Peter Jordan (BS ’57) remembers many happy hours spent tinkering with a chemistry kit in his basement as a kid growing up in Los Angeles. “One day, my experiment got out of hand,” he recalls. “My parents were having a party, and the smoke came up the stairs. I didn’t do that again.”
He did, however, keep up his interest in chemistry, choosing it as his major at Caltech before earning a PhD at Yale University and going on to enjoy an almost 50-year career at Brandeis University, where he conducted research in theoretical biophysical chemistry. Now, through a generous bequest, Peter has established two new professorships at Caltech: the Hans Jordan Professorship in Electrical Engineering and the Peter C. Jordan Professorship in Chemistry. The endowment will also fund research support for both professors.
“I hope that whoever is in those chairs will feel that they have absolute freedom to work on whatever they want,” says Peter. “I know that anyone who’s sitting in that chair as a Caltech faculty member will be doing some interesting stuff that I’ve never thought of.”
A Father’s Legacy
For Peter, there was never really any question that he would attend Caltech for his undergraduate years. “My father talked it up
all the time when I was growing up,” he says.
“I thought it was the only place to go.”
Hans Jordan (for whom the first professorship is named) was an electrical engineer who fled Nazi Germany for California with his wife and young son Peter in 1940. Unable to secure an academic position, he became chief engineer for a machinery company and, in his spare time, designed and patented one of the first reliable garbage disposal systems. During the post-war building boom in Southern California, modern homes all came equipped with these appliances, and Hans reached a level of commercial success that gave his family financial stability and enabled Peter to pursue a college education.
Pauling, Bergman, and the Path to Theoretical Chemistry
Peter, who was equally good at math, physics, and chemistry at Caltech, chose to major in the latter, he says, “…because it was fun and it came naturally to me.” Future Nobel Laureate Linus Pauling happened to be teaching the first-year student chemistry course when Peter arrived on campus. “He set a tone that made you want to learn from him,” says Peter. “He projected enormous enthusiasm for his subject.”
In his second year, he took a course that Pauling co-taught with Gunnar Bergman, who was then Pauling’s research assistant. “Pauling had either just gotten a Nobel Prize for work in chemistry or he was about to get it,” recalls Peter. “The final exam for this course was a half-hour oral exam with Pauling and Bergman peppering us with questions. That was the scariest thing I’d ever done in my life!”
Peter says he began leaning toward theoretical chemistry partly because Bergman encouraged him in that direction. However, an incident that occurred when he landed a summer job working in the organic chemistry lab of John “Jack” Roberts at the end of his sophomore year may also have influenced him.
“I came in one Monday morning, and the lab looked a little odd because one of the hoods had blown out during the weekend—
a graduate student had been following a preparation, and it exploded,” says Peter. “I thought, ‘You know, maybe theory isn’t
so bad.’”
The Freedom to Pursue Their Instincts
Peter’s research interests focused on the ways in which biophysical and biochemical processes are controlled in the body with potential health applications in targeted drug delivery or medical imaging. During his career, he has published more than 100 scientific papers and authored a textbook.
Peter has no idea what the holders of his endowed chairs will choose to work on. And that is just fine, he says. “I want them to be able to follow their instincts and do what they find enjoyable. It probably will be useful, too.”