How Dr. Howey's Careful Spelling Did Me a Favor

 submitted by John Firor (Physics '49)

I had returned from WWII service and changed my major to Physics instead of EE which I had picked as a freshman. I did fairly well in physics and was asked to teach lab sections and some classes in physics 201, 202, and 203. Department chair Dr. Howey called me in one day when I was a senior and asked what graduate school I planned to attend. This was not something I had given any thought to, and Dr Howey said it was high time I paid attention to my future. He then wrote out a list of universities that had graduate physics programs. In his careful way, he listed these schools alphabetically: Chicago first and his own school, Yale, last.

I went back to the domitory that evening and wrote to Chicago with the notion of writing to one school each evening. Life was too full, however, and I did not get around to any other letters.
I was admitted to Chicago (perhps they had an early affirmative action plan which led them to admit an ocassional southerner just to have diversity in accents) and that fall I took a train up to the big city and began school.

It was not long before I learned that the faculty there had more nobel lauriets than non-NLs. Many of them had joined the Chicago staff during the Manhatten project and had remained. Some of the other graduate students had dropped out of school and worked on the project also, putting them far ahead of beginners like me.

Over the year I have realized that the care to alphabetize that list
had sent me to what was probably the finest physics department in the world at that time, an event that I have been thankful for ever since.