had donated to the university. After ownership passed to the university, Arnold expressed the hope that the Harmses could continue to farm the land. Marian had a special project for which she was hoping to get Arnold’s support. Cullom had no library, and Marian felt that it should have one, especially for the sake of the children growing up in the community. She acquired a corner in the Cullom Community Center for a small library space and for a Head Start program. When they outgrew that space, she came to Arnold to ask for funds to purchase a building for the library. He was sympathetic, but he worried that with Marian as the only driving force for the effort, support might run out of steam. She marshaled the support of others and convinced Arnold that the community was committed and would work to sustain the library over time. Eventually he provided funds for the purchase of a small building that had been the site of a doctor’s practice. After much work by the community, there was enough space for the library in one half, and organizers planned to rent the other half to the local U.S. Post Office. On a later visit to Cullom, Arnold and I

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were treated to a tour of the newly renovated and outfitted library, and we met enthusiastic library committee members. As the institute neared completion, it seemed appropriate to give university faculty and staff and the local community a look inside. We announced an open house for university employees on Friday and Saturday, December 9 and 10, 1988, and for area residents on the afternoon of Sunday, December 11. To alert the public to the opportunity, an ad ran in the ChampaignUrbana News-Gazette for a few days before the event. We set up tours of the first-floor spaces, which included the atrium, the lobby entryway, the auditorium, and other meeting rooms. On the third floor, researchers from the tunneling microscopy and molecular recognition groups had set up displays. The tower conference rooms and informal meeting spaces on the bridges crossing the atrium were also available for viewing. Posters in the atrium provided information on the mission of the institute and the kinds of research groups that would soon be moving in. Saturday morning, December 10, represented the third anniversary of Arnold’s suggested deadline for choosing the architect for the building. Against many odds, and quite untypically of university construction projects, the Beckman Institute was on time and within budget. We decided to have a little celebration of the occasion with a short morning program. After opening remarks from me, Mort Weir, who was by now chancellor of the Urbana-Champaign campus, spoke, followed by Noel Fagerlund, CEO of SH&G; Ralph Youngren, chief architect at SH&G and senior vice president and director of design; Joe McCullough, vice president of Turner Construction; Al Fritchie, project administrator at Bacon and Van Buskirk, the firm that completed the extensive glass installation; Bill Kuhne, executive vice president of Petry-Kuhne, the construction contractor; and Paul Dixon, university architect. It was fitting to celebrate the organizations and people who had done so much to bring the project in on time and on budget and for all to take satisfaction in a job superbly done. All three days of the open house were well attended, particularly by area residents on Sunday, in spite of bitterly cold weather (figure 7).

The Inauguration Plans were underway to officially inaugurate the Beckman Institute in April 1989. A full week of activities began on April 2 with a buffet

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dinner in the atrium of the Beckman Institute, followed by a Beckman Institute Dedication Concert by the Champaign-Urbana Symphony Orchestra, held in the Foellinger Great Hall of the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts. The concert featured a commissioned work by Scott A. Wyatt, a faculty member in music, titled “Time Pinnacle,” a multimedia production incorporating computer-realized images by Donna Cox and multiple-image projection. In anticipation of a week filled with activities, Arnold and Mabel came to Urbana-Champaign on Tuesday, April 4. On Thursday, they visited the DU fraternity at 312 E. Armory for a “Welcome Home” luncheon in their honor. Arnold was in great form; in observance of the occasion, he played the piano (figure 8). Other members of Arnold and Mabel’s family also came for the inauguration, including daughter Patricia, son Arnold Stone, and grandson Arnold. The University Board of Trustees, President and Mrs. Stanley Ikenberry, and Chancellor and Mrs. Morton Weir sent formal invitations to participate in the inaugural activities to a select list of foundation members and other notables. The program began with tours of the institute on Thursday afternoon and followed with a reception and formal dinner in the atrium space of the institute on Thursday evening.

Figure 7.  Public visitors to a tower room during the December 12, 1988, open house.

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Figure 8.  Arnold Beckman playing the piano at the Delta Upsilon house on April 6, 1989. Standing at center background is Seely Johnston. (The Champaign-Urbana NewsGazette, date unknown). Photo courtesy of John Foreman.

The inaugural program was held on Friday morning, April 7, in the Foellinger Great Hall of the Krannert Center. It had been widely publicized across campus, and there was a full house. The program began with my welcome and introductions, followed by remarks from Charles Wolff, president of the University of Illinois Board of Trustees; Terry Bruce, U.S. congressman from the district that includes Urbana-Champaign; George M. C. Fisher, president and CEO of Motorola Corporation; Bill Greenough; Karl Hess; Stan Ikenberry; and finally Arnold Beckman. After receiving a standing ovation, Arnold went on in his inimitable way to thank us for turning his and Mabel’s gift into the institute, which he said, “exceeded all my expectations.” Bill Greenough then introduced Gerald M. Edelman, winner of the 1972 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine and director of the Neurosciences Institute at Rockefeller University, who presented the inaugural lecture, “Neurobiology and the Coming Scientific Revolution.” Edelman argued in his lecture that the metaphor of the human brain as a computer failed to capture some of its most important characteristics. Instead he described a neural network model in which the brain undergoes continual reformation, with some

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neural connections being reinforced while others wither as each experience alters and helps to shape it. It was a brilliant lecture, on a topic of central interest to many who would be working in the institute, and one in keeping with the broad notion of “Intelligence.”

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Mabel Beckman: In Memoriam When I first met Mabel Beckman in 1978, she seemed very pleasant, but rather quiet, not much given to idle chatter. As Audrey and I grew better acquainted with the Beckmans, we came to realize that she was more deeply involved in her husband’s affairs throughout their married life than we had first thought. Arnold in fact depended heavily on her good judgment and encouragement in many areas, but particularly in the phase of their lives that began in earnest when they made the decision in the late 1970s to dispose of most of their wealth through philanthropy. Arnold and Mabel practiced their philanthropy from the office in their Corona Del Mar home, with Jane Guilarte providing secretarial support. Mabel became secretary of the Beckman Foundation board soon after it was established. Long before that, she was quite active in the affairs of the California Institute of Technology; she was a long-time member of the Caltech Women’s Club. Early on she and Arnold made many substantial gifts to Caltech, one of which was the Beckman Auditorium. Our acquaintance deepened during the early 1980s, and the Beckmans were dinner guests at our home on several occasions. Audrey and Mabel talked a good deal about family matters. The Beckmans were frequently guests also of Stan and Judy Ikenberry, the Barrons, and other campus leaders. When the University of Illinois football team went to the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California, for the January 1, 1985, game, the occasion provided opportunities for further interactions with the Beckmans at a time when they had the proposal under consideration. Audrey and I were part of the official party, and we were designated as university hosts for the Beckmans on the day of the game. We therefore attended various events with them, including the game itself. Illinois was beaten pretty badly, so there was little to cheer about. Our spirits were buoyed, however at a point rather late in the game, when the official scoreboard display suddenly changed to read Caltech 128, MIT 0. Caltech students had a reputation for pulling stunts at the Rose Bowl games. They had

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Figure 9.  Arnold and Mabel Beckman and Ted and Audrey Brown on the occasion of the Institute’s inauguration, April 1989. Photo courtesy of Ann Riley.

somehow contrived to break into the display to flash this bogus score for the entire nation to see on their television sets. Arnold and Mabel were delighted that the Caltech kids had done it again. The warm receptions she received on her many visits to Illinois, coupled with her knowledge that Arnold’s Illinois roots were very important to him, made Mabel into an Illinois supporter. I feel sure that her encouragement was a vital ingredient in their joint decision to donate the funds for the Beckman Institute project. She showed great interest and enthusiasm for the project as it moved forward. She saw that the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology at Illinois would be an imposing monument to their extraordinary philanthropy. On the occasion of the October 1988 unveiling of Peter Fagan’s statue of Arnold, Mabel was looking drawn and tired. When the Beckmans arrived in Champaign on April 4, 1989, for the inaugural events, she was quite evidently ill and sat in a wheelchair. Her daughter Pat felt at the time that perhaps Mabel should not have made the trip, but she clearly wanted to do so. The week’s events must have been exhausting for her, yet photos of her on that occasion show her doing her best to smile (figure 9). On the morning of their departure, when nearly everyone else had gone,

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I picked them up from the Illini Union, where they were staying. Mabel wanted to have a last look at the institute before we left for the airport. We moved slowly through the quiet, sunlit atrium space with very little being said. Mabel passed away at home on June 1, at the age of 88. She would be missed by all of us who knew her, but for Arnold her loss was truly shattering. The partner who had sustained his activities for so many years was no longer at his side. A memorial service was held for Mabel in the Beckman Auditorium at Caltech on June 10, 1989. Stan Ikenberry was among those who spoke.

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Bringing the Institute to Life

I

n the wake of the inauguration excitement, it was time to do the many things necessary for the institute to become effective. Among them was putting together a staff. By this time the Beckman Institute had an annual state budget for operations, with understandings of how maintenance would be shared between the institute and the university’s physical plant. A great many things that would pass for ordinary in other facilities required special attention in the institute. For example, the flooring in the atrium was polished stone, much of which was covered with large carpets. Maintenance of the carpets and the other special features of the building cost more per square foot than corresponding standard-issue fixtures in the rest of the university. How many physical plant personnel from trades such as carpentry or electrical would be assigned to the building? What sort of storeroom facility should be housed in the institute? These and many other items needed

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to be resolved, and they occupied the time and energies of Bruce and Sarah as well as me. Our annual state budget for operations and maintenance was a bit over $2 million. Those funds were needed to pay the salaries of staff and provide for supplies and various other expenses. We needed to hire staff for the computer networking in the building. We coordinated design and implementation of the network with the campus computing office. Our network needed to be compatible with the campuswide system and at the same time meet the high-speed requirements we desired for the building itself. We needed to hire secretarial support staff for the faculty who would be moving in. It was expected that many faculty members would choose to cover some or all of their secretarial needs with funds from grants and contracts, but we had to make sure that the service level was adequate for all faculty. This meant establishing secretarial pools at select places in the office wing and assigning the personnel there to specific groups. We needed to hire general building support staff to handle audiovisual equipment, move furniture on the many occasions when the atrium or other rooms in the building needed to be set up for a lunch or some other function, shipping and receiving, and various other activities. Funds, albeit not large, were available in the budget for initially setting up special facilities and for purchasing computer networking hardware. We also needed to hire technical support staff for the service facilities that were to serve special needs—the electron microscopy and optical visualization suite being a prime early example. In addition, as activity increased in the building, services connected with grants and contracts required more people. We also needed to deal with building security. Because it was not a classroom facility, the institute’s traffic flow would differ from that of most campus buildings. During regular hours many people besides faculty, graduate students, and other researchers working in the institute would have occasion to come to the institute: undergraduate students working on projects, volunteers for human subject studies, people attending lectures and seminars, and those wishing to avail themselves of the Beckman Institute cafeteria. After about 6 pm, however, the building would be locked. The main entry under the tower and the heavily trafficked east entry were outfitted with magnetic card detectors, to permit

