I spent a wonderful morning this week with Dieter Heymann, who taught in Rice’s Geology Department for many years. Oddly enough, he wasn’t a geologist but was recruited here by Alex Dessler, then chairman of the Space Science Department, to work on lunar samples. I’ll have more on all this later but first I want to let everyone see this fascinating newsletter that I found when I went to look at his file in the Woodson. It’s mind blowing. First, who even knew that the Chamber of Commerce had a Science Committee? But more importantly, you can clearly see here what a heady time this era was for Houston and for Rice specifically. The critical research that was going on here and the amount of money flowing in was unlike anything we’d ever experienced before.

Someone went through this issue and circled every mention of a Rice faculty member or student and there’s a circle on every page but one–or would be if they’d remembered to draw one around Bill Akers on the back page.

Here’s the whole thing:

Bonus: Cannady Hall going up. It’s hard to get a good look at it.