Published: February 03, 2007 09:27 pm            

Historical Perspective: A look at the lives of William Thomas Burke and Charles Chester Stock

A native of Clay County, William Thomas Burke earned an undergraduate degree from Indiana State in 1949, a law degree (J.D.) from Indiana University in 1953 and a doctorate of juridicial science (S.J.D.) from Yale University in 1959.

Professor of law emeritus at the University of Washington School of law in Seattle since 1999, Dr. Burke recently completed his 50th year as a college educator, a career which began while he was a graduate student at Yale.

The author of several books and numerous academic monographs, Dr. Burke is deemed the world’s leading authority on the international law of the sea and ocean sciences.

In1962, Burke co-authored “The Public Order of Oceans: A Contemporary International Law of the Sea,” with the late Myres S. McDougal, Sterling professor of international law at Yale.

The first comprehensive effort to clarify all aspects of the law of the sea, it was as acclaimed as a trail-blazing work.

A Columbia University law professor asserted that the authors’ analytical tools “enabled them to penetrate below the surface of traditional legal doctrines and to relate the law of the sea to the needs and concerns of mankind in a way not matched by any other work.”

Since the publication of that pioneer work, Burke has continued to address the evolution of international law as it relates to the sea.

He does not hesitate to criticize, as he did in his 1994 monograph, “The New International Law of Fisheries,” hailed as “the best treatment of the subject in the literature of the contemporary era.”

In 1962, Burke accepted a position a professor of law at Ohio State University and then became a professor of law at the University of Washington in 1968. He added an additional title, “Professor of Marine Studies,” in 1976.

Born in Brazil on Aug. 17, 1926, Dr. Burke is the father of three children.



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When 44-year-old Charles Chester Stock became the sixth recipient of the annual Distinguished Alumni Award at Garfield High School in 1954, he was celebrated as “one of America’s most outstanding scientists.”

There is no need to alter that assessment 53 years later. Stock continued to add to his laurels.

The oldest son of Orion L. and Jessie May (Blood) Stock, Chester was born in Terre Haute on May 10, 1910. He attended Collett School and received a diploma from Garfield in 1928, while residing with his family at 2514 N. Eighth St.

In 1932, he earned a B.S. in chemical engineering from Rose Polytechnic, where his father was an honored professor. As a senior, he also was recipient of the coveted Heminway Award.

In 1937, he was awarded a Ph.D. in physiological chemistry from Johns Hopkins University in Cleveland. He married Grace Elizabeth Knipmeyer on June 6, 1936.

Dr. Stock matriculated to New York University, teaching bacteriology while working on a masters degree in medical bacteriology. He received the degree from NYU in 1941.

During World War II, Dr. Stock was an investigator at the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research and the Office of Scientific Research and Developmen., created in 1941 to provide for research on scientific and medical problems related to the national defense.

In 1947, Stock became chief of chemotherapy at Sloan-Kettering Institute, better known today as the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. That year he also was named professor of biochemistry at the Sloan Kettering division of Weill Cornell Medical College, the Cornell University medical school and biomedical research unit situated in New York City.

He became the science director at Sloan Kettering 1960 and was first named vice president in 1961. He served in that capacity over several disciplines until 1980.

Presented an honorary doctorate from Rose Poly in 1954, Stock was a member of the college board of managers from 1972 to 1978.

Dr. Stock has served on the board and advisory committees of the National Research Council, National Cancer Institute, American Cancer Society and numerous academic societies, including honorary memberships in the Societa Italiana di Cancerologia, the Japanese Cancer Association, Hungarian Oncological Society and the European Institute of Ecology and Cancer.

He also has been appointed to editorial advisory boards for “Cancer Research Journal,” “Journal of Medicinal and Pharmaceutical Chemistry,” “Journal of Cancer Investigations,” and “The Journal of Cancer Nursing.”

He was recipient of the Army-Navy Certificate of Merit, the 1965 Alfred P. Sloan Award in cancer research and the 1973 Lambda Chi Alpha Alumni Achievement Award.

The Memorial Sloan-Kettering C. Chester Stock Award Lectureship, presented annually, was created in his honor in 1980.

        

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