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access to the institute for those who were authorized to have an access card. The cards were individually coded to create a record of who entered the building and when. The Beckman Institute may have been the first general campus facility to be equipped with such special access. We felt that it was desirable because the institute would contain much expensive research equipment. Besides, the presence of laboratory animal facilities rendered the institute susceptible to attack by radical animal-rights groups. To handle the issuing and tracking of access cards, deal with other security matters, and maintain a buildingwide patrol, a security person was on duty twenty-four hours per day. All these concerns seem rather mundane, but they represented departures from the usual way of doing things, and successfully working through each of them was important for the institute’s prospects. As just one example from the larger community, voices of discontent were heard from some in the largely African American community north of the institute, across University Avenue. The claim that the institute would be an asset to the community seemed at odds with its rather formidable north façade, which had no entryway. The extra levels of security I have described also made it appear to some that the institute was saying “Not welcome!” In the placement of doors there had been no thought of excluding the general public from the institute, nor were the security measures targeted against any segment of the public. We simply needed to be able to monitor and control access to a building that would eventually be used by more than 700 persons and that would house the special laboratory facilities I mentioned. Many talks with interested groups of citizens went some way toward defusing this issue, but it has resurfaced at times, even in recent years, as an element in general university-community relations. As an outreach effort when the institute was up and running, we made the Beckman Auditorium available for lectures and talks sponsored by entities outside the university when there was some thread of connection with campus interests. For example, the auditorium was the venue for a series of lectures on health issues in cooperation with Carle Clinic that was open to the public. The institute has from its earliest days served as a focal point for stimulating the interests of young people in science. Every other year the institute holds an open house that targets primary and secondary school students interested in science careers or just interested in science in general. Fac-

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ulty and students set up demonstrations in institute research facilities that are oriented toward capturing the interest of school-age groups. Attendees come from schools throughout east-central Illinois. It was important that we establish communication with the campus and community as a mean of educating people about the general aims of the institute, the research programs housed there, and the means by which we hoped to achieve our goals of establishing genuinely multidisciplinary research efforts. I took advantage of opportunities to give talks to interested groups on campus and off. To generate print materials, we initially used services provided through the Office of the Associate Chancellor for Public Affairs, but it became evident that we needed to have our own office of publications and public affairs. Soon we were publishing a quarterly newsletter that featured stories about researchers in the Beckman Institute, news of important new grants, notices of major lectures and the like. I wrote a “From the Director” letter for each issue. After a time, as the workload increased we hired Judith Jones as director of public affairs to handle not only communications but organization of special meetings such as the regular meetings of the External Advisory Committee, publicity for lectures, and other public-relations matters. As part of the effort to make the institute more widely known generally, we published brochures and other informational materials and worked fairly successfully with the campus Office of Public Affairs to have articles placed in major newspapers and magazines.

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Relations with Colleges and Departments Because nearly all researchers working in the Beckman Institute would have their appointments in other departments and colleges, it was clearly important for the Beckman Institute to have good working relationships with other campus units. The two colleges from which most of the faculty would come were Liberal Arts and Sciences and Engineering. I asked the deans of these two colleges to meet with me at regular intervals and they agreed to do so. These meetings were very useful in helping us work through concerns that arose as the institute took form. I sensed that in the College of Engineering more than in Liberal Arts and Sciences there were feelings that the Beckman Institute was setting up unwelcome competitions with existing facilities and programs. For

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example, those administering the Materials Research Laboratory, which had many special instrument facilities, were suspicious that special service facilities in the Beckman Institute would compete with theirs for users. The regular talks with the deans were welcome opportunities to put such concerns on the table and attempt to resolve them. The report of the Beckman Administrative Committee called for the vice chancellor for academic affairs, in consultation with the director of the institute, to appoint a coordinating committee for the institute. The committee was to consist of the executive officers of academic units with strong ties to the institute. In practice, this meant that department heads of nearly all departments that had faculty with appointments in the institute would have membership on the Coordinating Committee. The report called for the committee to meet at least twice each year, but in the early going it met more frequently. Good communication with department heads was extremely important. From the perspective of faculty, the department is perhaps the university’s single most important organizational structure. Faculty members acquire tenure typically in departments, are recommended for salary increases by department heads, and receive their teaching assignments and allocations of office and research space in a department. If we could not work successfully with department heads, we were in trouble. Although a few department heads were worried about the consequences of their faculty spending time in the Beckman Institute, most were pleased with the opportunities that the new facilities provided. Perhaps the greatest concern of the departments and colleges had to do with how the indirect cost return funds for research grants would be handled. Campus policy called for a certain percentage of such funds to be returned to the department in which the research was performed, and an additional percentage to the college housing the department. There was a concern that when faculty carried out their research in the Beckman Institute, the institute might claim at least some of the indirect cost return funds granted for the research, since the institute would be bearing many of the associated indirect costs. At this early stage of building the Beckman Institute, I wanted to have as few impediments as possible to faculty participation. Accordingly, I proposed that on any research grants administered through departments, even though the research was to be performed entirely in the Beckman Institute, the indirect

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cost return funds would go entirely to the departments and colleges. I did, however, make a further proposal that I felt was in keeping with the spirit of the Beckman Institute: Any research proposals involving two or more faculty members that were interdisciplinary in character, particularly when the faculty were from different departments, and where all or most of the research would be performed in the institute, would be submitted through the Beckman Institute administrative offices, and the indirect cost return funds on successful grants of this kind would go to the Beckman Institute. The idea was that the Beckman Institute should receive the indirect cost return funds on research grants that were clearly born of the Beckman Institute environment—that is, on research that would not likely have occurred in its absence. At the time, there were no research grants of this kind, and none were on the immediate horizon. We thus put a potentially contentious matter out of the way, at least temporarily. My proposal meant that for faculty occupying space in the Beckman Institute, the research grants on which they worked would be administered through the home departments, even though the faculty members might be spending all their time in the Beckman Institute. There were of course many other detailed issues about how to conduct business matters. Margarita Ham was especially effective in working with departmental business officers in handling appointments and other aspects of grant administration. We seem to have established conditions for faculty presences in the institute that met with general approval from departments and colleges. It quickly became evident that the Beckman Institute could be of great assistance to colleges and departments in the recruitment of new faculty. Potential faculty members whose interests were aligned with one of the institute programs could be offered an opportunity for research space and membership in that program. For example, the Department of Physics was able to recruit Klaus Schulten from Germany on the promise that he would have full-time access to the Beckman Institute. The opportunity to be in proximity to the resources of the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) was highly attractive to him. His research group became part of the Physical Theory and Computation program, and Klaus went on to become one of the major scientific presences in the institute, widely recognized for his creative computational strategies for visualizing the dynamics of large biomolecules. The institute could

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also frequently not only offer office and laboratory space but assist the departments in purchases of needed startup equipment, as was the case with Klaus. In a somewhat similar way, the institute became a locus for the development of Paul Lauterbur’s magnetic resonance imaging, or MRI, research, in which the institute and campus invested substantially through the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs. Paul went on to share in the 2003 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his central role in the development of MRI as a powerful tool in medical diagnosis. This potential for mutually beneficial cooperation with colleges and departments in recruitment of faculty has over time become a tremendously effective tool in building the campus’s research capability. The institute can work with departments to build up promising interdisciplinary groups that fit with the institute’s overall strategic plan, and the campus in the process adds stellar researchers to the faculty.

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Campus Relationships It cannot be denied that in some sectors of the campus the Beckman Institute was not seen in a good light. Many faculty members felt that it was responsible for diverting funds that might have gone for other campus needs. Then there was sheer envy that some scientists and engineers had access to such a beautiful facility while others lacked it. It was of course not possible to disarm all such negative feelings, but we did what we could. We made it known that the Beckman Auditorium could be available for conference and lecture use, consistent with the institute’s own needs for it, and our invitation was taken up on many occasions. I also anticipated early on that the institute would benefit from an art program and had sequestered about $200,000 in the original budget for purchasing art. The institute has a great deal of interior wall space, and the corridors would look pretty barren without art. I appointed a small committee of faculty whom I knew to be interested in art to work with someone from the School of Art and Design. Eventually Nancy Gardner, an instructor in art and design and the wife of Chet Gardner, a professor in electrical and computer engineering, volunteered to help choose art, and she was tremendously helpful. The School of Art and Design had a large collection of interesting posters from the Polish school of postermaking and offered to let us have a selection of those as a start on our art

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collection. Then the committee selected for purchase various paintings and prints, mainly from the work of faculty artists. We also purchased three large pieces: a glass work by Bill Carlson that went into the atrium and metal sculptures by Roger Blakeley and Christiane Martens that went outside to complement the building’s landscaping. A later set of purchases, mainly of prints, resulted from a trip to Chicago galleries. We made the atrium space available on occasion for exhibits. For example, in 1990 the exhibit “Industrial Design: Where Art Meets Engineering” was the brainchild of Peter Hadday, a graduate student in computer science, who was inspired by a Krannert Art Museum show. Mark Arends, a faculty member in Art and Design, was the curator. Later in 1990 the atrium boasted an extensive display of the large wood sculptures of Brent Collins. At least two of them were purchased for the institute’s collection. At about that same time we also hosted a series we called Noon Time Art Lectures by faculty from the School of Art and Design. These popular brown-bag talks were held in a room close to the Beckman cafeteria so that people could pick up their meal beforehand and bring it to the talk. I thought it would be nice to take advantage of the atrium space for musical performances. After exploring several options, we settled on a program that brought small instrumental ensembles of undergraduate and graduate music students to the institute for relatively brief performances during the noon hour on Thursdays. On some occasions the performances included vocalists. The recitals became known as the Thursday Noon Bridge Concerts, because the performers were located on the bridge that ran across the atrium on the second floor. The students received modest stipends for their performances. If they were discouraged that many of those eating and talking below them took little notice of their presence, they didn’t show it. The quality of the performances was very high, and many people did listen closely. Thomas Schleiss from the School of Music did a fine job of arranging for many of the recitals. Two other examples of outreach efforts from those early years come to mind. I had made the acquaintance of John Friedman, of the Department of English, who was interested in the production of medieval manuscripts in northern England. One of his great challenges was to identify the specific scribe who had produced a manuscript, since the scribes who

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made the handsomely illustrated and illuminated books seldom signed their work. John was reduced to looking for characteristic flourishes and other subtle differences in the scribes’ writing styles. I suggested that he might talk with researchers in the Complex Systems group, which was concerned in part with developing computer-based pattern recognition. John made contact initially with Norman Packard and Russ Shermer, who got him started in use of techniques that could help make the assignments, and these eventually led to further collaborations that proved highly productive for him. He presented a nice poster on his work at an open house held in the institute in the fall of 1990. As a second example, Dick Wheeler, chair of the Department of English, came to see me one day about his efforts to lure the novelist Richard Powers to the campus as a faculty member. Knowing of Rick’s strong interests in science and technology, he thought that some sort of connection with the Beckman Institute might be attractive to him. When Rick and I later met, he seemed quite intrigued by the Beckman Institute and eventually accepted an offer to join the faculty that included the use of an office and workstation in the institute as an adjunct member of the cognitive sciences research program. I like to think that the Beckman Institute was a drawing card for him in coming to Illinois, and I was most gratified to read the brilliant novel he produced not long afterward, Galatea 2.2, which concerns a fictional research facility not unlike the Beckman Institute. To the time of this writing Rick remains a distinguished member of the Urbana-Champaign faculty, recognized as one of the finest novelists writing today. He continues to have an adjunct appointment in the Beckman Institute.

