 |
The couple has supported student research at the Institute for over three decades. |
 |
Dan Harris (PhD ’73) was 20 years old when he arrived at Caltech in September 1968 to work on a PhD in chemistry with Harry B. Gray, the Arnold O. Beckman Professor of Chemistry. In December, Dan met freshman Sally Mais at a mixer at Caltech with students from Pomona College. Two years later, they were married on Thursday, October 1, which was the first day of fall classes at the Institute. Dan had two guests at the wedding, including classmate George Rossman (PhD ’71). Sally invited her roommate to be her guest.
Following the ceremony, Sally accompanied Dan as they drove to Caltech, where he was teaching Chem 2. The academic year of 1970-71 was noteworthy as the first year in which women were admitted as undergraduates to the Institute. However, there were no women registered for Chem 2 that term. When class settled down at the start of the lecture, there were 35 men in the lecture hall, plus one woman in her white dress near the middle of the room.
Dan surveyed the scene of anxious students about to begin their Caltech careers and voiced this spontaneous thought: “I see that there is only one woman in this room today, and the only way I got her to come was to marry her two hours ago.” The class broke into applause.
The couple has supported student research at the Institute for over three decades. In 2025, they established a charitable gift annuity (CGA), which provides fixed quarterly payments for life. Upon death, the remainder of the funds shall be used to support Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowships (SURF). The CGA was funded with a qualified charitable distribution (QCD) from their individual retirement accounts.
In the past, Dan and Sally endowed four SURF students in honor of Gray, the founding director of the Beckman Institute; Rossman, now a professor of mineralogy at Caltech; and two other colleagues. They fund a fifth SURF student annually and endowed the Yvonne Amelia Goddard Scholarship in 2020 to provide support for undergraduates.
While Dan was a research chemist and program manager for the US Navy at China Lake, California, he and Sally authored chemistry textbooks. Their first book, Symmetry and Spectroscopy, was written for Chem 2 when Dan was a graduate student. They published 19 books between 1978 and 2024 all while raising two sons, both of whom would go on to study at Dan’s undergraduate alma mater, MIT.
Textbook proceeds enabled their generosity in student support. Dan and Sally appreciate the philanthropic sentiment expressed by the quotation: “What I gave, I have; what I spent, I had; what I kept, I lost.”
This article was written by the Harrises and edited for inclusion in Techniques.