Wednesday, February 22, 2006
Thirty years ago, Buckminster Fuller lectured at USI
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R. Buckminster Fuller, the great American engineer, mathematician, and architect perhaps best known for designing the geodesic dome, lectured an American Issues Forum course 30 years ago, on February 25, 1976. According to Darrel Bigham, professor of history, Fuller was the most celebrated of several AIF guest lecturers in the spring of 1976. "The AIF was one of several national efforts to encourage Americans to think about the American Revolution Bicentennial, which reached its climax on July 4, 1976," he said. "Bucky" Fuller, 80 years old at the time, lectured to an overflow audience. Donald Pitzer, professor of history, said, “We had people sitting in the aisles in Forum I, so there were well over 300 people, and we had a TV hookup in Forum II for the rest of the crowd.” Fuller's subject was “Utopia or Oblivion.” “He thought that by recycling and being careful with natural resources and energy sources, we could provide for the whole population of the earth,” Pitzer said. “If we did that, we could produce a type of Utopia, but if not, we would destroy ourselves.” Pitzer said Fuller began his lecture very simply, “dancing around like a little child.” “He even lay down on the lab table that was there. He got everybody involved. And as he went along, he began to explain that the tetrahedron [the basic structural unit of the geodesic dome] is the building block of the universe, so he was showing that the way he had put the universe together in his mind and in his structures was really the fundamental way that the universe builds structures. “Then he began writing equations on the blackboard, and he spoke for three hours. He was finally dancing on the ceiling - nobody could follow him. He was up there in the sky intellectually and scientifically, and we were in awe. "He electrified the room.” Having an intellectual giant on campus, Pitzer said, “was uplifting, positive, intellectually charged - I just thought that he had given us a great boost. We were such a young institution, just barely 10 years old. Fuller said he felt that the places he was invited were the intellectually alive places on the planet.” Pitzer contacted Fuller through one of his students. “I had a student whose parents somehow had a contact with him, and he spoke for $500 dollars, when his fee was $10,000. We were very lucky to get him to come here,” Pitzer said. When Fuller died in 1983, Pitzer wrote a "little verse" that was published in an Evansville newspaper. He said he was inspired by Fuller’s love of inventing new words. Weren’t we lucky To have Bucky That intellectual extravaganza Showing us a whole new world of Universe, Omniverse, Buckyverse. |
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