Image of members of the Cavendish Research group, Cambridge University. Dr. E.L. Harrington of Physics (third row, fourth from right) among the people identified, including two women, Gladys Isabel Harper (née Mackenzie), and Esther "Polly" Salaman (née Polianowsky).

Bio/Historical Note: Gladys Isabel Mackenzie was born 2 May 1903 in Edinburgh, Scotland. She attended Craigmount School, Edinburgh, from 1913-1919. In 1919 Mackenzie matriculated in the Faculty of Arts at the University of Edinburgh. She graduated with an MA with first class honours in Mathematics and Natural Philosophy in 1924. She was also awarded a BSc from [Edinburgh]. Mackenzie was appointed as an assistant in the Department of Natural Philosophy in the University of Edinburgh. She worked with Charles Glover Barkla, professor of Natural Philosophy, and wrote two joint papers with him both published in the Philosophical Magazine: Notes on the superposition of x-rays and on scattering: the J phenomenon (Part III) (February 1926) and Notes on scattered x-rays: the J phenomenon (Part V) (November 1926). After working in Edinburgh for two years, Mackenzie was appointed to a lectureship in Physics at Newnham College, Cambridge in August 1926. Mackenzie joined the Edinburgh Mathematical Society in March 1925. She continued her membership when she went to Newnham College, Cambridge but she left the Society in 1930. On 14 March 1929 Mackenzie married Wallace Russell Harper, PhD, who was also a physicist; they had one son. In 1930 the Newnham College Roll letter (reporting for 1929) stated “Mrs W R Harper (Miss G I Mackenzie), who had been lecturer in Physics since 1926, resigned her post this year, and the Council appointed Miss A C Davies (D.Sc. Lond.) to succeed her”. Gladys Harper, now her married name, was a Bristol University Carnegie Research Scholar in 1929-30, then a research fellow from 1930 to 1933. From the beginning of her time at Bristol in 1929 to her resignation in 1947, Harper conducted her most noteworthy research. She started by researching methods of measuring the ranges of alpha particles. She tested ranges of alpha particles at varying initial velocities as they travelled through gases such as air, oxygen, nitrogen, argon and hydrogen and observed the stopping power of these gases as the particles travelled through them. Harper discovered a relationship between the range of the alpha particles and its initial velocity and proved that the theory of Gaunt for the stopping power of hydrogen atoms is also applicable for molecular hydrogen. This research was published in 1930. She was employed part-time at Bristol University to undertake both teaching and research from 1933 to 1939, then she was appointed as a lecturer in the Department of Physics, a position she held until 1947. In 1952 Harper was appointed as a part-time teacher at Channing School in Highgate, London. She taught there until 1958 when she became a part-time lecturer in Physics at Queen Elizabeth College, London. She continued in this position until she retired in 1970, the year her husband died, when she was made an honourary lecturer of the college. Gladys Harper died 22 February 1989 in North York, Ontario.