The Institute Develops In the next chapter I describe the Beckman Institute’s relationship to the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation. The annual allocation of discretionary funds from the Beckman Foundation beginning in 1990—$600,000 each year in the first couple of years, increasing modestly each year thereafter—was of immense help in getting the institute off to a good start. It was used to provide matching funds for equipment purchased on external grants and contracts, to assist with recruit-

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ing packages for faculty who would have a place in the institute, and to achieve other such purposes. In the second year of our funding, we inaugurated the Beckman Fellows program, which provides a highly attractive stipend and a research budget for a young scholar who has just completed a Ph.D. program and who aspires to work in association with one of the research programs in the Beckman Institute. The fellowship, a three-year appointment, provides an excellent opportunity for a young scholar to prepare for an independent scientific career. The first Beckman scholar appointments were made in 1992, to Efrat Shimshoni, a condensed matter physicist, and Andrew Nobel, whose interests lay in the area of information theory and statistics. Two Beckman fellows were to be appointed each year, which meant that from the third year there would typically be six Beckman fellows in the Beckman Institute. The program proved to be very successful, and the Beckman Foundation later extended it to other Beckman institutes and centers. As faculty groups became established in the institute, it became possible to organize conferences and workshops. Through Karl’s leadership, the Beckman Institute became the home for a new National Center for Computational Electronics, funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF). A national workshop was held in May 1990. Bill Greenough was similarly active in establishing the institute as a center for stereology, the quantitative study of anatomical structures, and the first American Neuroscience Stereology Course, funded by the NSF, was held at the Beckman Institute in October 1990. The NSF also sponsored a multidisciplinary conference on parallel systems that involved Klaus Schulten and researchers from the neuronal pattern analysis faculty group in the institute. A conference on self-assembly of submicron systems was also held in the institute in the fall of 1990. In the fall of 1991 the institute hosted a large conference on drug design, funded by a grant from the technology development office of the State of Illinois. The conference drew researchers from across campus, NCSA scientists, and many from the pharmaceutical industry, as well as faculty with appointments in the Beckman Institute. It became the first in a high-profile series known as Beckman Institute Protein Symposia, which drew researchers from all over the nation. The sheer range of topics with which these meetings were concerned is testimony to the breadth of the Beckman Institute’s programs.

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Bill Greenough on Undergraduate Education and “Returnees”

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One thing most people don’t know about the Beckman Institute is the deep involvement of many undergraduates from disciplines across the campus in research conducted there. Literally hundreds of students are involved in institute research at any point in time. Many of these students go on to research careers in disciplines related to their undergraduate experiences. For example, Kara Federmeier, who carried out undergraduate research (later published) in my lab, returned to the Beckman Institute for her first faculty-level appointment. Kara is now a tenured associate professor in the Psychology Department and a member of the Cognitive Neuroscience group in the institute. Former graduate students are also attracted by offers to return. As an example, Steve Boppart, who did graduate work with Bruce Wheeler of the NeuroTech group, subsequently obtained both M.D. (Harvard) and Ph.D. (MIT) degrees and is now a member of the Beckman Institute Bioimaging Science and Technology group, a faculty member in Electrical and Computer Engineering, and director of a campuswide program on medical imaging.

We had begun to have successes with multiple-investigator proposals that drew together researchers from several disciplines. A cooperative grant from Motorola Corporation to work on natural language systems for control of vehicles drew in researchers from linguistics, computer sciences, and artificial intelligence. As more large, multiple-investigator proposals for external support were granted, the issues of indirect cost return distribution and other related administrative matters again arose. There would clearly be a continuing need for communications with other campus units through the Coordinating Committee and other avenues. As the institute took shape, many issues involving space utilization and other matters relating to the faculty and the institute arose. As associate directors, Bill and Karl were each responsible for relations with faculty from their respective program areas: physical sciences, computers, and computation on Karl’s side; biology, behavior, and cognition on Bill’s

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side. Karl, Bill, Sarah, and I met for brown-bag lunch meetings every week. There always seemed to be matters needing attention; the Beckman Institute represented a significant departure from the traditional academic organization, and resolving the many issues that arose was not always easy. For Karl and Bill, the Beckman Institute had developed into a longtime commitment. The burden of administrative responsibilities while maintaining full-time research programs brought both of them to the point of stepping down as associate directors at the end of their appointment periods after the 1990–91 academic year. (It had been planned from the outset that the associate director positions would be renewable rotating three-year appointments.) They were succeeded by Professors David Payne and Albert Feng. Karl and Bill’s extraordinary roles in the Beckman Institute were not over, however. Their scientific accomplishments in the institute earned them election to the National Academy of Science; in addition, Karl was elected to the National Academy of Engineering. Both have embodied the best traditions of interdisciplinary research in collaborations with other Beckman Institute researchers. Nor were their administrative contributions at an end; my successor, Jiri Jonas, later brought them in as leaders of newly established thrusts.

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Evaluation of Programs The report of the Beckman Administrative Committee called for the appointment of an External Advisory Committee (EAC) by the chancellor of the Urbana-Champaign campus. The EAC, which was to have membership from outside the University of Illinois, was charged with advising the director and chancellor on matters of broad policy and on program direction and quality. Membership would be drawn from world-class scholars in fields relevant to the programs of the institute. The individuals would “have distinguished themselves as creative and successful administrators of major interdisciplinary programs.” One of the committee members would be asked to serve as chairperson. The administrative committee report called for the EAC to close each meeting with an executive session with the director and, subsequently, with the chancellor and vice chancellors for academic affairs and for research. We decided to make the EAC a rather large group, because one of its functions would be to raise awareness of the institute. What better

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way to make the scientific and engineering world aware of the Beckman Institute than to bring eminent scientists, engineers, and policymakers to the campus and expose them for a day or two to our plans for the institute and to meet with Beckman Institute faculty? The first meeting of the EAC, with sixteen members, was held in July 1986. Some early EAC members were Richard Atkinson, Lewis Branscomb, Gordon Bower, Daniel Dennett, Jennifer Lund, James McGaugh, Frederick Seitz, Nicholas Turro, and Rosalyn Yalow. In the initial meetings, we asked for their reactions to our overall strategy and requested suggestions for how we might improve our plans. As the institute took shape, the EAC was increasingly asked to evaluate specific programs during two-day meetings. It also served as a voice for the institute in reporting to the campus administration. By 1991 the EAC membership stood at twenty-six. The appointments were for four years and were staggered. As the programs in the institute took form and proceeded with varying degrees of success to establish themselves, the question of program evaluation came to the fore. Many of the faculty groups in the Beckman Institute were succeeding admirably in their efforts to establish interdisciplinary collaborations and make effective use of the opportunities that the institute represented. We felt that we were making steady progress. Nevertheless, we had to pay attention to instances in which things were not going so well. The problems were of two kinds: Some faculty members were making little use of the spaces that had been assigned to them. Their offices remained unused for weeks at a time; few or none of their graduate students were to be seen in the institute. In other instances graduate students were working in more or less isolated groups, not experiencing the benefits of stimulating interactions with personnel engaged in other research efforts. Various factors were responsible for this, among them the recent construction of a new building adjacent to the Beckman Institute that was to house engineering faculty mainly from the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. In other cases, faculty with part-time appointments did not find it convenient to come to the institute regularly from their home departments. A second problem had to do with how faculty within groups interacted with colleagues outside their disciplinary areas. While there was a fair amount of interdisciplinarity within many of the programs, we hoped for more extensive interactions across program boundaries.

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Some efforts designed to stimulate such interactions were successful to a degree. The afternoon Director’s Coffee, held regularly in one of the tower rooms, provided a means for graduate students and faculty to converse informally. We instituted the Director’s Seminar series, in which Beckman Institute faculty were invited to present an account of their research interests in nonspecialist terms, so as to be understandable to the general Beckman Institute audience. I also began a series of brownbag lunches, to which faculty members were invited in groups of about ten. Each person at the table was invited to give a brief account of his or her research interests. There was time for general discussion of Beckman Institute affairs and questions from the faculty. The lunches proved to be a fairly effective means of making the faculty aware of others’ interests, and some truly collaborative interdisciplinary interactions were the results of introductions made there. Yet another innovation that proved helpful was a program of Beckman Graduate Fellowships. Graduate students could apply for these, which provided a half-time research stipend for a full year. The application required describing a research proposal and specified that the work would be supervised by two Beckman Institute faculty with distinctly different research interests. In effect, we were empowering the graduate students as agents of change; often they proved to be less invested in sticking to familiar ways than the faculty were. We dealt with the first problem, that of the absent faculty, by requesting from the faculty member an account of planned participation. When it was not forthcoming, or not acted upon in a reasonable period of time, we simply took away the space. It generated some ill will, but we made a point, and we needed the space for others. The second sort of concern could be dealt with only by more systematic program evaluations. The Program Advisory Committee, originally appointed in March 1987, had undergone significant membership change over the years. In the 1992–93 academic year it had a membership of thirteen, in addition to the ex officio memberships of the director and associate directors. I raised with them the matter of program review and asked that they help construct a policy and procedures to deal with it. By June 1993 we had a program review process, which was distributed to all Beckman Institute faculty members. It called for grouping all the institute’s programs into three groups, plus NCSA, and establishing an annual review process in which one of the four groups would be reviewed

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each year, making for a four-year review cycle. The review committees were to consist of six members, three drawn from the Program Advisory Committee and three external members. Writing the letter to the Beckman Institute faculty on program review was virtually my last administrative act as director. The previous spring, in May 1992, I had submitted my resignation as director, effective at the end of summer 1993. I planned to retire from the university at about that same time. May 1993 was marked by the tragic death of Bruce Marshall in a diving accident. Bruce was a key person in the early days of the Beckman Institute project. Later, as associate director for operations, he was admired and liked for his responsible oversight of the institute’s day-to-day operations. My last year as director was very busy; in November 1992 I assumed the position of interim vice chancellor for academic affairs, filling in for Bob Berdahl, who had left to assume the presidency of the University of Texas. The search for my replacement as Beckman Institute director, underway during the 1992–93 academic year, concluded successfully with the appointment of Jiri Jonas, a distinguished professor of chemistry at UIUC. In addition to being an outstanding research scholar, Jiri had demonstrated administrative talents as director of the School of Chemical Sciences for several years. Although it goes beyond the time span of my historical account, I want to say that Jiri Jonas was a superb director during his years in that position. One of his major accomplishments was in reorganizing the institute programs into major thrust areas, and in the process positioning the institute faculty to be highly competitive in seeking major multiple-investigator grants involving interdisciplinary work. In addition, once that reorganization had been accomplished, he instituted the program reviews along the lines recommended in the Program Advisory Committee report. The reviews resulted in turnover of research programs in the institute, one of the most difficult things to manage in an academic setting. Turnover of programs is essential if the institute is to remain hospitable to new initiatives and a fertile breeding ground for interdisciplinarity.

