UpDate - Vol. 11, No. 10, Page 7
November 7, 1991
Recognition; Named professorships honor distinguished scholars

     Thirty-four members of the University of Delaware faculty are
named professors-a designation honoring distinguished teaching and
scholarship. Sixteen retired members of the faculty are named
professors emeritus. Named professors were recognized Oct. 29 at a
formal dinner hosted by President and Mrs. David Roselle and
Provost and Mrs. R. Byron Pipes at Arsht Hall in Wilmington.
     Those memorialized by named professorships include the
following:
     One of the largest accounting and consultancy firms, Arthur
Andersen & Co. employs more than 70 University of Delaware
graduates, two of whom are partners in the firm.
     Maxwell P. and Mildred H. Harrington had a special love for
the coast. Both were Delaware natives, and Mr. Harrington graduated
from Delaware in 1950 with a bachelor's degree in civil
engineering. He worked for the federal government in marine
sciences for several years and served as an engineer at Camp
Lejeune-the U.S. Marine Corps base in Jacksonville, N.C.  After Mr.
Harrington's death in 1983, Mrs. Harrington continued to support
the College of Marine Studies as a Marine Associate. In 1988, she
donated an extensive seashell collection amassed during their
travels. Mrs. Harrington died last year.
     Elias Ahuja (1863-1951), a native of Spain, represented the Du
Pont Co. in Chile early in the century. After retiring to his
native country he was decorated by Alfonso XIII for his
philanthropy, but in 1937, he returned to the United States and, at
his death, left a substantial sum to philanthropies in Delaware in
memory of his associations in the state.
     H. Fletcher Brown (1867-1944), chemist, business executive and
University of Delaware trustee, was a native of Massachusetts and
a graduate of Harvard University who, after retirement, became a
major figure in the improvement of education in Delaware, to which
he devoted a large portion of both his time and his fortune. The
University, the public schools, the Y.M.C.A., and other
institutions were recipients of his aid.
     Allan P. Colburn (1904-1955), chemical engineer, acting
president of the University in 1950 and its first provost, had a
distinguished if short career in industrial research before joining
the faculty in 1938. Enterprising and imaginative, he was largely
responsible for the rapid development of the chemical engineering
department and for the initiation of doctoral programs.
     Henry Belin du Pont (1898-1970), business executive, yachtsman
and pioneer aviator, was a University trustee and an active sponsor
of many civic and cultural enterprises. The breadth of his
interests is indicated by his having received two undergraduate
degrees, one in liberal arts from Yale University and one in
engineering from M.I.T. His generous benefactions to University
activities were made with little fanfare or publicity.
     Henry Francis du Pont (1880-1969), the last life trustee of
the University, won distinction as a cattle breeder, a
horticulturist and a collector of American antiquities. His estate,
Winterthur, became nationally famous as the site of his collection
of decorative arts and early American interiors. In cooperation
with Winterthur, the University conducts graduate programs, in
early American material culture and art conservation.
     Willis F. Harrington Sr. (1882-1959), a graduate of Delaware
in the class of 1902, took another degree at M.I.T. before entering
the chemical industry, where he particularly distinguished himself
as an executive in the manufacture of dyes. He was interested in
many civic ventures, including the Delaware Hospital, of which he
was board chairman. He and his brother, Chancellor William Watson
Harrington (1874-1959), an 1895 graduate of Delaware and a trustee
for 59 years, were long-time friends of the University.
     Charles Polk Messick (1882-1978), a graduate of Delaware in
the class of 1907, was a pioneer in the development of civil
service merit systems. Chief examiner and secretary of the New
Jersey Civil Service Commission as early as 1917, he became a
national authority in the field and was recognized as "the nation's
elder statesman in public personnel administration."
     Lydia H. Richards (1872-1959), Robert H. Richards Sr.
(1873-1951) and Robert H. Richards Jr. (1905-1977) are memorialized
by the Richards Professorship. Lydia Richards was for many years a
member of the Women's College advisory committee to the Board of
Trustees, on which her husband, Robert H. Richards, a leader of the
Delaware bar, was a prominent member. Their son, Robert H. Richards
Jr., a graduate of Delaware in the class of 1928 and also of the
Harvard Law School, succeeded his father as head of the law firm of
Richards, Layton & Finger.
     H. Rodney Sharp Sr. (1880-1968), a graduate of Delaware in the
class of 1900, was the University's most generous patron in its
long history. Besides his gifts to the University's physical
expansion and to the endowment, he took a personal interest in the
cultural opportunities available for students and in the beauty of
the campus, utilizing his position as a life trustee and long-time
chairman of the buildings and grounds committee to help attain
those ends. Through many years his loyalty to his alma mater never
wavered.
