Marsh White, Who Earned The First Ph.D. Ever Conferred
At Penn State, Turns 100 Years Old This Month

4-12-96 (1,652 words)
After Marsh White got his Ph.D. in physics on June 15, 1926 -- the first doctoral degree ever awarded by Penn State -- he went on to become a professor of physics at Penn State, the founder and long-time officer of the Penn State chapter of a national physics honor society, the co-author of what is arguably the best-selling college physics textbook ever, and a consultant to the Pentagon during the Second World War.

Those are just a few items from White's impressive resume. To cap off all his accomplishments, on April 22 White is going to celebrate his 100th birthday. But White acts as if he doesn't understand what all the fuss is about.

"The only real news item is the fact that I'm 100 years old," says White. "There's a new century, and here's an old man, still with us for a while. That's news, but that's about the only news."

But White is downplaying the contributions he's made and the changes he's seen -- and helped bring about -- since he first came to Penn State as a graduate student. Since he earned his Ph.D. in 1926, his diploma has hung in the board room of the Kern Graduate Building, along with portraits of past graduate school deans.

As a Penn State faculty member (and assistant instructor during his graduate school years), White taught here for more than 40 years. During that time, he has watched physics change from a science that focused largely on simple machines like levers and inclined planes to a discipline that now extends not only inward to the smallest particles of matter but also outward to the farthest reaches of the universe.

In 1947, White co-wrote a textbook on college physics that is probably one of the best-selling textbooks ever. Revised and updated over the years, it has been used in more than 100 U.S. colleges and technical schools and translated into at least two languages (including Japanese), and still brings White a quarterly royalty check from McGraw-Hill. White has also written about high-velocity electrons, the future supply of physics teachers, and the effectiveness of physics teaching techniques.

Well known for his activities with fraternities, which earned him the nickname "Mr. Fraternity," in the 1920s White founded the Penn State chapters of Delta Chi, a social fraternity, and Sigma Pi Sigma, a national physics honor society. In 1971, he was made an honorary member of Sigma Pi Sigma for being a past national president and the founder and executive secretary (1928-68) of the Penn State chapter. He is also a past national president of Delta Chi and was an adviser to the Penn State chapter, created in 1921, for several decades.

For his work for the U.S. Department of War in the 1940s, he was honored by both the Pentagon and the White House. In 1944, White was made a special consultant with the war department's new developments division and was later named expert consultant to the secretary of war. "That was big stuff," White recalls.

In those positions, White headed a technical detachment that studied Army installations in need of technical experts and screened Army inductees to identify those with college educations in technical subjects who could do research and scientific work.

"It was almost impossible (for the government) to find people with technical backgrounds, (and because) I was quite familiar with physics departments throughout the country, they asked me to come to Washington and organize the technical detachment," White says. "I attracted quite a bit of attention by taking people out of infantry jobs and setting them to work in places like Los Alamos."

From 1963 to 1982, White served on the board of directors of C-COR Electronics, the State College-based firm that designs and manufactures high-quality electronic equipment for use in a variety of communications networks worldwide. One of the firm's co-founders, John L. McLucas, came to the area because of Marsh White.

James R. Palmer, who served as C-COR's chief executive for 31 years, recalls that McLucas "knew of Marsh White, and was so impressed with him that he wanted to come where Marsh White was to get his doctorate." White, says Palmer, was a long-time and a valued board member who always spoke on behalf of the company's employees and its customers. "It was a joy to know and to be associated with and to work with him," Palmer says of White.

Born in Claremont, N.C., in 1896, White went to Park College, in Parkville, Mo. He intended to major in English and history, but as he puts it, "fell under the influence" of a physics professor who later won the Oersted medal. At Park College, White not only earned a bachelor of science degree in physics (in 1917), but met his future wife, Stella Steele. They married in 1917 and moved to Philadelphia, where White worked in a munitions plant.

About that time, Dave Duncan, acting head of the physics department of The Pennsylvania State College, came to visit White in Philadelphia and offer him a position in the college's fledgling graduate program. "I had long planned to come to a technology institution, and (Duncan) offered me a job, so I was glad to come and do graduate work here," White recalls. "I got a salary of $900 for nine months -- that was pretty good."

When White first came to State College in 1918, it was a simple country town, surrounded by farmland, its major streets unpaved. White recalls having a lot of fun with the college's prank-loving students, joining in their tug-of-war games and other outdoor fun. "For many years I played along with the students in a lot of things like that."

But he was tough on them in the classroom. "I expected them to be prepared when they came to class," White says. "I very carefully assigned things in advance, and so it became well known that when you come to class, you're supposed to be prepared. Instead of me just lecturing at them, I wanted them to participate, so I got the reputation of being tough."

White says he doesn't think students are greatly different now -- they're probably neither more frivolous nor more serious. "Well, they have their serious times," he concedes.

At Penn State's graduate school commencement in spring 1986, White was honored with a "refreshed" Ph.D. degree. At the time, Charles L. Hosler, then dean of the graduate school, joked that White's decades-old Ph.D. was getting a little stale and needed to be refreshed. "After all," Hosler said, "we had stolen his diploma a long time ago, and it's been hanging in Kern ever since the building was built."

Throughout his life, White has been honored many times. In addition to his honors from Sigma Pi Sigma, he has received a National Interfraternity Council Conference silver medal (1981) "for a lifetime of service to youth;" a citation for outstanding service from the American Association of Physics Teachers (1953), of which he is a past president; a doctor of science degree (1958) and a distinguished service award (1950) from Park College; and a War Department citation (1946) and a Presidential Certificate (1948) for his wartime work in the Pentagon.

One of the major influences on White's life was R.L. Edwards, his physics professor at Park College, and another was Stella, his wife of 68 years, who died in 1995. "She was definitely the smarter of the two of us -- she was the brains of the family," White recalled in a 1986 interview with The Penn Stater, Penn State's alumni magazine. "After I saw Stella for the first time (at Park College), I told her I was struck by lightning like St. Paul at Damascus. I then managed to get invited to eat in her dormitory. But to get to the right table with the right girl took some time. They only invited boys to dine with them twice a year."

White's persistence paid off, and he and Stella married in 1917. Both of them received their master of science degrees from Penn State in 1920, and in 1922, Stella gave birth to twin sons, Kenneth and Laurence. Three years later a third son, Malcolm, came along. All three sons graduated from Penn State -- Kenneth in 1944, Laurence in 1948, and Malcolm in 1949.

White speaks easily on a range of topics, including the many changes he's seen on campus and in the borough of State College, but he gets positively animated when he's asked about the changes in physics over the years. "Nowadays, there's all this talk about atoms and sub-atoms -- this business was unheard of when I first came to college. A single atom -- a single hunk of matter -- and believe it or not, someone got the notion of splitting this atom, and the nuclear age began," White says.

But new ideas about the nature of the universe continue to arise, and new discoveries appear to raise the odds for the existence of extraterrestrial life, White says. "So here we are on this little hunk of matter we call the earth, and we think it's pretty nice." But White says we keep asking ourselves: "Is there any other place in the universe like it?"

During his long life, White has been a body in motion, and now he is mostly a body at rest -- "That's my favorite sport now, staying in bed," he says -- but he still lives in his mail-order stone house on East Prospect Avenue, under the care of Vivian Hanscom, his nurse-companion.

"I'm very happy to have been here," White says. "This town has grown, and now we're a pretty good city."

*aj*

Contacts:
Alan Janesch
(814) 865-7517 (office)
(814) 867-3621 (home)
axj12@psu.edu

Christy Rambeau
(814) 865-7517 (office)
(814) 237-9046 (home)
cmr7@psu.edu