Having worked toward this day for most of my presidency, I share the joy in the air!
Nearly thirty years ago, UF took a major leap forward when we became a member of the Association of American Universities. That occurred during the administration of Marshall’s father, former President Marshall Criser, Jr.
Today, we break ground on this new chemistry building as part of another major leap forward. This is the university’s transformation to preeminence among the nation’s top public universities.
Like his father before him, Marshall Criser III has done a great deal to advance this transformation, both as chancellor of the State University System and during his tenure as a UF trustee. I want to thank father, son and the Criser family for their tradition of commitment to this university and to higher education in Florida.
I also want to recognize Steve Scott.
Steve has been a pillar of the chemistry department and the years of efforts that brought us to today’s groundbreaking. He has shown perseverance and wisdom in his leadership of the search for UF’s 12th president that will culminate next week. We are fortunate to have Steve as an advocate.
Few departments have been as influential in advancing our university as has chemistry.
UF opened its doors in Gainesville in 1906, but we only became a research university in June of 1934. That is when we granted our very first Ph.D. It went to John Albert Morrow, a chemistry student.
By the 1940s, UF chemistry was already recognized by the American Chemical Society among the forerunners in the nation.
As our chemistry faculty grew, our students proved their brilliance – among them, a young man from Possum Trot, Kentucky, named Robert Grubbs.
Dr. Grubbs earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in chemistry in 1963 and 1965, respectively. Forty years later, in 2005, he won the Nobel prize in the field. He traces his achievement to his mentor at UF, the late Merle Battiste.
Today, chemistry remains a bright light in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, the State of Florida and the scientific community.
With exceptional labs, roomy lecture halls and elegant spaces for studying and advising, this new building will intensify this light at precisely the right moment in our university’s history.
The benefits go beyond us, to a world in desperate need of new ideas and solutions. We cannot imagine those ideas or solutions today, but if past is precedent, we have every reason to place our hopes in science.
Townes R. Leigh, the namesake for Leigh Hall, served for 29 years as chairman of chemistry, from 1920 until 1949. I want to close with the words from a speech he once gave here in Gainesville.
“Nature,” said Dr. Leigh, “furnishes the working material, and science works it. Scientists are creators, discoverers, those who reach down into the dark unknown and create something new, something unheard of.”
Dr. Leigh died in 1949, before the discovery of DNA, before the space age, before nanotechnology.
As the university continues its transformation to preeminence, may all of you advance the tradition of creating something new … something unheard of … something wonderful … in this new building. Thank you.