Bio/Historical Note: Esther (Polly) Polianowsky was born 6 January 1900 in Zhytomyr, Russian Empire. In 1917 she was accepted to the Kiev University to study mathematics. As civil war and anti-Semitic pogroms spread across the Russian Empire, however, her father forbade her from leaving alone for Kiev. Polianowsky fought in the Ukrainian national resistance during the Russian Civil War, thereupon escaping to Mandatory Palestine in January 1920 to join a group of pioneer agricultural workers. She succeeded in securing travel documents for her widowed mother and four siblings, and paid a team of Polish foresters to lead them to the Polish border in secret. From there, Esther guided them to Palestine. Despite the volatile situation for Jews in Germany, Esther and her sister Feyga (Fania) elected to relocate to Berlin in the summer of 1922 to resume their education. Polianowsky's application to the University of Berlin was sponsored by Albert Einstein, whose recommendation gained her admission to the Faculty of Physics, in spite of her not having completed an entrance examination. While his pupil, Polianowsky developed a personal relationship with Einstein. He encouraged her writing after reading her article in the Frankfurter Zeitung recalling the murderous pogroms in Zhytomyr by Petliura's Cossacks during Orthodox Christmas of 1918. As the Nazi Party rose to prominence in Germany, Polianowsky was encouraged by Einstein to leave the country after graduation. He provided her with a recommendation to pursue doctoral work at the Cavendish Laboratory under Sir Ernest Rutherford. Her scholarship, funded by Jewish philanthropist Redcliffe Salaman, was conditioned on her later going to Israel to teach. Although this plan did not come to fruition, she grew close to the Salaman family and married Myer Salaman (1901-1995), a pathologist. Polianowsky left the Cavendish in the summer of 1928, her PhD incomplete, to devote her life to her family. At the suggestion of Ludwig Wittgenstein, Esther began writing fiction for an English audience. She published her first novel, Two Silver Roubles, in 1932, only six years after arriving in England knowing only Yiddish, Russian, German, and Hebrew. From 1940 on, Myer and Esther lived in Cambridge. When Myer joined the Royal Army Medical Corps in 1943, Esther and their children stayed in Cambridge. That same year, she and a co-author published an anthology of poems from the Russian, which included biographies of Kruykov, Pushkin, Blok, and Akhmatova. Salaman's reminiscences of Einstein were broadcast on the BBC Third Programme in 1955, and her second novel, The Fertile Plain, was published in 1956. Esther Salaman's later works include A Collection of Moments (1970), a study of involuntary memory, and The Great Confession (1973), which explores the use of memory by Aksakov, De Quincey, Tolstoy and Proust. She published memoirs of Albert Einstein and Paul Dirac in Encounter in 1979 and 1986 respectively. Esther Salaman died on 9 November 1995 in London at the age of 95.

Bio/Historical Note: Since it was founded in 1874, the Cavendish Laboratory has been at the forefront of discovery in physics. The core of the Laboratory’s program has been, and continues to be, experimental physics, supported by excellence in theory. The policy of the Department is to promote world-leading experimental and theoretical physics in all its diversity.

F.H. Auld, University Chancellor, making presentation of an honourary Doctor of Laws degree to Vivian Morton during Convocation held in Physical Education gymnasium. N.K. Cram, University Registrar, prepares to hood the recipient.

Bio/Historical Note: Vivian Williams Brown was born 10 September 1896 in Amherstburg, Essex County, Ontario, to Ida and Charles Brown, a Methodist minister. By 1906, the family had moved west to Regina. Although little is known of her childhood, the “Tribute” to her in the Journal of 1990 records that she was educated in schools in Ontario, Saskatchewan, and British Columbia. She graduated from the University of Saskatchewan in the spring of 1917 having earned a B.A. Earlier that same year, she had become a founding member of the Historical Association of the University of Saskatchewan along with six other students of Professor Arthur Silver Morton, whom she would later marry. She served as President of the University of Saskatchewan’s Alumni Association, President of the University Women’s Club of Saskatoon, and was a Charter Member of the Saskatoon Branch of the Canadian Institute of International Affairs. During the 1940s and 50s she also served in various positions with the National CFUW Board. The Saskatchewan Arts and Crafts Society created a joint scholarship in their names at the University of Saskatchewan. The Vivian Williams Morton and Arthur Silver Morton Memorial Travel Scholarship, designated for travel relating to research, is still presented annually to a fourth-year undergraduate or graduate student studying History, Anthropology, Political Studies, or Native Studies. A year after her term as CFUW President, in 1962, the University of Saskatchewan presented Morton with an honourary Doctor of Laws for her contribution to arts and culture. Vivian Morton died in 1990 in Ontario at the age of 94.

A winter scene done by Wynona Mulcaster, member of the Art Department faculty.

