Parallel Lives: Two Hoosier Chemists From Peru

Parallel Lives chroniclesthe fascinating careers of chemists Albert Fredrick Ottomar Germann (1886-1976)and Frank Erhart Emmanuel Germann (1887-1974). This book gives the readersignificant insight into the beginnings and then the dramatic evolution ofchemical research and education in the United States west of the Appalachians.Both Germann brothers flourished in the first half of the twentieth century;the author's professional career is set in the last half of that century.Although a generation apart, the author and many of characters in this engagingstory walked similar paths.

George Fleck was born in 1934 into a large extended family of Indianafarmers and public-school educators. His mother and her siblings attended theone-room Zent School (District School No. 8, Salamonie Township, HuntingtonCounty, Indiana), less than a mile walk across cultivated fields from thefamily homestead. Later, she and her younger brother drove a horse and buggy totown where they attended Warren High School. George's parents both taughtschool in rural and small-town Indiana for many decades. His paternalgrandfather was Whitley County (Indiana) Superintendent of Schools (1908-1921,1925-1937).

George attended the 1887 Calhoun Street School in South Whitley(Indiana) and then the 1932 South Whitley-Cleveland Township School, graduatingwith a class of 26 in 1952. He attended Yale College (New Haven, Connecticut),where he was a Jack Merillat Griffin Scholar and a research student of physicalchemist Seymour Jonathan Singer. He then attended the University of Wisconsin(Madison), where was a William H. Danforth Graduate Fellow and a researchstudent of chemistry historian Aaron John Ihde and physical chemist Robert ArnoldAlberty.

Dr. Fleck joined the faculty of Smith College (Northampton,Massachusetts) in 1961 as Assistant Professor of Chemistry, becoming part of asix-member Department of Chemistry. He retired from Smith in 2000 as ProfessorEmeritus of Chemistry.