Hubert Alyea’s Spectacular Chemistry

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One of Princeton’s most pop­u­lar fac­ulty mem­bers of the mid-20th cen­tury was chem­istry pro­fes­sor Hubert New­combe Alyea ’25 (1903–1996), known for his col­or­ful and explo­sive chem­istry demon­stra­tions that some­times burned his suits. Alyea taught at Prince­ton between 1930–1972, but gave lec­tures around the coun­try and the world and worked to make teach­ing sci­ence by demon­stra­tion with sim­ple means more fea­si­ble in devel­op­ing nations. Walt Disney’s inspi­ra­tion for the film ‘The Absent-Minded Pro­fes­sor’ (1961) occurred while attend­ing one of Alyea’s lec­tures, and he invited Alyea to Hol­ly­wood, where actor Fred Mac­Mur­ray copied his man­ner­isms for the film. Two of Alyea’s most famous demon­stra­tion lec­tures are fea­tured here.

Alyea devel­oped his two-hour lec­ture, “Atomic Energy: Weapon for Peace,” in 1945, when the hor­rors and power of the atomic bomb had just been impressed in people’s minds. He pre­sented the lec­ture some 2,800 times in many dif­fer­ent coun­tries. In it, Alyea explains the prin­ci­ples of the atomic bomb and atomic energy, using a vari­ety of chem­istry demon­stra­tions, inter­spersed with whim­si­cal com­ments and end­ing with his per­sonal views about world peace. Fea­tured here is a short­ened ver­sion of the lec­ture for a tele­vi­sion pro­gram that was part of the series “Prince­ton ’55, an Explo­ration into Edu­ca­tion through Tele­vi­sion.” The series was broad­cast by NBC in coop­er­a­tion with Prince­ton University.

Dur­ing the last week of his class ‘Chem­istry 104′ Hubert Alyea applied the lessons from chem­i­cal research to a phi­los­o­phy of life. He ended with a spec­tac­u­lar final lec­ture that was famous through­out his career. After his retire­ment in 1972, Alyea con­tin­ued to present “Lucky Acci­dents, Great Dis­cov­er­ies and the Pre­pared Mind” as a guest lec­turer across the coun­try.  He was also a pop­u­lar fix­ture at Prince­ton Reunions. The film fea­tured here was cre­ated around 1985 by the Alumni Coun­cil, using excerpts of the lec­ture from a record­ing at Louisiana State Uni­ver­sity. The lec­ture ends with Alyea singing “The Orange and the Black,” while mix­ing solu­tions that show the col­ors of Yale, Har­vard, and Prince­ton (23:13).

These films (a 16 mm film and a VHS video) are part of the Uni­ver­sity Archives’ His­tor­i­cal Audio­vi­sual Col­lec­tion (items no. 0099 and 1296).

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