Travel Guide: Scientific Indiana
When I wrote “Scientific Indiana,” I originally included relevant sites that could be visited so that readers could, in a sense, walk in the footsteps of the scientists. Unfortunately, most of the sites had to be cut from the final version of the book. So here they are! Below you will find actual places you can visit to connect to the scientists in the book. Most are in Indiana, but some are located further afield. The sites are listed in the same order as the book chapters. If you know of any further sites or exact addresses of homes, please send me the information.
New Harmony is a small town of about 800 people in southwestern Indiana. More than thirty buildings and structures from the Harmonist religious and Owenite utopian communities have been preserved as part of the New Harmony Historic District which is a National Historic Landmark. The Atheneum serves as the Visitors Center for Historic New Harmony and should be the first stop. Rooms are available at the New Harmony Inn. Allow a full day to see all the sites.
Harvey Wiley has several buildings named after him. Residence Halls on the campuses of Hanover College and Purdue University are named in his honor as is the FDA’s Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition operations, located in the Harvey W. Wiley Federal Building in College Park, Maryland. Wiley’s birthplace near Kent is remembered with an Indiana Historical Marker placed at the intersection of IN-256 and CR-850W. The home he built in 1893, the Wiley-Ringland House at 4722 Dorset Avenue in Chevy Chase, Maryland, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The 2.5-story Queen Anne-style house was partially destroyed by a fire in 1978, but was restored in 2002 by new owners.
Vesto Slipher has a building named in his honor on the grounds of the Lowell Observatory. The building, located at 1400 West Mars Road, is described on the observatory website. Also at the observatory, you can see the 24” telescope that he used along with some of his equipment. Slipher died in 1969 just a few days before his 94th birthday and is buried in Citizens Cemetery in Flagstaff.
Hermann Muller is buried in Crown Hill Cemetery in Indianapolis. A large archive of his papers are held in the Lilly Library at Indiana University. An online exhibit is available on the library’s website.
Harold Urey was one of the greatest chemists of the twentieth century. In his and his wife’s memory, the largest research building on the campus of the University of California San Diego has been named Harold and Frieda Urey Hall. There is also the Urey Lecture Hall on the campus of the University of Montana. And in Indiana, the Harold C. Urey Middle School in Walkerton is named in his honor.
Harold Urey died on January 5, 1981 at age eighty-seven of an apparent heart attack. His body was cremated in La Jolla and then buried back home in Indiana at the Fairfield Cemetery in DeKalb County, north of Ft. Wayne. According to the obituary in the hometown newspaper, “The cemetery is small and modest, and the tombstone is plain. It’s on high ground…far from large towns or highways, surrounded by farm fields and wooded land.” Frieda joined him eleven years later.
A number of sites related to Alfred Kinsey can be seen in Bloomington. His Institute is now known as the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction. Just before Kinsey’s death, the Institute had moved into Jordan Hall. It is now housed in Lindley Hall with the collection and library in Morrison Hall. In 2016, the Institute reversed the 1947 action that had made it an independent entity and the Institute merged back with Indiana University. The Institute used to give tours; I know because I took one, but that was about fifteen years ago. Currently, there is no mention of tours on the Institute website, but as I write this, we are just coming out of COVID. Check the website; they may offer tours or open houses in the future.
The Kinseys lived at several Bloomington addresses over the years. After they were married, they rented a house at 620 South Fess Avenue for a year. (The house that the Kinsey’s occupied at that address has been torn down.) Then in July 1922, they moved to 615 Park Avenue South (that home is still standing) where they lived for the next five years. The house is a small Arts and Crafts-style bungalow with a big basement where Kinsey worked on his biology textbook.
In 1927, the family moved into a new house that Kinsey built on what was then the southeast edge of town. The address is 1320 East First Street. He designed the house himself and supervised the construction. Deformed bricks were used because they were cheaper and Kinsey liked the usual shapes. When the masons started neatly laying the bricks, he requested that instead, they be laid unevenly and that the mortar be allowed to squirt out along the seams. This gives the exterior a unique gingerbread appearance. The gabled bedroom on the second floor where the filming occurred can be seen from the outside. The interior holds four bedrooms and a long living room where two shelves can be found under the window. The shelves were designed by Kinsey to hold his record collection. The house is surrounded by a huge yard that, in Kinsey’s time, was home to his garden which was full of flowers, especially irises. Kinsey loved irises and at one time had 250 varieties growing on his property.
Kinsey has been memorialized in several ways. In 2004, the biographical film Kinsey made its debut with Liam Neeson playing the title role. In 2012, he was inducted into Chicago’s Legacy Walk, an outdoor display celebrating LGBTQ history and people. In 2019, Kinsey was one of fifty inaugural heroic figures inducted on the National LGBTQ Wall of Honor at the Stonewall National Monument at the Stonewall Inn in New York City. Kinsey is buried at the Rose Hill Cemetery in Bloomington.