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The Beckman Foundation: Arnold’s Last Years

A

t the time of Mabel’s death in June 1989, the Beckmans had disposed of a considerable fraction of their wealth through philanthropic activities. Centers and institutes had been established at the University of Illinois, the California Institute  of Technology, Stanford University, City of Hope Hospital in Duarte, California, and the Beckman Laser Institute in Irvine, California. The Beckmans had contributed $20 million to build the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Conference Center of the National Academies in Irvine, California. Several other multimillion-dollar awards had been given to institutions throughout the nation. All this largess did not, of course, go unnoticed. Articles in such publications as the Chronicle of Higher Education, the Los Angeles Times, and other major news outlets ensured that there would be a stream of proposals requesting support. He was drowning in them.

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With Mabel gone, Arnold’s ability and willingness to deal with all the proposals received had diminished considerably. He determined that he would rely more heavily on his foundation board for advice, and accordingly he strengthened the board with additional memberships. He also questioned whether the foundation should be set up to disburse its assets, which at that time amounted to well in excess of $200 million, over a relatively short time period, and thus be self-liquidating, or whether it should be set up to exist in perpetuity, disbursing on the order of 5 percent of its assets each year. After consulting with many people on this matter, he decided to set up the foundation to exist in perpetuity. He drafted a philosophy statement, in which he spelled out his thoughts about a vision for the foundation. In that document he noted that two institutions had been of special importance in his life: Caltech and the University of Illinois. He identified five centers and institutes—the Beckman Institute at Illinois; the Beckman Institute at Caltech; the Beckman Center for Molecular and Genetic Medicine at Stanford; the Beckman Research Center at City of Hope in Duarte, California; and the Beckman Laser Institute in Irvine—to be recipients of discretionary funds for use by the director of each of the institutions. He specified that “up to 50%” of the funds available for distribution in each year were to be distributed to the five centers and institutes. The rest of the funds available for distribution each year were to be used in support of basic research in the chemical and life sciences. Dr. Beckman made it clear that he did not wish the foundation to make any major “bricks and mortar” grants, but rather to support ongoing research. (In a later letter of intent he modified that stance.) The philosophy statement also called for the formation of the foundation’s Grants Advisory Council (GAC) consisting of the directors of the five centers and institutes that would be receiving the discretionary funding. One of the directors would serve as the rotating chairman of the GAC. The function of the GAC would be to provide scientific advice to the board and assist it as appropriate in the formation and operation of appropriate programmatic efforts. Thus in 1990 I became a member of the GAC along with Harry Gray from Caltech, Michael Berns from the Beckman Laser Institute, Joseph Holden from City of Hope, and Paul Berg from Stanford. Harry Gray served as first chairperson, and I later succeeded him.

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April 10, 1990, was also the occasion of Arnold’s ninetieth birthday, celebrated at a birthday party hosted by Gavin and Ninetta Herbert at their home, La Casa Pacifica, in San Clemente, California. This beautiful estate had been used by Richard Nixon as his vacation White House during his presidency. (Incidentally, the event was reprised ten years later, when Arnold turned one hundred.) With Mabel gone, Arnold lived alone in their house in Corona Del Mar, though he had a full-time housekeeper. Age was beginning to catch up with him. He had hipreplacement surgery, which did not go so well, so that he was somewhat hobbled afterward. He still paid visits to Illinois and was happy to see the institute developing and to talk with researchers. On a few of those trips to Illinois, we drove to Cullom to visit relatives and friends who remained there. On one such trip we went to Pontiac, a town about twenty miles west of Cullom, so that Arnold could arrange for a gravestone that would mark his and Mabel’s grave. He intended for her remains to be buried in a small cemetery not far outside Cullom and for his own remains to be placed there after his death. We stopped at the cemetery on our way back through Cullom. It was a beautiful fall day, so we took the less-traveled back roads to return to Urbana-Champaign. Farmers were harvesting the gold-and-brown fields of soybeans that stretched across the land. On April 10, 1991 (Arnold’s ninety-first birthday), I was part of a program at the Beckman Center of the National Academies of Science and Engineering in Irvine, California, to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the appearance of the Beckman DU Spectrophotometer. Several of us spoke of the significance of that instrument to the world of science, and James D. Watson spoke on the Human Genome Project. Two weeks later, at a gala black-tie affair in Springfield, Illinois, Arnold was elected as one of seven recipients of the State of Illinois’s highest honor, the Order of Lincoln, of the Lincoln Academy of Illinois. Among the other recipients that year were Justice Harry A. Blackmun of the U.S. Supreme Court and James R. Thompson, former governor of Illinois. Arnold Beckman continued to visit the campus during the 1990s, though not so frequently as before. He had become more infirm, increasingly troubled by the bad hip and eventually restricted to a wheelchair. His daughter Pat moved in with her father in the house on Shorecliff Drive in 1994 and took care of him from that time on. In 1994 Harry

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Gray, director of the Beckman Institute at Caltech, and I were invited to join the board of directors of the Beckman Foundation. The board eventually grew to have ten members, including Pat Beckman and Arnold’s grandson, Arnie Beckman, a University of Illinois alumnus. Harry and I have until recently been the only research scientists on the board, and over the years we have been called upon frequently to apply our expertise. (I resigned from the Beckman Foundation board at the end of 2008, after I turned eighty.) The foundation’s continuing financial support for the Beckman institutes and centers constitutes Arnold and Mabel Beckman’s commitment to the excellence of the institutions they brought into being. The foundation also operates the prestigious Beckman Young Investigators Award program, which provides research support to young scientists from across the nation who are just taking up their first tenure-track academic appointments, and the Beckman Scholars Program, which provides funding to colleges and universities across the country for support of undergraduate research. I believe that Arnold’s last visit to the Beckman Institute at Illinois may have occurred in 1999, when there was a party in the atrium to celebrate his ninety-ninth birthday. The Medicare 7, 8, or 9 band was playing that evening. At one point he was positioned at the piano in his wheelchair and played quite good piano along with the band. He stopped coming to foundation board meetings when his hearing and sight had faded to the point where he could not participate effectively. I often visited him and Pat at home when I was in Irvine for foundation board meetings. Pat cared for him through a long decline; he died on May 18, 2004, at the age of 104. Among the many memorials in his honor, a program was held at the Beckman Institute on September 24, 2004. Beckman Institute director Pierre Wiltzius, Stan Ikenberry, Bill Greenough, Pat Beckman, and I offered remarks. Jim and Dena Vermette, long-time friends of Arnold and Mabel from Champaign, were in the large audience. Dena, a fine singer, offered beautiful versions of a few of his favorite ballads. Later Pat and other family members took his ashes to Cullom for burial in the cemetery that Arnold and I had visited many years before. Arnold Beckman had returned to his Illinois origins.

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APPENDIXES

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APPENDIX 1 Letters of Appointment of Faculty Committees to Prepare Proposals

The Graduate College 330 Administration Building



May 2, 1983

TO: E. J. Copeland, Executive Secretary, Graduate College, 337 Administration Building, 3-4860 A. Crofts, Physiology & Biophysics, 524 Burrill Hall, 3-2043 J. Cronan, Microbiology, 330 Burrill Hall, 3-0425 H. Frauenfelder, Physics, 333 Loomis, 3-3393 W. Greenough, Chairman, Psychology, 822 Psychology, 3-4472 D. Kuck, Computer Science, 269 Digital Computer Lab. 3-6150 J. Malpeli, Psychology, 521 Psychology, 3-6605 L. Prosser, Physiology & Biophysics, 463 Burrill Hall, 3-1663 G. Schuster, Chemistry, 261 Roger Adams Lab. 3-0695 D. Shapiro, Biochemistry, 318 Roger Adams Lab. 3-1788 D. Waltz, Electrical Engineering, 6-143 Coordinated Science Lab. 3-6071 FROM:

T. L. Brown

Copyright © 2009. University of Illinois Press. All rights reserved.

SUBJECT: Development of Program Statement for a Major Center The Central Administration and Mr. Barron of the U of I Foundation have indicated that there is a possibility of interesting one, and perhaps more than one, potential donor in making a major contribution toward the construction and staffing of a substantial new facility on the Urbana-Champaign campus. The potential donors will remain anonymous. What we do know is that they are well acquainted with the University, that their interests lie in the general area of sciences and engineering. At the same time, they are represented as not having a particular concept of the form in which they would like to make a contribution to campus facilities. Rather, it seems to be the case that these individuals, astute and sophisticated senior members of our society, are in effect asking the University: “What is it the University really needs? If we were to put a substantial amount of money into a physical facility, what would it accomplish, what new form or forms of excellence, what enhancements of current excellence might result?” For the purposes of discussion consider that the principal donor might be willing to make a contribution of up to $20 million. It is anticipated that such a contribution might be made on a matching basis, and that the State might be induced to appropriate up to an equivalent amount of money toward the construction of

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a facility. A second donor would appear to be potentially interested in endowing chairs, graduate fellowships, and so forth, associated with the faculty and staff that might work in such a center. We as a campus are being asked to come forward with a proposal for such a center. We are in effect given a blank slate; what should we write on it? Chancellor Cribbet has asked me to oversee the development of a plan and program statement for a campus center that will be so compellingly attractive that our potential donor will be entirely unable to resist making the contribution which we desire. I ask your assistance in that effort. Several discussions have already been held to consider some of the criteria that should apply in attempts to define the nature of the center that we might devise. (Incidentally, I use the word “center” advisedly, and perhaps unwisely; we need not be thinking about a center, but it represents a convenient term to describe that which we are attempting to formulate.) As we think about a center we should recognize at the outset that it really has two major components: on the one hand it is a physical facility, which will add to the laboratory, office, seminar and classroom spaces already available on the campus. Secondly, it will house programs, which may be extensions of, or additions to, existing programs, or which may be entirely new efforts.

Some guiding criteria:

1. The thrust of the center should be related to, or draw from, intellectual strengths already present on the campus.

Copyright © 2009. University of Illinois Press. All rights reserved.

2. It should relieve, rather than stress, resources elsewhere on campus. 3. It should be possible within the confines of the program statement to see that it would establish UIUC as a world center in the area of intellectual interest encompassed by the center. 4. The center should focus on an area, or areas, of great growth potential, in which there is substantial potential Federal funding. 5. The center should draw upon a diverse set of disciplinary expertise and interests. That is, it should not be so narrowly focused as to encompass only a single department, perhaps not even a single college. On the other hand, however, we must be careful that it not be defined so broadly as to lack a proper focus. 6. The focus of the center must be basic science, but the potential for applications to the larger needs of the society should be clearly evident.

