Scope and Content Note
The papers of Wallace Reed Brode (1900-1974) span the years 1901-1974, with the bulk of the material produced during the period from 1928 to 1969. The collection consists of personal and official correspondence, research files, and speeches and writings documenting Brode's career as a research chemist, university professor, science organization executive, and government science administrator. The papers are organized into the following series: Correspondence, Speeches and Writings, Subject File, and Classified.
The Correspondence series contains letters, memoranda, telegrams, and attachments and is arranged chronologically. The Speeches and Writings series includes typed, printed, or handwritten copies of speeches and writings by Brode, as well as related correspondence and research notes, all arranged by title. The Subject File contains awards, correspondence, currency samples, diaries, financial records, magazine articles, newspaper clippings, patents, personnel records, photographs, press releases, printed matter, research notes, social invitations, travel records, and other items arranged alphabetically by topic or type of material.
Significant correspondents represented in the papers include John Brademas, Robert B. Brode, Detlev W. Bronk, Vannevar Bush, William O. Douglas, Ora S. Duffendack, Novice G. Fawcett, Angel Hernaiz, Christian Archibald Herter, Hubert H. Humphrey, Foy D. Kohler, Douglas MacArthur, George S. McGovern, W. P. Mitchell, G. Francis Nauheimer, Edgar L. Piret, Herman W. Pollack, Walter L. Reynolds, B. R. Stanerson, and Dael Lee Wolfle.
The papers are particularly comprehensive in their coverage of Brode's tenure as director, 1951-1960, and foreign secretary, 1965-1967, of the American Chemical Society; associate director, 1947-1958, of the National Bureau of Standards; and science advisor, 1958-1960, to Secretary of State John Foster Dulles. There is considerable material concerning the dismissal of Allen Varley Astin as director of the National Bureau of Standards by Sinclair Weeks, secretary of commerce during the Eisenhower administration. In that episode Brode testified before Congress that the bureau had been under "terrific pressure" to approve a commercial battery additive which its tests had proved to have no value.
Some papers in the collection pertain to defense positions Brode held during World War II, particularly with the Office of Scientific Research and Development and the Alsos mission to collect information on enemy scientific research, especially atomic energy experimentation. Other defense-related files concern Brode's administrative and technical advisory positions in the rocket research laboratories of the Naval Ordnance Test Station at Inyokern, California, from 1945 to 1947.
Brode was one of triplet brothers, all of whom, like their father, Howard Stidham Brode, became professors of science. Papers documenting Brode's teaching career at Ohio State University, 1928-1948, are scant. His work as a chemist, however, is well represented by scientific publications, speeches, and research records. Brode was a recognized leader in the field of spectroscopy and applied optics, and most of his laboratory research and scientific publications, both at Ohio State and the National Bureau of Standards, pertain to steric effects in dyes and absorption spectra related to color and dyes. The collection also contains material about Brode's pioneering efforts to promote the use of molecular models with colored balls and wooden pegs as educational tools for representing the structure of organic molecules.
The collection includes material illustrating an avocational interest Brode and his wife, Ione "Sunny" Sundstrom, had in handcrafted rugs and Indian culture of the American Southwest. Brode was considered an expert on the dyestuffs and dying techniques used by native Americans.