To satisfy a curricular requirement, I enrolled in Chemistry for my freshman year. Up until then I had developed little interest in science but I found the lectures by Kenneth Buxton compelling and complete, no book was actually needed. One thing led to another and I ended up taking all the chemistry courses and branched out to do nearly the same with biology under Julian Corrington and physics under Jesse Coop. It should also be noted that the German I acquired from Arthur Davis let me pass the examination required at that time for graduate students in science at Harvard with barely a month's review. I graduated in 1942 with a B.S. in chemistry and minors in both biology and physics. Kenneth Buxton steered me toward a job with the Reynolds Experimental Laboratory of the Atlas Powder Company in Tamaqua, PA, where the training program was designed to provide supervisors for the TNT plants at Paducah, KY and Weldon Springs, MO. The intensive course turned me into a competent analytical chemist. I was kept on at Tamaqua after the training course was over. For the next few months I spent my time analyzing ethylene glycol dinitrate fumes in one of the dynamite mixing houses. I did no research.
Toward the end of my first year, I was offered a chance to teach chemistry at the Northeast Missouri State Teachers College in Kirksville, the permanent staff having all gone off to the war. I accepted and spent the next year teaching every course in chemistry by myself, but probably not too well. We used books and on occasion I was only a few pages ahead of the students. Along the way, however, I decided I should get directly into the war effort.