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7. The center should bring together existing powerful groups in such a way that the united whole will possess a potential for excellence greater than that which the separate components of the center could hope to attain. 8. Because we are not absolutely sure of the total funding or the temporal order in which the funding might be acquired, the center should, to the extent possible, be envisioned as modular, with perhaps two or three major components. In this manner, the first stage might be constructed first, and later stages added as funds became available. Obviously, such a modular character will need to apply not only to the physical facilities but the programmatic aspects. Models for the Center In considering the possibility of a “center” which gathers under its roof faculty, staff and students from several disciplinary areas, the question of an organizational model inevitably arises. Among the models that might be considered are the following:

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1. The MRL Model – Faculty are appointed to our Materials Research Lab for the purpose of conducting research under two major research block grants, one from the Department of Energy, the other from the National Science Foundation. The faculty hold their appointments in disciplinary departments, frequently possess sources of funding other than that provided by the MRL, and often work in laboratory space in their home departments rather than in the MRL building. Nevertheless, MRL is a physical facility which brings together faculty from several disciplinary areas, for the purpose of providing exceptionally good facilities not available in the individual departments, and also to provide an environment in which interdisciplinary, highly interactive research can be conducted. In considering such a model in connection with our hypothetical center, a major difference that arises at the outset is that the funding for the activities which occur in our proposed center will probably not be in the form of a block grant. It is extremely unlikely that the University would be able to provide internally block grant funding of great magnitude. Nevertheless, by providing exceptionally good facilities and (we hope) endowed chairs, and perhaps fellowships, the center would provide a strong attraction for faculty who wished to conduct research in company with others in related disciplines. Our success in formulating the center concept and in attracting faculty to such a center will of course depend upon the details of the organizational arrangement we make and our imaginativeness in defining the scope of the center’s activities. 2. The “home center” Model – In this model, for which I lack a really good name, faculty would have their major appointments in the center, with adjunct appointments in the departments representing their disciplin-

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ary areas. The focal points within the center would be interdisciplinary programs which spanned the interests of faculty from several different departments. Again, by means of providing excellent facilities for carrying out research, perhaps release time, graduate fellowship support, and so on, the center could hope to attract outstanding people. This model sounds vaguely like our now-defunct Center for Advanced Computation, in which faculty received tenure appointments not attached to departments, and depended upon external grant support for their stipends. We of course do not wish to repeat the CAC experience, but some modified structure which places the faculty more securely within departments, while at the same time providing a strong role for the center, might be feasible.

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Aside from these structural questions, there is the major one of how the Center might be formulated in terms of the disciplinary interests of its membership. It is on this question, perhaps more than any of the others, that we earnestly seek your advice. We have decided to proceed by asking two groups of faculty, with different overall research interests, to think about this question. The following example of possible subject matter content for the center programs is put forward not to stifle your imaginativeness but simply to provide an indication of the breadth of interest that such a center might encompass and as a point of departure. We must avoid an excessively narrow program statement; on the other hand, if we try to scoop in everything that is good and exciting under the roof of this center, which – despite the large amounts of money being discussed – will have a limited capacity, our proposal will lack an essential focus and crispness. It follows from this that, in choosing among all the good possibilities available, there will be a highly arbitrary element involved in making a final choice. That choice may depend in part on our knowledge of the background of the potential donor, and so forth. For this reason we have asked two different groups to formulate what will surely be two different program statements for such a center, with corresponding descriptions of an appropriate physical facility, so that we might make some choice. Center for Neuroscience and Cognitive Studies This center might include faculty from Psychology, Physics, Chemistry, School of Life Sciences, Engineering and the School of Basic Medical Sciences. 1. Basic Neurosciences

a. Neuronal form and function b. Developmental Neurobiology and Plasticity c. Neurochemistry/Neuropharmacology/Neuroendocrinology

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2. Brain Function in Behavior

a. Neuroethology/Biopsychology b. Clinical and Experimental Neuropsychology

3. Human Cognition a. Language/Linguistics b. Cognitive Psychology c. (?) Computational Linguistics 4. Neural Modeling and Artificial Intelligence It may be helpful for you to know that the second committee has been asked to organize a center around the general theme of adaptive, integrated manufacturing systems, solid state devices and materials, and information processing.

Copyright © 2009. University of Illinois Press. All rights reserved.

As I have indicated above, these suggestions are made simply to provide a point of departure. I ask the committee to consider this and other possibilities and make a recommendation regarding a model that seems most appropriate. For your recommendations to be most helpful, we must have them by about July 1. I know that this is a short time, but for various reasons over which we have no control a fast schedule of development is essential. By early in the fall we must be prepared to lay out a fairly well-defined plan, with some artist’s renderings of possible facilities, and so forth. You should therefore, as part of your considerations, reflect upon the character of the facilities that would be optimal for the type of center which you propose. That is, attempt to guess at the fraction of space that would be assigned to “wet” laboratory, offices, seminar rooms, and so on. I would like to meet with the committee at an early stage to discuss any of these matters, at your desire. We very much appreciate your willingness to assist the University in this important and challenging assignment. cc: J. E. Cribbet E. L. Goldwasser bcc: T. Eakman

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The Graduate College 330 Administration Building



May 5, 1983

TO: B. T. Chao, Mechanical & Industrial Engineering, 144 Mechanical Engineering Building, 3-1250 J. Cruz, Electrical Engineering, 4-113 Coordinated Science Lab. 3-0280 W. Kubitz, Computer Science, 234 Digital Computer Lab. 3-6249 W. McMillan, Physics, 313 Loomis Lab. 3-2490 H. J. Stapleton, Executive Secretary, Graduate College, 314 Administration Building, 3-6807 G. Stillman, Chairperson, Electrical Engineering, 203 Electrical Engineering Research Lab. 3-3097 D. Slotnick, Computer Science, 283 Digital Computer Lab. 3-6726 C. Wickens, Psychology, 515 Psychology, 3-6145 M. Williams, Library, 5-135 Coordinated Science Lab. 3-1047 FROM:

T. L. Brown, Vice Chancellor for Research

Copyright © 2009. University of Illinois Press. All rights reserved.

SUBJECT: Development of Program Statement for a Major Center The Central Administration and Mr. Barron of the U of I Foundation have indicated that there is a possibility of interesting one, and perhaps more than one, potential donor in making a major contribution toward the construction and staffing of a substantial new facility on the Urbana-Champaign campus. The potential donors will remain anonymous. What we do know is that they are well acquainted with the University, that their interests lie in the general area of sciences and engineering. At the same time, they are represented as not having a particular concept of the form in which they would like to make a contribution to campus facilities. Rather, it seems to be the case that these individuals, astute and sophisticated senior members of our society, are in effect asking the University: “What is it the University really needs? If we were to put a substantial amount of money into a physical facility, what would it accomplish, what new form or forms of excellence, what enhancements of current excellence might result?” For the purposes of discussion consider that the principal donor might be willing to make a contribution of up to $20 million. It is anticipated that such a contribution might be made on a matching basis, and that the State might be induced to appropriate up to an equivalent amount of money toward the construction of a facility. A second donor would appear to be potentially interested in endowing chairs, graduate fellowships, and so forth, associated with the faculty and staff that might work in such a center.

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Page 2 May 5, 1983

Copyright © 2009. University of Illinois Press. All rights reserved.

We as a campus are being asked to come forward with a proposal for such a center. We are in effect given a blank slate; what should we write on it? Chancellor Cribbet has asked me to oversee the development of a plan and program statement for a campus center that will be so compellingly attractive that our potential donor will be entirely unable to resist making the contribution which we desire. I ask your assistance in that effort.

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APPENDIX 2 Letters of Appointment of Program, Administrative and Steering Committees

OFFICE OF THE CHANCELLOR Swanlund Administration Building



October 8, 1985

TO: Messrs. Karl Hess, Chairman Jacob A. Abraham Edward S. Davidson Ken D. Forbus Anthony J. Leggett Franco P. Preparata John R. Shapley Larry L. Smarr John R. Tucker Christopher D. Wickens James P. Wolfe Peter G. Wolynes FROM:

Thomas E. Everhart, Chancellor

Copyright © 2009. University of Illinois Press. All rights reserved.

SUBJECT: Program Committee for Materials Science, Computers and Computation Center of the Beckman Institute As you all know by now, the University has received from Arnold and Mabel Beckman the largest single gift ever presented to a public university. Their $40 million dollar gift, with the $10 million that will be forthcoming from the State, will enable us to construct the Arnold O. and Mabel M. Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology. We are faced with an exceptional opportunity, perhaps the most dramatic and exciting one that we will see in our working lifetimes. Much of the success of the Institute will depend upon the imagination and hard work that goes into the establishment of the organizational structure and definition of its relationship to other campus units. In addition, there are many important but secondary considerations relating to the operation of the Institute that must be addressed. I believe that you should know something of the background leading up to the proposal that was eventually submitted to Dr. and Mrs. Beckman. Beginning more than two years ago, in response to encouragement from Lew Barron, President Ikenberry and Vice President Weir, the campus administration began planning for the preparation of a major, bold new proposal for an addition to campus facilities. Two faculty committees, one concerned largely with engineering and physical science, the other

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with the life sciences, were appointed. They were asked to identify the large, broadly-based research areas and important questions that this University is now best equipped to address, or could effectively address in the future. These committees, composed of some of our most productive and distinguished researchers, examined the most promising areas of research, looking for ways in which interdisciplinary activities might be established to most effectively advance research frontiers. Finally, they were asked to think about how the promise inherent in these research efforts might best be realized in a new facility, organized to optimize interdisciplinary interactions, use of specialized research resources, and so on. These two committees, under the excellent leadership of Professors William Greenough and Karl Hess, worked long and hard to produce two outstanding reports. These formed the basis of the proposal that was eventually submitted to the Beckmans and that will find its realization in the Beckman Institute. I enclose a copy of the supplemental proposal drafted by Vice Chancellor Brown and others that forms the basis of their agreement to fund the Institute.

Copyright © 2009. University of Illinois Press. All rights reserved.

The long-range objective for the Beckman Institute is to stimulate research of the highest possible quality in cross-disciplinary areas that hold promise for significant development in the years ahead. The Institute should be organized to encourage faculty from diverse disciplines to interact in a mutually supportive manner. It should provide stellar research support facilities not currently available, should serve as an attraction that draws distinguished researchers here as visitors or on more permanent appointments. The Institute may provide space and support for international conferences. It should serve as a stimulus to our faculty to work together in the development of research proposals of a quality and breadth that might not otherwise be realizable. In serving all these admirable purposes, the Institute should at the same time provide an easement of some of our current space and support problems. In all its activities we expect that the Institute will not operate in a stand-alone mode but will work with and through current departments and colleges to improve the overall quality of the Institution. We must now move very quickly to implement the Beckmans’ magnificent gift. To that end we are establishing a committee structure. By means of this letter I request that you serve as members of a program committee under the Chairmanship of Professor Karl Hess to develop the program statement for the Center for the Materials Science, Computers and Computation component of the Beckman Institute. The full committee structure for bringing the Institute into existence is as follows: Steering Committee Theodore L. Brown, Chairman, Vice Chancellor for Research and Dean, The Graduate College Edwin L. Goldwasser, Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs

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William T. Greenough, Psychology Karl Hess, Coordinated Science Laboratory William F. Prokasy, Dean, College of Liberal Arts & Sciences Mac E. Van Valkenburg, Dean, College of Engineering Program Committee for Materials Science, Computers and Computation Center Karl Hess, Chairman Jacob A. Abraham, Electrical and Computer Engineering Edward S. Davidson, Electrical and Computer Engineering Ken D. Forbus, Computer Science Anthony J. Leggett, Physics Franco P. Preparata, Electrical and Computer Engineering John R. Shapley, Chemistry Larry L. Smarr, NCSA/Astronomy John R. Tucker, Electrical and Computer Engineering Christopher D. Wickens, Psychology James P. Wolfe, Physics Peter G. Wolynes, Chemistry

Copyright © 2009. University of Illinois Press. All rights reserved.