Percy Julian died of cancer in April 1975, just a week after his seventy-sixth birthday and is buried in the Elm Lawn Cemetery in Elmhurst, Illinois. In 1993, the United States Postal Service issued a commemorative stamp in his honor. In 1999, the American Chemical Society recognized Julian’s synthesis of physostigmine as a National Historic Chemical Landmark and one of the top twenty-five achievements in the history of American chemistry. The commemorative plaque is housed in the Percy Lavon Julian Science & Mathematics Center at DePauw University.
The Percy Julian house is located at 515 N. East Ave. in Oak Park, Illinois. The house was built in 1908 and is part of the Frank Lloyd Wright – Prairie School of Architecture Historic District. The house was not designed by Wright, but is in the Prairie School style.
Wendell Stanley has a building named in his honor on the Berkeley campus. The original Stanley Hall was torn down after an earthquake made it too dangerous for use. A new state-of-the-art building was constructed in 2007. It houses researchers from various departments including biology, chemistry, physics, engineering, and mathematics with the idea of breaking down barriers between academic disciplines. The new building carries the old name: Stanley Hall. Stanley is buried at the Sunset View Cemetery in El Cerrito, California. The grave is located in the Urn Garden, Row 16, Grave 85-A.
Emil Konopinski lived, at least for a time, in a 3,000-square-foot ranch-style house at 1342 Southdowns Drive in Bloomington. Konopinski shared the house with colleague Lawrence Langer and his wife. Langer was a nuclear physicist who worked on the Manhattan Project with Konopinski. It was, certainly by today’s standards, an unusual living arrangement. The reason given was that there was a housing shortage in the area at the time. The house was built by Konopinski and the Langers in 1955 and was inspired by a house designed by John Yeon in Portland, Oregon that the trio had seen in a magazine. A local architect, William Strain, actually designed the house. Records found in the home indicate that the physicist spent $38,000 on the house, a substantial sum in 1955. One unique feature of the house is a dining room table that slides into the kitchen for easy clean-up. Subsequent owners have kept the interior in the mid-century-modern style.
In recognition of Herbert Brown’s accomplishments, one of the two main chemistry buildings on the Purdue campus is named the Brown Building and the entire chemistry department has been rename the Herbert C. Brown Laboratories of Chemistry. Brown is buried in the Jewish Cemetery of Greater Lafayette in Indiana.
Salvador Luria, who died in 1991, was cremated. His ashes were scattered among the rocks at the end of Nobska Beach at Woods Hole, Massachusetts, where Luria liked to wade in the tidal pools. He and his wife Zella had a summer home on McGregor Road in Woods Hole. The exact address is unknown.
The horn antenna, built by Edward Purcell and Harold “Doc” Ewen, can be seen on the grounds of the Green Bank Observatory in West Virginia.
Ben Roy Mottelson was born in Chicago and graduated from Lyons Township High School North Campus located at 100 S. Brainard Avenue in LaGrange, Illinois.
The house where James Watson grew up is located at 7922 Luella Avenue in the South Shore neighborhood of Chicago. He and his father went birdwatching in Jackson Park. He attended elementary school at Horace Mann School at 8050 S. Chappel Ave. and high school at South Shore High School. The Eagle Pub, where the discovery of the structure of DNA was announced, is in Cambridge, England. A section of Watson and Crick’s original metal plate model of DNA can be viewed at the National Science Museum of London.
A bronze bust of Ei-ichi Negishi sits outside of Wetherill Laboratory of Chemistry at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana.
The building that housed the restaurant and apartment where Ferid Murad grew up is in the 1500-block of 119th Street in Whiting, Indiana. He attended Whiting High School at 1751 Oliver Street.
Richard Schrock was born in Berne, in northeastern Indiana, on January 4, 1945. When Schrock was five, the family moved into an old house on the west side of South 13th Street in Decatur. Schrock’s father put his carpentry skills to work and, over several years, renovated the home. The house was situated on a large, one-acre lot and Schrock remembers that the yard “took forever to mow” on hot summer days. The family kept a garden that yielded corn, tomatoes, melons, strawberries, and raspberries. In the summer, Schrock explored the local woods and ponds, fished, caught frogs and snakes, and built little huts from sticks and twine. In the winter, he learned how to ice skate. Noah Schrock used the two car garage at the back of the house as a woodworking shop.
Eric Wieschaus was born in South Bend and lived on Jefferson Boulevard in Mishawaka until he was five or six. The exact address is unknown.