Creighton University

The first of the scientific departments of Creighton College to come into being was that of chemistry. Its birth occurred on the night of November 14, 1883 when Father Lambert gave the first chemical lecture in the hall on the third floor of the main building. The historian of those days gives us only three lines. "Wednesday, 14. Magnificent weather. Night lecture by Father Lambert well attended-all went off well. Bishop and many of the clergy present." This is all, not even the subject is mentioned. This was recovered from The Omaha Herald which says that it was "Combustion" and that it was illustrated by experiments.

A month later, December 14, authorization was received to build the chemical laboratory. This was a frame structure 30x60 feet. Its southern half 30x30 feet was the lecture room with a rather diminutive lecture table 2x6 feet in the northwest corner. Along the east and west walls were long tables about 18 inches wide with a trough, gas and water pipes, and three narrow shelves. There was also a wide shelf underneath, no lockers in the modern sense in which a student could securely lock his apparatus. As may be imagined, the stopcocks of the water pipes were sometimes accidentally or otherwise turned on with full force, so that the water was squirted across half the room.

There was also a fume chamber about three feet square, made of four sets of ordinary upper and lower windows with their iron balancing weights. Its upper part was en connection with the stove pipe, coming from a self-feeder in the room, its only source of heat. This was woefully inadequate for the purpose -on January 3, 1884 the thermometer sank to 34 degrees below zero, the lowest on record in Omaha- so that all the chemicals that would be injured by the cold had to be carried into the college building every winter.

The entrance to the laboratory was from the south. Another door back of the lecture table led into an adjoining room in which material was stored. This room had also a skylight for photographic use, the dark room being in the northwest corner of the building. The northeast end was a mechanical workshop. The store room, that is, the one with the skylight, had a smaller one east of it. This could be entered only from the outside, the reason being that the chemical fumes should nor injure the large telescope which was kept here before the observatory was built. When the telescope was transferred to its present home, of course, a door was cut between the two rooms.

On March 10, 1884, 14 boxes of chemical goods arrived, and on the 18th there was another lecture by Father Lambert, very well attended –“everything went off splendidly” in the laconic style of the historian.

On April 25 "an evening course of lectures was starred. Very fine gentlemen came." A chemical lecture on April 28 in the laboratory, and one on the microscope on May 1, the latter "well attended," and a third on May 28 in Boyd's Opera House which "went off well," is all that is recorded of this lecture course.

On November 10, 1884 evening classes in chemistry were begun. They were taught by Mr. H. D. Gartland, as Father Lambert was no longer on the staff. He had been on it only one year 1883-84 during which he was officially the vice-president, or principal or dean, in our modern phraseology.

These evening classes in chemistry seem to have run on for three years. On November 30, 1887 they were discontinued, because only five had paid their fee of six dollars. After a week, however, they were started again and made free. How long they continued is not stared.

On account of the building of the church, the site of which it occupied, the laboratory was moved on April 1, 1887 to the northwest corner of the main building and so placed that this corner just touched the southeast one of the laboratory. The orientation of the latter remained the same, the porch being as before on its east aide. At the northern end of this porch, facing eastward, a wood handball alley was built, on which Father DeSchryver had later on had the American flag painted in the fond hope that respect for the flag would deter the students from carving their names into it.

The laboratory remained in this second position until June 29, 1902. It was then sold, moved to Burt street and remodeled into a dwelling house. During this year of building 1901-02 there was no chemistry, as all the materials had been taken our of the frame laboratory and stored on the first floor of the main building in its southwest class room.

By the end of June, 1902 the second floor of the main building between its front and rear corridors had been fitted our as the present home of the chemical department.

The southeast room is the lecture room and seats 72 students. The lecture table is 12x3 feet with a fume chamber near it jutting into the next room which is the general store room. A small apartment in this was built as a photographic dark room, and was used as such until the larger one on the third floor was ready. The entire north side, 25x60 feet, is the students' laboratory with 120 lockers, and a fume chamber. The apparatus is up to date in every way.

When the distinction between college and high school became sufficiently pronounced, chemistry was taught to the college students only. One year 1924-25, it was offered to the high school also, but so very few availed themselves of it, that the offer was not repeated. There was always a laboratory in which the students themselves performed experiments. This has gradually advanced in grade, so that now analytic and organic work is carried on, the spectroscope and delicate balances are used, and the like.

Besides the college chemical laboratory, there are similar laboratories in the medical, pharmaceutical, and dental departments. It is the intention of the University, as soon as the means become available, to erect a building north of the dental department and as large as this, and devote it entirely and exclusively to chemistry.