Program Committee for Biology, Behavior and Cognition Center William T. Greenough, Chairman William F. Brewer, Psychology Gerald F. De Jong, Electrical and Computer Engineering Hans Frauenfelder, Physics Dedre Gentner, Psychology Jordan Konisky, Microbiology Paul C. Lauterbur, College of Medicine Jerry L. Morgan, Linguistics C. Ladd Prosser, Physiology Victor D. Ramirez, Physiology and Biophysics Edward J. Roy, Psychology David J. Shapiro, Biochemistry David L. Stocum, Anatomical Sciences Carl R. Woese, Genetics & Development Administrative Committee Edwin L. Goldwasser, Chairman Emanuel Donchin, Psychology Larry R. Faulkner, Chemistry Charles W. Gear, Computer Science Heini Halberstam, Mathematics

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Page 4 October 8, 1985

Samuel Kaplan, School of Life Sciences Charles C. O’Morchoe, College of Medicine Timothy N. Trick, Electrical and Computer Engineering

The Program Committee is asked to undertake the following tasks: 1. Review the summary supplement to the proposal, enclosed, and evaluate it in terms of its proposed structure, conceptual basis and program content. 2. Establish criteria for the inclusion of particular program elements within the Center. Establish criteria also, for the selection of individual faculty who will participate in the activities of the Center. 3. Try to define the nature of the working environment in the Institute or Center. What sorts of facilities, office spaces, places for graduate students and so on should the Center have? What centralized services? Herein, we will have to establish some priorities and will also have to design for future flexibility. 4. Address the issue of incentives; what features of the Center will provide inducements for faculty to become active participants in its activities? How will conflicts between departmental and college loyalties arise, if at all, and how can they be avoided or minimized?

Copyright © 2009. University of Illinois Press. All rights reserved.

5. Address the issue of access. What level of convenience in parking, shuttle bus or van service will be needed to reduce barriers to access for those whose offices may be some distance from the Institute? 6. Identify the types of space and facilities that will be required in terms of more or less broad, generic, characteristics. In this connection it should be noted that the Institute will not be designed to serve the needs of particular faculty members. That is, there should be no individual fiefdoms within the Center. Individual faculty members may be active in the Center for a long or short period of time, may need more or less laboratory space and places for graduate students, may spend more or less of their time in the Center as compared to their home department, and so on. We want to be flexible and to make the Center an attractive place for the gathering of those with common research interests and a common need for highly specialized, expensive facilities. Most importantly, we want there to be opportunities for interdisciplinary contact and sharing of ideas. 7. Draft a more or less detailed program statement that can form the basis for the architects to begin the planning of the building, yet provide for future flexibility as the programs of the Institute evolve.

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Page 5 October 8, 1985

8. Work with other administrative and academic units in coordinating the space and facilities requirements. This is a long, and probably incomplete, list of tasks. I hope, however, that many of them will fold together rather naturally when some of the major questions and issues facing us in organizing the Institute have been settled. As the Committee carries out its charge, it will be important to keep in mind a key sentence from the supplementary proposal; “Our references to specific research areas and relationships are meant to be illustrative. At the rapidly changing frontiers of science and technology, nothing is constant, save perhaps the rules for promoting creativity, and for retaining excellence.” We are faced with a marvelous opportunity, one that in all likelihood will not again come our way during our lifetimes. At the same time, we are faced with the difficult, complex tasks of creating a new kind of entity within the University community, one that is at once different from the traditional lines of organization and operation of the University, yet one that maintains the high standards of excellence and rigorous review characteristic of our departmental structures at their best. We are faced with challenges that we are capable of meeting, if we put our best minds and hearts to it. I very much appreciate your willingness to work on this important project. I will be available to meet with the Committee at any time and to lend whatever assistance may be needed to forward the work of the committee. TEE/lt

Copyright © 2009. University of Illinois Press. All rights reserved.

Enclosure

.....

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OFFICE OF THE CHANCELLOR Swanlund Administration Building



October 8, 1985

TO: Messrs. William T. Greenough, Chairman William F. Brewer Gerald F. De Jong Hans Frauenfelder Dedre Gentner Jordan Konisky Paul C. Lauterbur Jerry L. Morgan C. Ladd Prosser Victor D. Ramirez Edward J. Roy David J. Shapiro David L. Stocum Carl R. Woese FROM:

Thomas E. Everhart, Chancellor

SUBJECT: Program Committee for Biology, Behavior and Cognition Center of the Beckman Institute

Copyright © 2009. University of Illinois Press. All rights reserved.

As you all know by now, the University has received from Arnold and Mabel Beckman the largest single gift ever presented to a public university. Their $40 million dollar gift, with the $10 million that will be forthcoming from the State, will enable us to construct the Arnold O. and Mabel M. Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology. We are faced with an exceptional opportunity, perhaps the most dramatic and exciting one that we will see in our working lifetimes. Much of the success of the Institute will depend upon the imagination and hard work that goes into the establishment of the organizational structure and definition of its relationship to other campus units. In addition, there are many important but secondary considerations relating to the operation of the Institute that must be addressed. I believe that you should know something of the background leading up to the proposal that was eventually submitted to Dr. and Mrs. Beckman. Beginning more than two years ago, in response to encouragement from Lew Barron, President Ikenberry and Vice President Weir, the campus administration began planning for the preparation of a major, bold new proposal for an addition to campus facilities. Two faculty committees, one concerned largely with engineering and physical science, the other with the life sciences, were appointed. They were asked to identify the large, broadly-based research areas and important questions that this University is now best equipped to address, or could effectively address in the future. These committees, composed of some of our most productive and distinguished researchers, examined the most promising areas of research, looking for ways in which inter-

.....

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Page 2 October 8, 1985

disciplinary activities might be established to most effectively advance research frontiers. Finally, they were asked to think about how the promise inherent in these research efforts might best be realized in a new facility, organized to optimize interdisciplinary interactions, use of specialized research resources, and so on. These two committees, under the excellent leadership of Professors William Greenough and Karl Hess, worked long and hard to produce two outstanding reports. These formed the basis of the proposal that was eventually submitted to the Beckmans and that will find its realization in the Beckman Institute. I enclose a copy of the supplemental proposal drafted by Vice Chancellor Brown and others that forms the basis of their agreement to fund the Institute.

Copyright © 2009. University of Illinois Press. All rights reserved.

The long-range objective for the Beckman Institute is to stimulate research of the highest possible quality in cross-disciplinary areas that hold promise for significant development in the years ahead. The Institute should be organized to encourage faculty from diverse disciplines to interact in a mutually supportive manner. It should provide stellar research support facilities not currently available, should serve as an attraction that draws distinguished researchers here as visitors or on more permanent appointments. The Institute may provide space and support for international conferences. It should serve as a stimulus to our faculty to work together in the development of research proposals of a quality and breadth that might not otherwise be realizable. In serving all these admirable purposes, the Institute should at the same time provide an easement of some of our current space and support problems. In all its activities we expect that the Institute will not operate in a stand-alone mode but will work with and through current departments and colleges to improve the overall quality of the Institution. We must now move very quickly to implement the Beckmans’ magnificent gift. To that end we are establishing a committee structure. By means of this letter I request that you serve as members of a program committee under the Chairmanship of Professor William Greenough to develop the program statement for the Center for the Biology, Behavior and Cognition Center component of the Beckman Institute. The full committee structure for bringing the Institute into existence is as follows: Steering Committee Theodore L. Brown, Chairman, Vice Chancellor for Research and Dean of the Graduate College Edwin L. Goldwasser, Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs William T. Greenough, Psychology Karl Hess, Coordinated Science Laboratory William F. Prokasy, Dean, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Mac E. Van Valkenburg, Dean, College of Engineering

.....

92            Appendix 2

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Page 3 October 8, 1985

Program Committee for Materials Science, Computers and Computation Center Karl Hess, Chairman, Jacob A. Abraham, Electrical and Computer Engineering Edward S. Davidson, Electrical and Computer Engineering Ken D. Forbus, Computer Science Anthony J. Leggett, Physics Franco P. Preparata, Electrical and Computer Engineering John R. Shapley, Chemistry Larry L. Smarr, NCSA/Astronomy John R. Tucker, Electrical and Computer Engineering Christopher D. Wickens, Psychology James P. Wolfe, Physics Peter G. Wolynes, Chemistry

Copyright © 2009. University of Illinois Press. All rights reserved.

Program Committee for Biology, Behavior and Cognition Center William T. Greenough, Chairman William F. Brewer, Psychology Gerald F. De Jong, Electrical and Computer Engineering Hans Frauenfelder, Physics Dedre Gentner, Psychology Jordan Konisky, Microbiology Paul C. Lauterbur, College of Medicine Jerry L. Morgan, Linguistics C. Ladd Prosser, Physiology Victor D. Ramirez, Physiology and Biophysics Edward J. Roy, Psychology David J. Shapiro, Biochemistry David L. Stocum, Anatomical Sciences Carl R. Woese, Genetics & Development Administrative Committee Edwin L. Goldwasser, Chairman Emanuel Donchin, Psychology Larry R. Faulkner, Chemistry Charles W. Gear, Computer Science Heini Halberstam, Mathematics Samuel Kaplan, School of Life Sciences Charles C. O’Morchoe, College of Medicine Timothy N. Trick, Electrical and Computer Engineering

.....

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Page 4 October 8, 1985

The Program Committee is asked to undertake the following tasks: 1. Review the summary supplement to the proposal, enclosed, and evaluate it in terms of its proposed structure, conceptual basis and program content. 2. Establish criteria for the inclusion of particular program elements within the Center. Establish criteria also, for the selection of individual faculty who will participate in the activities of the Center. 3. Try to define the nature of the working environment in the Institute or Center. What sorts of facilities, office spaces, places for graduate students and so on should the Center have? What centralized services? Herein, we will have to establish some priorities, and will also have to design for future flexibility. 4. Address the issue of incentives; what features of the Center will provide inducements for faculty to become active participants in its activities? How will conflicts between departmental and college loyalties arise, if at all, and how can they be avoided or minimized?

Copyright © 2009. University of Illinois Press. All rights reserved.

5. Address the issue of access. What level of convenience in parking, shuttle bus or van service will be needed to reduce barriers to access for those whose offices may be some distance from the Institute? 6. Identify the types of space and facilities that will be required in terms of more or less broad, generic, characteristics. In this connection it should be noted that the Institute will not be designed to serve the needs of particular faculty members. That is, there should be no individual fiefdoms within the Center. Individual faculty members may be active in the Center for a long or short period of time, may need more or less laboratory space and places for graduate students, may spend more or less of their time in the Center as compared to their home department, and so on. We want to be flexible and to make the Center an attractive place for the gathering of those with common research interests and a common need for highly specialized, expensive facilities. Most importantly, we want there to be opportunities for interdisciplinary contact and sharing of ideas. 7. Draft a more or less detailed program statement that can form the basis for the architects to begin the planning of the building, yet provide for future flexibility as the programs of the Institute evolve. 8. Work with other administrative and academic units in coordinating the space and facilities requirements.

.....

