Prof. Vincenti remembers undergraduate life at Stanford in the 30's
Emeritus Prof. Walter Vincenti, '38, spoke to the Stanford Emeriti Council on what Stanford was like when he was an undergraduate. He was introduced by former Aero/Astro Chair Emeritus Prof. George Springer, who pointed out that Prof. Vincenti has the longest connection with Stanford of anyone in the emeriti community.
After he graduated from Pasadena High School, he decided to follow his brother, Louie, who had opted for Stanford ten years before. Stanford is still often referred to as The Farm. When Prof. Vincenti arrived in 1934, large sections of Stanford were literally a farm.& A good freshmen prank was burning a bale of hay. All freshmen were housed in Encina Hall, still standing today but not a dormitory for many years. The number of female undergraduates was limited to 500, all housed in Roble Hall. Stanford was known primarily for its undergraduate liberal arts education in those days. The only graduate schools were in law and engineering.
He played on the freshmen basketball team, but soon realized that he had no chance of replacing classmate Hank Luisetti, '38, on the varsity team. Instead he became the manager of the team, going along with them on a memorable road trip. In Kansas City, he met James Naismith, who had invented the sport of basketball. In a game at New York's Madison Square Garden, which was then actually on Madison Square, he saw Luisetti's one-handed shots contribute to the defeat of Long Island University, then the top-ranked team in the country and riding a 43-game winning streak. The publicity that Luisetti's one-handed shots received popularized that shot. Luisetti's statue still adorns Stanford's Maples Pavilion.
Prof. Vincenti was a research scientist with the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, working at the Ames Aeronautical Laboratory at Moffett Field until he joined the new Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics in 1957, focusing on fluid mechanics. He co-founded Stanford's interdisciplinary program in Values, Technology, and Society in 1971, serving several times as chair and teaching the program's popular introductory course for many years. He retired in 1983.
Prof. Vincenti, 98 years old on April 20, 2015, led a Fluid Mechanics seminar on "Inventing the Airplane" to a standing-room-only audience a few days before his 95th birthday. Five years before, he had marked his 90th birthday with a lecture on William Durand.
