1958–1965: The Eiler and Kumler Chairships
John Eiler, 1972
Warren (Bud) Kumler, about 1940
Department vision expands
Pharmacist and biochemist John Eiler led the fledgling department from 1959 to 1960. Chemist Warren (Bud) Kumler assumed the chairship in 1960, becoming the first true department chair (with the department chair also serving as director of the graduate program). The department drew up and began implementation of a 25-year plan calling for 65 graduate students, much more space, and significant scientific instrumentation, e.g., mass spectrometry, nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), and other spectroscopies.
Strong funding for research and education ignites success
Chemistry lab, 1966
Chin-Tzu Peng
A long-standing tradition began: funding for instruments was principally obtained from off-campus sources, typically from National Institutes of Health (NIH) or National Science Foundation (NSF) grants. Eugene Jorgensen, Warren Kumler, and John Craig also successfully obtained the first of our non-stop NIH training grants, providing huge support for our graduate programs. More faculty members joined those who had moved from UC Berkeley, so the department soon had faculty members working in enzymology (John Eiler, and in 1970, Daniel Santi), organic chemistry [Eugene Jorgensen, Roger Ketcham, Manfred (Fred) Wolff], spectroscopy (Louis Strait), free radicals (Dallas Tuck), calorimetry (Frank Goyan), colloid properties (T. Werner Schwarz), dipole moments (Warren Kumler), and radiochemistry (Chin-Tzu Peng).
By the end of this decade, the department’s exceptional success established the UCSF School of Pharmacy as #1 in federal research funding among schools of pharmacy, and it has never relinquished this standing.
Eugene Jorgensen (right), 1962; Bud Kumler, 1968; John Cymerman Craig
John J. Eiler, 1941; Daniel Santi, 1972; Roger Ketcham, 1970s
Fred Wolff, 1970s; Louis Strait, 1938; Dallas Tuck; Frank Goyan, 1950s