94            Appendix 2

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Page 5 October 8, 1985

This is a long, and probably incomplete, list of tasks. I hope, however, that many of them will fold together rather naturally when some of the major questions and issues facing us in organizing the Institute have been settled. As the Committee carries out its charge, it will be important to keep in mind a key sentence from the supplementary proposal; “Our references to specific research areas and relationships are meant to be illustrative. At the rapidly changing frontiers of science and technology, nothing is constant, save perhaps the rules for promoting creativity, and for retaining excellence.” We are faced with a marvelous opportunity, one that in all likelihood will not again come our way during our lifetimes. At the same time, we are faced with the difficult, complex task of creating a new kind of entity within the University community, one that is at once different from the traditional lines of organization and operation of the University, yet one that maintains the high standards of excellence and rigorous review characteristic of our departmental structures at their best. We are faced with challenges that we are capable of meeting, if we put our best minds and hearts to it. I very much appreciate your willingness to work on this important project. I will be available to meet with the Committee at any time and to lend whatever assistance may be needed to forward the work of the committee. TEE/lt

Copyright © 2009. University of Illinois Press. All rights reserved.

Enclosure

.....

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OFFICE OF THE CHANCELLOR Swanlund Administration Building



October 8, 1985

TO: Messrs. Theodore L. Brown Edwin L. Goldwasser William T. Greenough Karl Hess William F. Prokasy Mac E. Van Valkenburg FROM:

Thomas E. Everhart, Chancellor

SUBJECT: Steering Committee for the Beckman Institute The purpose of this letter is to ask you formally to serve on the Steering Committee for the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology. Vice Chancellor Brown has agreed to chair the Committee. The membership of the Steering Committee tentatively consists of those addressed by this letter, with the possible addition of a single “at-large” faculty member. Please discuss the desirability of including such a faculty member at one of your early meetings. The major activities of the Steering Committee will be to receive the reports of the chairpersons of the other three committees and to discuss how the recommendations and findings of these three committees can be brought together so that the Beckman Institute can reach its full potential.

Copyright © 2009. University of Illinois Press. All rights reserved.

It is evident from our discussions with Dr. Beckman that he expects us to move rapidly. It will be necessary to keep all three action committees working steadily, in order to provide program statements to an architect at an early date. We have promised Dr. Beckman we shall choose the architect by December 10, 1985. We hope to have tentative programs for each part of the Institute and its overall organization available at that time. I thank you for your willingness to contribute actively to this project. It is surely the most exciting venture in the recent history of the University, and we can all feel privileged to have a hand in shaping it at this most critical early stage. TEE/aw

.....

96            Appendix 2

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OFFICE OF THE CHANCELLOR Swanlund Administration Building



October 8, 1985

TO: Messrs. Edwin L. Goldwasser, Chairman Emanuel Donchin Larry R. Faulkner Charles W. Gear Heini Halberstam Samuel Kaplan Charles C. O’Morchoe Timothy N. Trick FROM:

Thomas E. Everhart, Chancellor

SUBJECT: Administrative Committee for the Beckman Institute

Copyright © 2009. University of Illinois Press. All rights reserved.

As you all know by now, the University has received from Arnold and Mabel Beckman the largest single gift ever presented to a public university. Their $40 million dollar gift, augmented by the $10 million that will be forthcoming from the State, will enable us to construct the Arnold O. and Mabel M. Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology. We are faced with an exceptional opportunity, perhaps the most dramatic and exciting one that we will see in our working lifetimes. Much of the success of the Institute will depend upon the imagination and hard work that goes into the establishment of the organizational structure and definition of its relationship to other campus units. In addition, there are many important but secondary considerations relating to the operation of the Institute that must be addressed. I believe that you should know something of the background leading up to the proposal that was eventually submitted to Dr. and Mrs. Beckman. Beginning more than two years ago, in response to encouragement from Lew Barron, President Ikenberry and Vice President Weir, the campus administration began planning for the preparation of a major, bold new proposal for an addition to campus facilities. Two faculty committees, one concerned largely with engineering and physical science, the other with the life sciences, were appointed. They were asked to identify the large, broadly-based research areas and important questions that this University is now best equipped to address, or could effectively address in the future. These committees, composed of some of our most productive and distinguished researchers, examined the most promising areas of research, looking for ways in which interdisciplinary activities might be established to most effectively advance research frontiers. Finally, they were asked to think about how the promise inherent in these research efforts might best be realized in a new facility, organized to optimize interdisciplinary interactions, use of specialized research resources, and so on.

.....

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Page 2 October 8, 1985

These two committees, under the excellent leadership of Professors William Greenough and Karl Hess, worked long and hard to produce two outstanding reports. These formed the basis of the proposal that was eventually submitted to the Beckmans and that will find its realization in the Beckman Institute. I enclose a copy of the supplemental proposal drafted by Vice Chancellor Brown and others that forms the basis of their agreement to fund the Institute. The long-range objective for the Beckman Institute is to stimulate the highest possible quality research in cross-disciplinary areas that hold promise for significant development in the years ahead. The Institute should be organized to encourage faculty from diverse disciplines to interact in a mutually supportive manner. It should provide stellar research support facilities not currently available, should serve as an attraction that draws distinguished researchers here as visitors or for more permanent appointments. The Institute may provide space and support for international conferences. It should serve as a stimulus to our faculty to work together in the development of research proposals of a quality and breadth that might not otherwise be realizable. In serving all these admirable purposes, the Institute should at the same time provide an easement of some of our current space and support problems. In all its activities we expect that the Institute will not operate in a stand-alone mode but will work with and through current departments and colleges to improve the overall quality of the Institution. We must move quickly to develop the organization and the program for the Beckman Institute. To that end we are establishing three committees to address issues in parallel. By means of this letter, I request that you serve as members of a committee under the Chairmanship of Vice Chancellor Goldwasser to consider an appropriate organizational structure and the administrative procedures to bring the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology into existence. The full committee structure for bringing the Institute into existence is as follows:

Copyright © 2009. University of Illinois Press. All rights reserved.

Steering Committee Theodore L. Brown, Chairman, Vice Chancellor for Research and Dean, The Graduate College Edwin L. Goldwasser, Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs William T. Greenough, Psychology Karl Hess, Coordinated Science Laboratory William F. Prokasy, Dean, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Mac E. Van Valkenburg, Dean, College of Engineering Program Committee for Materials Science, Computers and Computation Center Karl Hess, Chairman Jacob A. Abraham, Electrical and Computer Engineering

.....

98            Appendix 2

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Page 3 October 8, 1985

Edward S. Davidson, Electrical and Computer Engineering Ken D. Forbus, Computer Science Anthony J. Leggett, Physics Franco P. Preparata, Electrical and Computer Engineering John R. Shapley, Chemistry Larry L. Smarr, NCSA/Astronomy John R. Tucker, Electrical and Computer Engineering Christopher D. Wickens, Psychology James P. Wolfe, Physics Peter G. Wolynes, Chemistry Program Committee for Biology, Behavior and Cognition Center William T. Greenough, Chairman William F. Brewer, Psychology Gerald F. De Jong, Electrical and Computer Engineering Hans Frauenfelder, Physics Dedre Gentner, Psychology Jordan Konisky, Microbiology Paul C. Lauterbur, College of Medicine Jerry L. Morgan, Linguistics C. Ladd Prosser, Physiology Victor D. Ramirez, Physiology and Biophysics Edward J. Roy, Psychology David J. Shapiro, Biochemistry David L. Stocum, Anatomical Sciences Carl R. Woese, Genetics & Development

Copyright © 2009. University of Illinois Press. All rights reserved.

Administrative Committee Edwin L. Goldwasser, Chairman Emanuel Donchin, Psychology Larry R. Faulkner, Chemistry Charles W. Gear, Computer Science Heini Halberstam, Mathematics Samuel Kaplan, School of Life Sciences Charles C. O’Morchoe, College of Medicine Timothy N. Trick, Electrical and Computer Engineering The charges given to the two Program Committees are, in brief, to consider the content of the research programs that might best be designated for occupancy of the Institute; to identify the specialized facilities, working environments, and types of lab space needed, as necessary to define a program statement that will permit the architects to begin design of the building.

.....

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Page 4 October 8, 1985

I ask the Administrative Committee to consider, among others, the following questions: 1. How should the Institute be administered internally? Review the structure proposed in the summary supplemental proposal, and make recommendations regarding it or alternate structures you deem more suitable. 2. Where does the Institute fit into the campus administrative structure? Should the director of the Institute report to the Vice Chancellor for Research? To the Chancellor? Other? 3. What shall be the relationship of the Institute to other campus administrative units, particularly the disciplinary departments and colleges? . . . We may assume that faculty lines will be in the departments. Although subsequent experience may cause us to think differently, there is no intention at this point to make appointments of faculty to the Institute who do not have appointments in disciplinary units. In that respect, the Institute, at the outset at least, will operate along lines similar to that of MRL. . . . How are grants and contracts to be processed? For those faculty with appointments in the Institute who occupy space in the Institute or whose students and research group members occupy space and use facilities within the Institute, how will the research grants and contracts pursued in the Institute be handled? Will they pass through the business office of the Institute or of the parent department? How will the indirect cost on such grants and contracts be shared?

Copyright © 2009. University of Illinois Press. All rights reserved.

. . . How will promotion and tenure evaluations be carried out for faculty with appointments in the Institute? 4. Given that the Institute may be remote in distance from many units whose programmatic participation in the Institute can be expected, access is an important issue. Adequate close parking will be essential. What other strategies might be employed to enhance accessibility? (Shuttle buses? Van service?) 5. What shall be the relationship of the centralized, highly-specialized facilities within the Institute to those in departments? Who will fund such specialized facilities? How will priorities be established with respect to access to specialized facilities within the Institute? . . . It will be important for the Administrative Committee to maintain contact with the concurrent activities of the two program committees.

.....

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Page 5 October 8, 1985

. . . For planning purposes you should keep in mind Governor Thompson’s statement: “I also have assured Dr. Beckman that the State of Illinois, with pride, will guarantee the perpetual maintenance and operation of the Institute. “While it is the intention of the University to secure the bulk of the research funding for the Institute through federal contracts and grants, corporate sources, and philanthropic foundations, the University and the State of Illinois will provide an additional $2 million annually to help launch new and creative lines of scientific investigation, assist during critical stages in research and development, and to speed technology transfer.” We need, in addition, recurring dollars for administrative staff; centralized service facilities; computer services; electronic library and electronic mail services; and telecommunications. Estimates of these expenses would be helpful.

Copyright © 2009. University of Illinois Press. All rights reserved.

. . . Clearly, many delicate questions arise regarding the relationship of the Institute to other campus units. We must work toward solutions to all these problems which provide strong incentives for our best faculty to associate with the Institute, to come together to do the highest quality research of which they are capable, in a stimulating, highly productive environment. At the same time, we must satisfy the departments and colleges from which the faculty emanate that their interests are served by the availability of the Institute, which can provide badly needed space, research resources, and so on, to faculty with appropriate research interests. The challenge for the committee is a large one, and much depends upon your successful deliberations. I thank you in advance for your willingness to undertake this extremely important assignment on behalf of the University. TEE/lt Enclosure

.....

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APPENDIX 3 Instructions for Proposal Submission

Proposal Instructions Beckman Institute 1. Descriptive title of proposed research____________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________ 2. This is a proposal from

_______ An individual faculty member _______ A faculty group

3. Listing of all faculty to be included who will desire space and other resources within the Institute. Name Rank Dept.

Current Office Address

Campus Phone No.

______________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________

Copyright © 2009. University of Illinois Press. All rights reserved.

