Word: fieser
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Died. Louis Frederick Fieser, 78, the Harvard organic chemist who first synthesized the blood-clotting agent vitamin K and developed combat napalm; in Cambridge, Mass. His research into the chemical reactions involved in cancer-a disease the cigarette-smoking Fieser himself contracted-won him numerous awards. About his work with napalm, the gasoline-derivative jelly first used in World War II and then extensively in Viet Nam, Fieser once declared: "I'd do it again, if called upon, in defense of the country...
...Fieser got quite proficient at making napalm. "It's quite simple," he said. "You just take gasoline, sprinkle in some powder, and stir. First it turns into a mixture the consistency of applesauce, and then you let it sit a while and it turns into a thick, tough gel." He pulled a vial of napalm from one of his office shelves; it looks like dried yellow glue. Fieser said that although it was made 30 years ago it would still burn...
After the war ended, Fieser went back to teaching here. He never worked for the government again. And the army continued to use napalm...
...Fieser was aware of the continuing use of his invention, but he didn't become really outraged about it until June 1972, when he read in the Boston Herald Traveler that a napalm accident in Vietnam had killed or maimed 20 civilians and soldiers. He realized that U.S. soldiers were using napalm as an antipersonnel weapon, not just to burn down buildings. He had never suspected that napalm could be useful to the United States because of the way it clung to people's skin while it burned. A week after he read the article, he wrote Nixon...
...unlikely that any weapon development will go on at Harvard any time in the near future, since there is now a University-wide ban on classified government research. But Fieser is not, despite the abuses of his invention, opposed to professors working on weaponry during wartime...