1959
As to Francis, he attended Columbia University and received his bachelor’s degree in 1952 and his master’s degree in 1954. He was doing research work in experimental psychology at Columbia, did some interesting experiments with animals, was also teaching at the same time, substituting for a teacher there, and enjoying teaching very much, as he often told us. He got his Ph.D. in the year 1955.
I remember that, when Hedy and I were in Australia in 1956, we received a letter from Francis, in which he wrote that he had received offers from two or perhaps three drug companies for research work and he mentioned Eli Lilly in Indianapolis and Schering in Bloomfield, New Jersey. I remember that I answered immediately and advised him to choose the Schering Corporation, which is near New York, otherwise, if he chose Eli Lilly, he would have to move away from New York to Indianapolis. He finally chose Schering. Francis does not remember now that I advised him to choose Schering. He may have done it anyway, without my advice. He had to commute from New York to Bloomfield, which he did not seem to mind. He installed at Schering a fantastic laboratory. Details about it are described by Francis in an interview, which I had taped and then typed, and which are attached to this biography.
While working at Schering, he continued lecturing at Columbia about twice a week, but gave it up later, as it was taking up too much of his time. And while at Schering, he made an important invention, which resulted in establishing a new system of teaching, now well known as “programmed instruction” and the founding of a company “Basic Systems” in 1960, which grew into a big company, with a big office on Broadway at the corner of West 113th Street, where dozens of young people, mostly college students, were working. It was an enormous success, so much so, that a giant company, the Xerox Corporation, finally bought the whole company and paid millions of dollars for it, and Francis got out of that deal 10,000 shares of Xerox, which he could finally sell for 2 ½ million dollars, of which half a million dollars went to the government in taxes. A great success, of which he and we parents with him could be very proud. One of the students who worked for him, soon after he had started with Basic Systems, was Vicki Weitzberg and he married her on December 24th,1961. It was a love affair then and is still a love affair, as can be seen easily.
Now back to where I had left off, our return from our trip to Canada. We made then frequent trips to New Haven, as we were enamoured grandparents, Nancy being our only grandchild, and we thought that she was one of the wonders of the world. They came also once in a while to us in Brooklyn. I took great many movie pictures of Nancy, and she, being now 19 years old, will be glad to see herself as a baby, making the first steps, at first being held by both hands, then by one hand, and then walking freely all by herself, also climbing up the stairs in our house, sitting in a swing and enjoying it, no matter how fast it moved.
Towards the end of 1959, the sad news reached me that my sister Else had died in Bucharest, on the 7th of November. I have written about it already and will come back to it soon.