492 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 19 60 



Following the early X-ray studies started on cotton fibers by Mrs. 

 Farr and later by Dr. Wayne Sisson, a young botanist, Dr. Earl 

 Berkley, was assigned to Webb's staff about the mid-1930's, through 

 a cooperative arrangement with the former Bureau of Plant Indus- 

 try, to intensify and expand the X-ray studies of crystalline cellulose 

 in cotton fibers. Dr. Berkley and his assistant, Orville Woodyard, 

 developed extensive interrelated information bearing on cellulose 

 orientation, strength, and cell- wall development of cotton fibers, much 

 of which represented successive stages of fiber growth from flower- 

 ing to maturity. They also developed basic data on the cell-wall 

 structure and shrinkage of cotton fibers in general. Dr. Berkley, later 

 for a number of years Director of the American and foreign-based 

 laboratories of Anderson Clayton & Co., is now Director of Fiber Re- 

 search and Testing for the Deering Milliken Service Corporation. 



Others of Webb's early staff who have won distinction are : INIason 

 Dupre, subsequently Assistant to the Director of the Department's 

 Southern Regional Laboratory at New Orleans and now Assistant 

 to tlie Washington Director of the Department's Agricultural Re- 

 search Administration for Cotton Utilization Research and Develop- 

 ment; George Pfeiffenberger, for some years laboratory director for 

 Chicopee Manufacturing Co., subsequently for Otto Goedke, one of 

 the first cotton merchant firms to adapt the new laboratory tech- 

 niques to the selecting of cottons to meet the particular requirements 

 of its mill customers, and now Executive Vice President of the Texas 

 Plains Cotton Growers, Inc., where he is promoting and encouraging 

 extensive research and testing for improving and preserving cotton 

 quality; Murphy Cook, now Director of the cotton fiber laboratories 

 and related technical phases of the worldwide cotton merchant finn 

 of George H. McFadden Bro.; John T. Wigington, Director of the 

 Technical Division of the American Cotton Manufacturers Institute, 

 through which technicians from mills of member companies are 

 trained in the techniques of quality analysis ; and W. J. ^lartin, USDA 

 extension cotton utilization specialist, whose function is to carry to 

 the spinners of the country the lessons of the laboratory findings and 

 experience. 



Still others are: the late Dr. Enoch Karrer who, until his death 

 some years ago, was Head of the Physics Section of the Department's 

 Southern Regional Laboratory; J. N. Grant, now Head of the Physics 

 Section of that laboratory; E. W. S. Calkins, cotton fiber specialist 

 with U.S. Rubber Co.; Arvid Johnson, research and development 

 specialist for the Lumus Gin Co. : Roland L. Lee, Jr., Chief of the 

 Textile Division of the U.S. Tariff Commission ; Leo Gerdes, a con- 

 sultant on cotton ginning and a columnist for the Cotton Trade 

 Journal ; Scott Shaw, active in the development of improved methods 

 and apparatus for the Department's cotton ginning investigations; 