It may be proper to add here a few words about some of the professors of chemistry The first was Father A. A. Lambert, 1883-84, in the year six of the institution. Upon him the pleasant duty devolved of turning Mr. Creighton's generous offer of ten thousand dollars into physical, chemical and astronomical departments of the University.

The College catalogue of 1884 groups this scientific outfit under 17 heads. Three of these are astronomical and nine physical, and will be mentioned in their own proper chapters. Three or four pertain to chemistry. They are: an entire outfit for Chemistry, all the chemical glassware and apparatus of the latest and most improved form, besides a full set of chemicals; a complete photographic outfit; a new building, containing the chemical laboratory, with its furnaces and apparatus having a complete outfit for each student; the astronomical department, the photographic gallery and the physical workshop; the best of the most recent works on science, especially chemistry.

In the private history of the college there is a statement at the end of June, 1885, based on bills in the treasurer's office and therefore as accurate and as authentic as one might desire, that the laboratory building and shelving (by P. J. Creedon) cost $2,770, the chemical apparatus and chemicals (from Bullock and Crenshaw, Philadelphia) $613, the laboratory furniture $230, the photographic camera and material (from Hyatt, Sr. Louis) $150, the mechanical tools $180, mineralogical specimens $150, thus giving for the laboratory building and its contents, a total of about $4,093.

Judged by the standards of its day this was a very liberal outfit. It was, however, only a beginning, because Mr. Creighton in subsequent years more than doubled his gifts to this department of chemistry alone. Later on when the needs of the University in its entirety were brought home to him, his benefactions to the departments ceased, only to be replaced by very much greater ones for buildings.

To come back now to the first scientific man of Creighton College, Father Lambert, and to his private character, we might style this meteoric. He acted quickly and did not see difficulties. His learning, however, was nor profound, and he sometimes resorted to subterfuges and tricks to cover up his failures. Experts, and men like Mr. Creighton who were good judges of character, soon lost their admiration of his brilliancy and placed him on his proper level. It is most probably for this reason that he was on the staff of Creighton College only for one year, although his immediate successors were inexperienced young men. Persons of this stamp, of course, cannot brook restraint. The obedience, which the Jesuit Order demands as its first essential, then became too irksome for him, and some years later he severed his connection with it.

The second professor of chemistry was Mr. H. D. Gartland. He was at the college from 1882 to 1886, but taught chemistry only the one year after Father Lambert had gone, 1884-1885. He was present during the incipiency of the scientific departments, and had the pleasure of opening the boxes as they arrived and feasting his eyes on the marvels they contained. All the chemistry he knew he probably picked up under Father Lambert. His predilections were for work that required muscle, especially plumbing, and his highest accomplishment was "wiping a joint." By a strange fatality he also left the Jesuit Order some years later, but his reasons for doing so did nor become known publicly.

When Father Dowling was installed as rector of Creighton College on July 18, 1885, the first demand that he seemed to have made upon his higher superior, Father Bushart, the provincial of the whole Province, upon whom the apportionment of his subjects rested, was that he would detail Father Joseph Rigge to Omaha to take charge of the science departments. Father Joseph,-and now the writer wishes to speak in the first person-was my brother, doubly so, first natural brother 15 years older, and secondly spiritual brother in the same Society of Jesus, my vocation to which under heaven I owe to him. And thirdly I have had the happiness to be his successor in all his scientific departments and to use the identical instruments that he used. And I could fill a big book with what I know of him and his work.

Father Joseph Rigge taught chemistry during all the nine years he was here from 1885 to 1894, but physics only intermittently for four years. What be did in physics and astronomy must be reserved for other chapters. In character he was the antithesis of his predecessors, quiet, unassuming and learned. He won renown at once as a lecturer; for he had a wonderful ingenuity in devising new and bold experiments to illustrate old and seemingly wellworn principles, and of adapting his subject matter to the capacity of an unprofessional audience. His own lectures on sound, music, oxygen and hydrogen, and those of his students on the steam engine, the blood and chemical reactions were especially fine.

Father Rigge's thoroughness as a scientist displayed itself also in many other and more substantial ways than in popular scientific lectures. His predilection was for chemistry, and it was in his laboratory and at his hands that the first analysis of the vast petroleum springs and lakes of Wyoming was made. An able article from his pen on this subject appeared in the Scientific American Supplement, (No. 651, June 23, 1888) under the title "The Wyoming Oil Fields." The Omaha Daily World, for December 4, 1886, contained a long article written by him on "Omaha as a Coal Point." It was illustrated by many drawings and maps and gave a complete scientific view of the whole question together with an analysis of the coal recently found in Omaha. He said that coal exists beyond all question but he is not convinced that its quantity is great or its quality valuable. A similar article appeared later in the American Catholic Quarterly Review, January, 1887.

