Payback Ist Die Hölle

The idea of paying math and science teachers higher salaries than teachers of other subjects, which was discussed in the recent "Innovation Economy Conference," is nothing new (C&EN, Dec. 7, 2009, page 3). When I was in graduate school in the late 1940s, the dean of the School of Chemistry & Physics (Dean Frank C. Whitmore at Penn State) not only lobbied for higher salaries for his faculty members, as compared with those in the liberal arts, but actually obtained them.

Payback time came when the required language proficiency exams were administered to graduate chemistry students. In the first year that I took the exams, the German department failed 32 out of 33 students taking them. After a stern warning from the dean, the German department at the next session passed 15 out of 30, allowing them to go on for their Ph.D. I was one of the 15 who passed; however, I remember with some trauma that one brilliant student in physical chemistry who later went on to a distinguished academic career, failed the German exam 13 times, delaying his graduation.

Nelson Marans
Silver Spring, Md.