______________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________ (attach list of additional names as necessary)

.....

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4. Attach a narrative description (no more than 500 words) of proposed research activities. Please describe the general character of the research. What are its broad objectives? What methods are to be employed to attain these objectives? 5. In a narrative statement please address the ways in which the proposed individual or faculty group meets the various criteria outlined in the criteria statement. In particular, explicit mention should be made of: * Relationships to broad Beckman Institute themes * Relationships to other potential Beckman Institute programs * How, and how much, inclusion in Beckman Institute will enhance research efforts * Need, if any, for specialized facilities * Expected character and extent of faculty involvement. This issue should be addressed as directly as feasible for all faculty listed under 3. * Need for—and prospects for receiving—external funding of the proposed research. Special attention should be given this item where special facilities are involved. * Evidences of the quality and productivity of the faculty likely to be most centrally involved in the Beckman Institute. Please append current CV’s for all faculty listed under 3.

Copyright © 2009. University of Illinois Press. All rights reserved.

6. What requirements (nature and amount) will this proposed research generate for: 1. Wet laboratory spaces (chemistry—biology) 2. “Dry” laboratory spaces (computer rooms, laser lab, etc.) 3. Human subject spaces (interview rooms, test cubicles) 4. Animal facilities 5. Special facilities (rooms for major equipment darkrooms, special screening, etc.) 6. Computer rooms (extra cooling? other special requirements?) 7. 8. 9. 10. 11.

Group workrooms, seminar spaces, etc. How many 150 ft² faculty offices will you require or would you like to have? (Could be either singly or doubly-occupied; please specify) _____ How many assigned desk places for graduate students, postdocs, or junior visitors? ______ How many offices will be desired for senior visitors from off-campus? _____ Please describe any special circumstances you deem important to consideration of this proposal. These could include such items as: * Requirements you might have that are not covered by the above materials. * Special factors that might operate, such as relationships with other units. * Prospects for growth and development of program.

.....

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INDEX

Copyright © 2009. University of Illinois Press. All rights reserved.

Abraham, Jacob A., 86 Alpert, Daniel, 39 Arends, Mark, 64 Atkinson, Richard, 69 Bardeen, John, 5, 41 Barrett, James R., 4 Barron, Lewis, 4, 10, 54 Beckman, Arnold, announcement of gift, 14; architect selection date, 16; Beckman Foundation vision, 73; construction site visits, 33; Delta Upsilon, 52, 53; early life, 1, 2; fiftieth anniversary of Beckman DU, 74; grant to support Research Board, 2; groundbreaking ceremony, 26; Illinois roots, x; inauguration remarks, 53; initial response to proposal, 10; last visit to Illinois, 75; ninetieth birthday celebration, 74; Order of Lincoln induction,74; philanthropic activities, 72; philosophy statement, 73; unveiling of statue, 48, 49; visits to Cullom, 49 Beckman, Arnold Stone (son), 52 Beckman, Arnold (grandson), 52, 75 Beckman, Mabel, 10, 52, 53, 54–56; burial place, 74; construction visit, 33; death, 56; groundbreaking ceremony, 26, 27; last visit to Illinois, 55; photo, 55; role in Beckmans’ philanthropy, 72; viewing of Arnold’s statue, 48 Beckman, Patricia, xviii, 52; Beck-

man Foundation Board, 75; care for Arnold, 74 Berdahl, Robert, 71 Berg, Paul, 73 Berns, Michael, 73 Blakeley, Roger, 64 Bloomer, J. Philip, 47 Bower, Gordon, 69 Branscomb, Lewis, 69 Brewer, William F., 91 Brown, Audrey, xviii, 2, 54, 55 Bruce, Terry, 53 Burkholder, Donald, 5 Capwell, Charles, 4 Carlson, Bill, 64 Chao, B. T., 84 Clark, Jim, 44 Collins, Brent, 64 Copeland, Elaine, 6, 79 Cox, Donna, xv, 43, 52 Cribbet, John, 3, 4, 9 Crispin, Julie, 23 Crofts, Anthony, 79 Cronan, John, 79 Cruz, Joseph, 84 Davidson, Edward S., 86 De Jong, Gerald, 91 Dennett, Daniel, 69 Dixon, Paul, xviii, 17, 19, 23, 29, 34; appointment as project architect, 17; celebration of construction completion, 51; quality control measures, 35

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Donchin, Emanuel, 97 Drucker, Daniel, 5, 6 Edelman, Gerald M., 53 Everhart, Thomas E., 9, 10, 11, 14; appointment of Administrative Committee, 97; appointment of Program Committees, 86, 91; appointment of Steering Committee, 96; groundbreaking ceremony, 26

Copyright © 2009. University of Illinois Press. All rights reserved.

Fagan, Peter, 48, 49 Fagerland, Noel, 17, 51 Faulkner, Larry R., 97 Feng, Albert, 68 Fisher, George M. C., 53 Flynn, John, 29 Forbus, Kenneth D., 86 Frauenfelder, Hans, 5, 79, 91 Friedman, John, 64 Fritchie, Al, 51 Gardner, Nancy, 63 Gear, Charles W., 97 Gentner, Dedre, 91 Goldwasser, Edwin, xviii; Administrative Committee report, 24; appointment to Administrative Committee, 97; appointment to Steering Committee, 96; chair of Administrative Committee, 15; initial meeting to formulate proposal, 4; meeting with Center Professors, 8; member of Steering Committee, 15 Gray, Harry, 73, 75 Green, Fred, 16 Greenough, William T., xviii, 12, 14, 53; acceptance of Program Committee chair, 7; American Science Stereology Course, 66;

.....

appointment to Steering Committee, 96; Arnold Beckman memorial service, 75; associate director, 38, 68; brown-bag lunch meetings, 68; election to NAS, 68; groundbreaking ceremony, 27; inclusion of cafeteria in Institute, 19; Program Advisory Committee, 39; Programming Committee, 38; space allocation process, 21; undergraduates in the Beckman Institute, 67 Hadday, Peter, 64 Halberstam, Heini, 97 Ham, Margarita, 19 Harms, Marian, 49 Herbert, Gavin, 74 Herman, Richard H., xiii, xviii Hess, Karl, xviii, 12, 14, 53; acceptance of Proposal Committee chair, 7; appointment to Program Committee, 86; appointment to Steering Committee, 96; associate director, 38, 68; brown-bag lunch meetings, 68; chair, Program Committee, 15; election to NAS and NAE, 68; inclusion of cafeteria in the Institute,19; National Center for Computational Electronics, 66; Program Advisory Committee, 39; program selection process, 41; space allocations, 21; Steering Committee, 15 Holden, Joseph, 73 Holonyak, Nick, 5 Ikenberry, Stanley O., xviii, 11, 54; Arnold Beckman memorial, 75; biographical sketch, xi; design features of building, 19; gift announcement, 13; groundbreaking

106            Index

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ceremony, 26, 27; inauguration invitations, 52; inauguration ­program, 53; letter to the Beckmans, 12; Mabel Beckman memorial, 56; presentation of proposal to Arnold Beckman, 10; unveiling of Arnold Beckman’s statue, 49 Johnston, Seely, 49, 50, 53 Jonas, Jiri, xiv, xv, 71 Jones, Judith, 60 Kalinke, Maryanne, 4 Kaplan, Samuel, 97 Konisky, Jordan, 39, 91 Konrath, Emil, 23 Kubitz, William, 84 Kuck, David, 79 Kuhne, Bill, 51

Copyright © 2009. University of Illinois Press. All rights reserved.

Lauterbur, Paul, 11, 42, 63, 91 Leggett, Anthony J., 86 Leonard, Nelson, 5 Lund, Jennifer, 69 Malpeli, Joseph, 79 Marshall, Bruce, 19, 38, 58, 71 Martens, Christianne, 64 Martin, Ross, 5 McCollough, Joseph, 51 McGaugh, James, 69 McGaughey, Steve, xviii McMillan, William, 84 Medin, Douglas, 39 Mischo, William, 22 Mitnik, Peter, 23 Moreland, Frances, 28 Morgan, Jerry L., 39, 91 Nixon, Richard, 74 Nobel, Andrew, 66

O’Morchoe, Charles C., 97 Packard, Norman, 65 Payne, David, 68 Percival, Carolyn, 38 Pines, David, 5 Powers, Richard, 65 Preparata, Franco P., 39, 86 Prokasy, William, 5, 6, 30; appointment to Steering Committee, 15, 96; chair, director search committee, 29 Prosser, C. Ladd, 39, 79, 91 Ramirez, Victor, 91 Riley, Ann, 38 Roy, Edward J., 91 Schermer, Russ, 65 Schleiss, Thomas, 64 Schoedel, William, 4 Schulten, Klaus, 62, 64 Schuster, Gary, 79 Seitz, Frederick, 69 Shapiro, David, 79, 91 Shapley, John R., 86 Shepherd, Nina, 13, 27 Shimshoni, Efrat, 66 Slotnick, Daniel, 84 Smarr, Larry L., 44, 86; Director, NCSA, 41; Program Advisory Committee, 39 Stallman, William, 45 Stapleton, Harvey, 6, 84 Stillman, Gregory, 5, 7, 84 Stocum, David C., 91 Suzuki, Michio, 5 Thompson, James R., 10, 13, 26, 28 Trick, Timothy, 97 Tucker, John R., 86 Turro, Nicholas, 69

.....

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Van Valkenberg, Mac E., 15, 96 Vazzano, Andrew, 17, 21 Vermette, Jim and Dena, 75

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Waltz, David, 79 Wasserman, Sarah, xviii, 11, 58; appointment as associate director, 38; brown-bag lunch meetings, 68 Weber, Gregorio, 5 Weir, Morton W., 3, 11, 14, 31; architect selection date, 16; celebration of construction completion, 51; groundbreaking ceremony, 27; initial meeting to formulate proposal, 4; preparation of overview

document, 8; presentation of proposal to Arnold Beckman, 10 Wheeler, Richard, 65 Wickens, Christopher, 84, 86 Williams, Martha, 84 Wiltzius, Pierre, xiv, xviii, 75 Woese, Carl R., 91 Wolfe, James P., 86 Wolfe, Ralph, 5 Wolff, Charles, 53 Wolynes, Peter G., 86 Wyatt, Scott A., 52 Yalow, Rosalyn, 69 Youngren, Ralph, 19, 23, 34, 51

.....

108            Index

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Copyright © 2009. University of Illinois Press. All rights reserved.

Theodore L. Brown is professor of chemistry, emeritus,

at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, founding director of the Beckman Institute from 1987 to 1993, vice chancellor for research and dean of the Graduate College from 1980 to 1996, and interim vicechancellor for academic affairs from 1992 to 1994. He has published on the order of two hundred fifty research papers and has written several chemistry texts. He is the author of Making Truth: Metaphor in Science and Imperfect Oracle: The Epistemic and Moral Authority of Science and is coauthor of Chemistry: The Central Science; the eleventh edition appeared in 2008.

Bridging Divides : The Origins of the Beckman Institute at Illinois, University of Illinois Press, 2009. ProQuest Ebook 10.back.109-110.Brown.indd 109

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The University of Illinois Press is a founding member of the

Copyright © 2009. University of Illinois Press. All rights reserved.

Association of American University Presses.

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