     The Unidel professorships owe their origin to the Unidel
Foundation, established by Amy du Pont (1876-1962), sportswoman and
philanthropist. Through this agency she originally supported
various facets of women's education at Delaware and eventually she
bequeathed her estate to it. After application by University
officials, the foundation's board makes grants to finance specific
projects that enrich educational programs that are beyond what can
be expected from the usual sources of financial support.
     Hugh Martin Morris, a native Delawarean born in 1878, was
graduated from Delaware College, now the University, in 1898, with
a bachelor of arts degree. After teaching for two years, he studied
law and, in 1903, was admitted to the Delaware bar. He pursued a
distinguished legal career in Wilmington until 1919 when Woodrow
Wilson appointed him U.S. District Judge for Delaware. He retired
from the bench in 1930 to resume the active practice of law. In
June 1928, the University awarded him the honorary degree, doctor
of laws, and a year later, he was appointed to the Board of
Trustees, where he served until 1959, for the last 20 years as
president of the board. A noted benefactor of the University, his
gifts included his home and farm on Polly Drummond Hill in Newark.
When the Hugh M. Morris Library was dedicated in 1964, Judge
Morris, though quite elderly, attended the ceremony. He died in
1966.
     A graduate of Dartmouth College and Oxford University, where
he was a Rhodes Scholar, Ned B. Allen earned his doctorate from the
University of Michigan. He spent a year as a newspaper reporter for
the Springfield, Mass., Union and a year as an instructor at the
University of Southern California before joining the Delaware
faculty as an associate professor of English. He was promoted to
full professor in 1947 and later was chairperson of the Department
of English. He retired in 1965. The author of a number of articles
that appeared in Modern Language Notes, The Shakespeare Association
Bulletin and Delaware Notes, he also wrote a book, The Sources of
Dryden's Comedies. Dr. Allen died in 1984.
     Jerzy L. Nowinski joined the Delaware faculty in 1961 and was
named H. Fletcher Brown Professor in 1965. He retired in 1973. His
master's and doctoral degrees were awarded by the Warsaw
Polytechnic Institute. The author or coauthor of several monographs
and more than 200 papers, Dr. Nowinski founded and serves on the
editorial board of the Journal of Non-Linear Mechanics, and he
serves on the editorial boards of the Journal of Thermal Stresses
and the Iranian Journal of Science and Technology. He has received
a number of awards, including the Officer Cross of Polonia
Restitua, Gold Medal of Merit, Government Scientific Award, Silver
and Gold Awards for the reconstruction of Warsaw, M.T. Huber
Scientific Prize and the Sigma Xi Scientific Award.
     John W. Shirley was an internationally known authority on the
Elizabethan scientist, Thomas Harriot. His Harriot studies began
when he was a John Simon Guggenheim Fellow. He came to the
University in 1962 as Provost and Vice President for Academic
Affairs and served in that capacity until 1972, when he was named
H. Fletcher Brown Professor. He also served as Acting President of
the University during 1967-68. Dr. Shirley received his bachelor's
degree in physics and literature and his doctorate in literature
and philosophy, both with honors, from the University of Iowa. He
also received an honorary doctor of humane letters degree from St.
Lawrence University and a doctor of letters degree from Durham
University of England. In 1982, the University awarded him the
Medal of Distinction, in recognition of his significant
contributions. He died in 1988.
     Robert Lyle Spencer was dean of Delaware's School of
Engineering from 1928 until his retirement in 1945. He was
instrumental in the growth of teaching, research and service
programs in the field of engineering at the University, and he
contributed substantially to the development of the physical plant
to support engineering science technology. Evans Hall was built
during his tenure, and, according to a 1945 issue of The University
of Delaware News, "Money provided to equip the building was
inadequate. Teachers and students had to make and install what they
could. Dean Spencer himself built all the classroom desks and
bulletin boards in the new building." He served as Dean of Delaware
College from February to April 1944, and as Acting President of the
University from April to May, 1944. He died in 1945. less than a
month after he resigned from the University because of illness.
Spencer Laboratory is named in his honor.
     Amy Rextrew was the first dean of the School of Home Economics
at Delaware. A native of New York, she held degrees from New York
State College for Teachers and Columbia University and had also
studied at Cornell University, the University of Tennessee and
Michigan State University. A member of the faculty from 1927, she
was Dean from 1945-48 and served as Dean of Women from 48-52. Miss
Rextrew was active in professional organizations, including the
American Home Economics Association and the Delaware Home Economics
Association. She died in 1974.