MEMORIAL OF C. W. HAYES 89 



At Johns Hopkins University 



While at Brecksville several teaching positions were offered to Hayes, 

 including one at the then newly organized Whitman College in Oregon, 

 but he could not bring himself to give up his plans for graduate work in 

 chemistry. His final choice of universities lay between Harvard and 

 Johns Hopkins. He decided on the latter both because it included only 

 graduate students and because of the presence in the faculty of Eemsen, 

 Williams, and others of a brilliant group of investigators that had been 

 attracted by the new institution. Of his choice, his sister, Prof. Ellen 

 Ha3^es, writes: 



"Willard never regretted going to Baltimore. The three years spent at the 

 'Hopkins' were certainly among the happiest and richest of his life. He was 

 without care or responsibility; the miscellaneous undergraduate course of a 

 college was replaced by a few closely related subjects, chief of which was the 

 much loved chemistry. He came in daily contact with master minds and he 

 found congenial fellowship with other young men who, like himself, were there 

 in a zeal for knowledge." 



In this inspiring atmosphere Hayes developed those high scientific 

 ideals to which he remained true throughout his life. 



He arrived in Baltimore in September, 1884, and his almost boyish 

 enthusiasm is shown by his writing: 



"I did not arrive here until late Monday evening, but before I could sleep I 

 had to go around and look at the buildings of the university by moonlight." 



Though entered as a student of chemistry, within a month he joined 

 one of Professor Williams's geologic excursions to Pen-Mar — the first of 

 his life, and he was then twenty-six years old. The excursion led to the 

 top of the Blue Eidge, and he writes : 



"I have at last actually been on top of a mountain and looked off. It was 

 grand." 



His first work was in chemistry and physics, and much the larger part 

 of his time was spent in the chemical laboratory. He also found time 

 for some advanced studies in German, a language in which he was at that 

 time by no means proficient. His enthusiasm for the work of the chem- 

 ical laboratory is reflected in his letters. He writes of his first use of 

 the spectroscope : 



"I had always regarded the spectroscope as a kind of myth, though I had 

 seen them and read descriptions of them; . . . but when I saw the Na K 

 and Li lines flash across the screen my skepticism vanished. . . . Those 

 caesium and rubidium lines came out beautifully, both the blue and the red." 