Bio/Historical Note: Wynona Croft Mulcaster was born in 1915 in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan. She studied art with Ernest Lindner from 1935 to 1945, earning her Bachelor of Arts from the University of Saskatchewan in 1943. Mulcaster then went on to study at the Banff School of Fine Arts (1946), and at the School of Art and Design in Montreal under Arthur Lismer (1947). Mulcaster also attended many workshops at Emma Lake between 1937 and 1993, studying with Joseph Plaskett, Will Barnett, and Kenneth Noland, among many others. Mulcaster spent several years as an art teacher to school children in Prince Albert and rural Saskatchewan (1937-1943), then taught art at the Saskatchewan Teachers' College in Saskatoon, where she served as Director of Art Education (1945-1948), and at the University of Saskatchewan (1964-1977). Her students included Robert Murray, Otto Rogers, and Allen Sapp. Mulcaster's art led her to travel to Europe to visit major galleries in 1958 and 1959, after receiving a Canada Council grant. In 1976, she received a second Canada Council grant that allowed her to study at the Instituto Allende in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, receiving an MFA from this world-class art school in 1976. Mulcaster had an interest in horses, and they were her primary subject matter before she transitioned to landscape painting. In 1945 she founded the Saskatoon Pony Club, where she taught riding most days, with no salary, right up to 1973. Mulcaster was inducted into the Saskatoon Sports Hall of Fame for this work in 1994. Mulcaster's art is represented in many important collections, including those of the Canada Council Art Bank (Ottawa), the MacKenzie Art Gallery (Regina), the Mendel Art Gallery (Saskatoon), Glenbow Museum (Calgary), and the Saskatchewan Arts Board. In 1993 Mulcaster was awarded the Saskatchewan Arts Board Lifetime Achievement Award for Excellence in the Arts. Mulcaster died in August 2016, at the age of 101, in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, where she had lived for nearly 40 years.

Head and shoulders image of Elizabeth Brewster, professor of English, seated at her desk.

Bio/Historical Note: Elizabeth Winifred Brewster was born 26 August 1922 in Chipman, New Brunswick. As a young child she was a keen reader of any material that presented itself, including literary classics and the Eaton’s catalogue. Her first poem, submitted by her father and accepted by the Saint John Telegraph-Journal, was published when she was 12 years old. After she graduated from high school in 1942, Brewster entered the University of New Brunswick on an entrance scholarship. She received a BA in 1946, an MA from Harvard's Radcliffe College in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1947, then began her PhD at Indiana University, before electing to travel to England on a Beaverbrook overseas scholarship to study at King's College, London from 1949-1950. She later earned a BLS from the University of Toronto, then returned in 1957 to Indiana University Bloomington to complete her PhD on the work of English poet George Crabbe and graduated in 1962. She was a professor at the University of Saskatchewan, where she taught literature and creative writing from 1972 until she retired in 1990. A founding member in 1945 of the Canadian literary journal The Fiddlehead, Brewster went on to publish over twenty collections of her poetry, five books of fiction, and two memoirs. Over the course of her long career she was a recipient of many awards and honours, including the E.J. Pratt Award for poems from her second book Lillooet, the Saskatchewan Lifetime Achievement Award (1995), the Saskatchewan Book Award for Poetry (2003), the Saskatchewan Order of Merit (2008), and the Queen's Diamond Jubilee Meda (2012)l, and several other honours. Brewster was awarded an honorary degree from the University of New Brunswick in 1982. Her poetry collection Footnotes to the Book of Job was shortlisted for the 1996 Governor General's Award, and in 2001 she was inducted as a Member of the Order of Canada. Brewster died 26 December 2012 in Saskatoon at age 90.

Equivalent in scope to the Presidential or Vice-presidential records, this fonds specifically documents the administration of the Saskatoon campus from 1967-1974, and includes correspondence, reports, minutes, and memoranda. It also includes considerable documentation of the various administrative committees functioning during this period.

This fonds contains correspondence with colleagues, students and friends, subject files including information on the role of scientists in public affairs and education, nuclear energy, labour relations, various University of Saskatchewan committees and the Department of Physics, lecture and research notes, articles, reports and work that was in progress at the time of Dr. Skinner's death. There is also a substantial section of reference material.