TO THE EDITOR

Who's Who
Regarding the photo on the inside front cover of the Winter/Spring 2001 Chicago GSB magazine (below), I can identify the man seated on the sofa (second from left in the picture) as William Vatter, M.B.A. '37, Ph.D. '46, who taught at the GSB in the 1940s. I'm not sure when he retired, but I know he was not a student at the school at the time, as the caption implied. Vatter acted as comptroller for the Manhattan Project, about which he was tight-lipped as he authorized the expenditures of millions for atomic bomb research in what was known on campus as a "metallurgical project." We only learned of his involvement in the project after the bomb was dropped in 1945. He also happened to be my faculty advisor on the thesis I wrote as a graduation requirement for an M.B.A., and he insisted that I revise it for publication in the Journal of Business at that time. It was published.

I would suggest that this picture was taken in 1945 or 1946 because of the wartime ad on the back cover of Fortune. While I can't identify the others in the picture, I suspect that some of them were also faculty members since there was hardly any student lounge facility available, and certainly not one furnished in leather sofas and chairs. Students didn't come to class wearing three-piece suits--ties and sweaters were more appropriate dress. Another giveaway rests with the ties and single-breasted suits. After the Truman administration took over in 1945, double-breasted suits, bow ties, or brightly printed ties were de rigeur.

Maybe other readers from that primordial era will be able to identify the others pictured.

Ed Lowenstern, Ph.B. '45, M.B.A. '46