Dickinson, Roscoe

Dickinson, Roscoe Oilkey, 16 Diethylenetriamine metal complexes titrimetry, 553... 

Dickinson, Roscoe Gilkey. In Dictionary of Scientific Biography, Vol. IV, Charles Coulston Gillespie, ed., Charles Scribner s Sons, New York, (1974),... 

By melting the calculated amounts of magnesium and tin in an iron crucible under a mixture of potassium and magnesium chlorides, and cooling slowly, a mass of magnesium stannide was obtained from which individual crystals could be cleaved. The X-ray data were obtained from Laue and spectral photographs, treated as described by Dickinson.3 I wish to express my thanks to Dr. Roscoe G. Dickinson for his advice and active interest in this research. 

Under Roscoe Dickinson s guidance, Pauling learned how to use the finicky and complicated X-ray instrument, how to grow his own crystals, how to cut and polish them at specific angles, place them carefully in the apparatus, capture the X-ray diffraction patterns on photographic plates, measure the intensity and position of each important point, and analyze the patterns mathematically to see what they said about the atomic structure. 

Figure 1.4. Professor Roscoe G. Dickinson, about 1940. Photograph provided by courtesy of California Institute of Technology Archives.

Figure 2.5.B. Rosamond Dry Lake, Smoke Pot, 1943. Photographs by Roscoe Dickinson, given to HSJ in 1943.

Caltech had high standards of safety and protection of research workers and students. The new Crellin Chemical Laboratory, finished in 1939, had at least one large fiime hood in every laboratory. There were small downdraft fume hoods along the center of each work bench in the freshman chemistry laboratory, so that every two students had their own mini-hood. Before carrying out war-gas research. Professor Roscoe Dickinson asked for doubling the pumping capacity for two fume hoods in 65 Crellin and raising the... 

Got a letter today-hooray It s wonderful to hear from you. Soon after I d read it I saw R.G. [Roscoe G. Dickinson]. He was wandering around muttering and looking unhappy in general. He asked me if I d heard from you, and then with a gleam in his eye he asked if I knew where... 

R.J. Grabenstetter, Dave Volman, Roscoe Dickinson, Francis Blacet,... 

During Roscoe Dickinson s trip to San Jose Island, he was escorted to Panama by his Caltech crew and shown the sights. As they were doing so, Professor Dickinson, to his surprise, encountered Commander Robert Dickinson, his son, who was also sightseeing in Panama and on his way to elsewhere. Neither realized that the other was anywhere near Panama. 

Before I arrived at Pasadena, Professor Dickinson had undergone surgery for colon cancer. He was out of the hospital, at his home with Madeline, and I was told that his prognosis was fevorable. Bob Mills and I visited him. He was in a wheel chair, but he was cheerful and joking as usual. I told him about our work in Florida and our pine-tree meteorological tower. Roscoe and Bob chatted like the old chums that they were. 

Professor Roscoe Dickinson was a brilliant scientist, an artist, and a generous liberal person. He felt good about working with terrible poisons to provide better gas masks. When NDRC Division 10 shifted its emphasis on chemical warfare from defense to offense, he adjusted to the change and supported the new emphasis, accepting that a recognizable capability to go on the offense was a necessary part of defense. 

Courtesy Archives, California Institute of Technology, Historical Files of Roscoe Dickinson,... 

Friends We have come together today, the colleagues, students, other fiiends of Professor Dickinson—of Roscoe Gilkey Dickinson—here in the Gates and Crellin Laboratories of Chemistry where his life work was carried on, not, as we have done so often in the past, to discuss with him some detailed scientific experiment, but instead to recall the man himself—to think again about his life, his scientific work, his relation with his colleagues and his students, his influence on this institution in which he worked. 

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