It was at the earnest invitation of the Board of Public Works that he took an active part in investigating the origin of the fire which completely wrecked the Boston Store. In an elaborate report to Major Furay, then a member of the Board of Public Works, he points our, after exhaustive experiments with the trolley current in his laboratory, the causes of the extensive corrosion of water and gas mains, and concludes by suggesting remedies for the evil. The Scientific American gives him due praise for having been the first in this line of investigation. His public lecture on the same subject, June 19, 1894, is still remembered.

It is no wonder, therefore, that Mr. Creighton, with his keen insight into character, quickly recognized Father Rigge's ability, and followed up his plans with pecuniary encouragement. Accordingly, for many years afterwards the College catalogue mentioned Mr. Creighton's scientific donations. The first of these in time and in importance was the observatory. Amongst the many minor gifts we may mention two 15-foot gas ranks, two six-foot parabolic reflectors, an organ, a vertical attachment to the stereopticon, a micrometer eye-piece for the equatorial telescope, glass cases for minerals, expensive platinum and graduated glassware for special chemical analysis, a Becker analytic balance, an electric master clock and dial, assay and combustion furnaces, anatomical models, a dynamo, a water motor, and a large number of smaller instruments, and scientific books.

Much as I loved and esteemed my big brother, I differed radically from him on one point. This was that gradually at first, and then permanently, like so many others that I know, he shifted his affections from science to the ministry. The latter is of vastly greater importance, I grant, but then there are very many more workers in its field than in that of science. Of course, neither he nor all those that he benefited spiritually will agree to this, nor will many others, and it is useless to argue about it. But the number of scientific men, Catholic, clerical, and Jesuit, especially of his ability, is even now lamentably small. They are necessary in their own line. And so convinced was I ever, and am yet, of the glorious work that can be done in natural science by willing and earnest men, even when they have inferior talents, that I cast the die early in life irrevocably for science as far as my more important duties permitted. While I took my turn like the test of my brethren to do ministerial work in the college church in the city and in its neighborhood for many miles whenever I was sent, I never offered myself for it and persistently refused it no matter how strongly I was urged to it by those who were not my superiors. My choice of science was just as pure, if nor as noble, as my brother's for the chemistry. He has long ago gone to his reward, exceedingly great. May I follow soon and sit at his feet.

While in Omaha my brother Joseph frequently visited the jail and the county poor farm. Many a girl whose virtue was exposed, he sent to the Good Shepherd, his inseparable companion on his raids of mercy being "old Mt. Lee."
After leaving Omaha in 1894 he went down to British Honduras to minister to its halfsavage natives. Ill health drove him back to this country. But he returned again, until he was finally forced to relinquish his missionary work. He was then an assistant pastor at Sr. Xavier Church, Cincinnati, and died there on April 17, 1913 in his seventy-fifth year.

After Father Joseph Rigge's departure from Omaha in 1894 chemistry was taught by a different professor every year until 1900. They were Father C. J. Bergmeyer, Mr. B. J. Otten, Mr. C. F. Crowley, Mr. C. F. Woling, all of them Jesuits except Mr. (now Dr.) Crowley. In 1900 Father William Rigge assumed the reins for three years. He built the present quarters of the chemical department, but hastens to add that he had requested and had obtained minute specifications for it from Father Borgmeyer, then considered the best chemist of the Province. But as Father W. Rigge had neither the training, nor the ability, nor the taste for this branch of science, he was glad to relinquish it into the hands of Mr. F. Calhoun who taught it for four years. Then Mr. J. F. Knipscher was at the helm for two years, Mr. D. F. Hickey for five and Mr. L. J. PuhI for three. In 1917 Father J. A. Krance took charge for three years, to be followed by Mr. F. M. Brown for one year, Mr. F. P. Keenoy and Mr. P. M. Regan, each for two years. Since 1921 Father D. F. Hickey, who had taught it before from 1909 to 1914, has been at the head of the department, with M. M. Keenoy and Regan as associates the first for one, and the other for two years.

Father Hickey has fitted himself well for his position by his previous studies and experience. He has successfully raised the standard in his science. He lectures also as occasion demands outside of his own laboratory. He is an active member of the American Chemical Society, and of the Omaha Engineering Society.