I had another really busy day today, trying to do several things at once. I did some voice overs for the video they’re making for the celebration of the centennial of the laying of the Lovett cornerstone next Monday. I finished working on a talk to FE&P about the physical history of the first fifty years of the campus and started working on a presentation for Alumni College on Rice before Lovett. I did a little research on a guy who coached baseball here briefly in the 1920s. The most enjoyable thing I did today, though, was work on identifying people in all those photos that came over from Public Affairs a week or so ago.

Here I am hard at work with my long-time pal (and former dean of social sciences) Jim Pomerantz, who was brought in as a consultant on this project because he’s old enough to know the people in the pictures but not old enough to have forgotten who they are. We had a very high success rate today, I’m glad to say. Here’s my favorite photo of the bunch:

This is Rice’s third president, Dr. Kenneth Pitzer. He came back to Rice in the spring of 1994 to give a lecture in the Chemistry department, I believe, and this picture was certainly taken then. I’m not sure where he is, but it’s clearly on campus somewhere. I admire him tremendously and I really wish I had gotten to meet him.

After we were finished with the day’s batch of pictures we went for lunch at Cohen House, where I got this photo of the heads on one of the columns:

The guy on the left is J.H. Pound, the engineering professor who took what I currently think are the first aerial pictures of campus. The guy on the right is another engineer, H.K. Humphries–I have a book that once belonged to him in my office (long story). I’ll get to him later.