Just for the record, the actual work I’m doing right now is about the tremendous changes the 1960s brought to Rice (and also about the surprisingly sharp limits of those changes). This means that I’m looking more carefully at the collections that shed light on this, of which there are many. A while ago I was going through some boxes that held material about the 1962 Semi-centennial celebration, including President Pitzer’s inauguration, and up turned this little gem:
Griffith Evans was a member of Rice’s first faculty and stayed until 1934 when he was lured away to chair the Math Department at Berkeley.
Two things: First, I hadn’t thought about it until recently but of course Evans knew Ken Pitzer at Berkeley and seems in fact to have been quite friendly with him. Second, the estimable Mrs. Evans was Isabel Mary Johns, daughter of an old Texas family and a descendant of San Houston, who graduated from Rice in 1917 and immediately married her teacher. Third, I’m fairly certain he didn’t make the trip after all but I’m in my office at home right now and don’t have any way to check on that.
I also, oddly enough, happen to have a photograph of Evans taken at almost the precise time this letter was written. I found it maybe a year ago in Julian Huxley’s papers. Huxley is in the middle, Evans at left and I have no idea who the guy on the right is–the picture is only labeled “Berkeley, 1962”:
Bonus:
