Life History of Ralph W. Spitzer

In: http://ir.library.oregonstate.edu/concern/articles/fb494f55r

Abstract

A detailed biographical sketch of Ralph W. Spitzer (b. 1918), a graduate student of Linus Pauling's and promising academic who joined the Oregon State College chemistry department in 1946. Promoted to Assistant Professor in 1947, Spitzer was nonetheless fired from the OSC faculty in 1949 by President August L. Strand, almost certainly because of progressive political views espoused by Spitzer and his wife Teresa. Spitzer eventually matriculated to Canada where he earned an M.D. specializing in chemical pathology and co-founded a successful diagnostic laboratory firm, C.J. Coady Associates. The paper is based upon a series of oral history interviews conducted by the author with Ralph Spitzer, his daughter Eloise Spitzer, and his wife Hisako Kurotaki.