 In
honor of the late Moses Passer, Ph.D. ’48 and former American Chemical Society director of education, his
widow, Dorothy Passer, has endowed the Moses Passer Lecture Series
in the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology. The first
lecture was presented in the fall of 2002.
Born in Poland on January 30,
1917, Moses Passer was brought to the United States by his parents
as a child and grew up in Rochester, New York. He attended the
University of Rochester, from which he graduated in 1945 with
a B.S. in chemistry, and Cornell University, which in 1948 granted
him a Ph.D. in organic chemistry (under the guidance of A. T.
Blomquist, working on organic reaction mechanisms). From 1952
to 1953, he conducted postdoctoral research at the University
of Illinois (with C.S. Marvel in polymer chemistry).
Moses Passer had two professional
careers. The first career, 1948–64, was at the University
of Minnesota, Duluth (UMD), as assistant
professor, associate professor (1954), and professor of chemistry
(1960). During his last 10 years at UMD, he also directed the
Duluth section of the Minnesota Peat Research Project. In 1964,
Passer accepted an appointment as educational secretary of the
American Chemical Society and, the following year, initiated
the ACS Short Courses program at the 1965 spring national meeting.
The short courses captured the imagination of the ACS community
and were an instant success.
When Passer joined the ACS staff
in 1964, educational activities consisted of career services,
student affiliates, and the Committee on Professional Training.
By 1987, ACS educational activities encompassed a broad spectrum
of novel and effective programs designed to make chemistry accessible
to every audience. These ranged from pre–high school science
projects for parents and children, through a rich variety of
activities at the high school, college, and university levels,
to a wide array of in-person and media lifelong continuing education
offerings for practicing professionals in the chemical sciences.
Indeed, the continuing education programs became models for scientific
societies both in this country and abroad. The rapid growth of
the ACS education sector during Passer’s tenure is illustrated
by the fact that more than 90 percent of the educational activities
available at his retirement were developed under his leadership,
and the education budget grew five times as fast as the ACS overall.
In 1993, at a national meeting
of the American Chemical Society, Moses Passer was honored with
a symposium in his name, co-sponsored by the ACS Division of
Chemical Education and the Society Committee on Education. This
symposium was in recognition of Passer’s contributions to
science and chemical education during the more than two decades
he served on the ACS staff.
Also in 1993, the ACS Division
of Chemical Education announced the Passer Education Fund. This
fund was established by Moses and Dorothy Passer to help improve
the teaching of the chemical sciences by
providing grants to chemistry and chemical technology teachers
at undergraduate institutions. The grants support participation
in continuing education courses in subject matter directly related
to teaching.
Moses Passer received the District
of Columbia Institute of Chemists Honor Scroll in 1977. He was a member of the Council of Engineering and Scientific Society Executives, Sigma Xi, and the Cosmos Club. He was also a fellow of the American Institute of Chemists and of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Passer was the author or co-author of papers in Engineering Education, Industrial and Engineering Chemistry, Journal of Chemical Education, Journal of Polymer Science, and Journal of the American Chemical Society. Moses Passer died at his home in Washington on January 10, 1999.
The lecture series began in 2002 with Cornell President Emeritus Frank H.T. Rhodes giving the inaugural lecture followed by Charles Casey, University of Wisconsin and the then President-Elect of the American Chemical Society, and Arthur Ellis, University of Wisconsin at Madison and the National Science Foundation.
For a list of previous lectures, please click here. |
