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I hate starting a new thread for just this but I couldnt find a decent place to drop it into
The new guy seems like he will fit in well there
Not my president.
The J.J. Pickle Research Campus sounds like it's something aggy would have --- an academic facility dedicated to pickle research.
Seriously though, Jake definitely brought the bacon home to Austin for funding while he was in Congress (along with his predecessor "Big Ears" Johnson).
But I think it should have been named the J. Neils Thompson Research Center.
Professor Thompson detailed to me in a one-on-one conversation in his civil engineering office one day about what the center's origins were.
Seems that a critical element for the WWII effort was magnesium, apparently alloyed with aluminum for bomb casings that were light and burned at a very high temperature when set off. Also seems that the Germans were aware of the U.S. efforts in this area of munitions.
German U-boats sunk over 50 ships during the war in the Gulf: German uboats in the Gulf of Mexico mostly because of oil supply. But the Texas Gulf Coast shelf was an important source of magnesium and related ores in the shallow seabed. The U-boats patrols in the Texas Gulf so concerned Washington that they could affect U.S. supplies of magnesium that it looked frantically for other ore sources.
Professor Thompson and his colleagues were made aware that the Central Texas limestone could be a good source of magnesium, far out of the reach of German U-boats, and thus the research began in Austin during WWII for this effort --- thus the founding of the Balcones Research Center, now the J.J. Pickle Research Campus.
So, I'm a bit biased, but would prefer the name of this important UT-Austin component be named for Professor J. Neils Thompson, or at least the "Thompson-Pickle" Research Center.
On a related subject of facility naming to UT basketball, would be a shame if the new facility just throws away Dr. Denton Cooley's name in the process:
I assume Dr. Cooley contributed some serious cash to help build this facility (the Cooley Pavilion practice facility for basketball) and his legacy shouldn't be tossed aside for a computer salesman's medical school, a one-year UT student.
Thompson and Cooley also have an important contribution beyond their legacies in their profession after UT graduation.
Thompson was on the 1934 UT football team that went to South Bend to beat the Domers 7-6, perhaps UT Austin's first most important football win.
Cooley was a 3-year letterman from 1939-41 on UT's basketball team; Texas' first Final Four was just 2 years later in 1943, after Cooley had graduated and gone to med school at UT Medical - Galveston, then Johns Hopkins.
These UT alums should not be forgotten just because of some non-graduates who have a bankroll in the millions or billions.
* Predict HORNS-AGGIES *
Sat, Nov 30 • 6:30 PM on ABC