H. O. Burdick

Harold O. Burdick was a native of New Market, N.J. and a 1919 graduate of Milton College in Milton, Wisconsin. He earned his master’s degree in zoology and physiology from the University of Wisconsin in 1927. He subsequently received an honorary doctorate from Milton College.

Dr. Burdick taught biology at Salem College, West Virginia, and at Milton College from 1919 to 1931, when he joined the Alfred University faculty as associate professor of biology. He was promoted to professor and chairman of the biology department in 1937, posts he held until his appointment as Acting Dean (1948) and Dean (1950) of the Liberal Arts College. Five years later he returned to teaching and retired in 1962.

Dr. Burdick was a pioneer researcher in the field of hormonal control of reproduction, working with Gregory Pincus at Harvard University in 1934. He was a superior teacher and avid researcher who actively involved generations of Alfred University undergraduate students during his thirty years of research on the influence of hormones on ovulation and egg transport in laboratory animals. Their publications contributed significantly to the early pool of scientific information that led to knowledge and techniques of modern reproductive endocrinology. Studies he conducted on the response of mice to sex hormones contributed to a fundamental understanding of the physiology of the reproductive cycle of mammals. His finding that single injections of pituitary sex hormones could cause ovulation in mice, formed the basis for his description as early as 1942 of a rapid test for the detection of human pregnancy. He was also aware that his and other discoveries had important implications for birth control in humans. Results of his 1943 investigation with Dr. Pincus indicated that pregnancy in mice and rabbits was inhibited by daily injection of a hormone similar to estrogen. He realized that the prevention of embryo development by hormonal means posed "serious ethical questions."

At the end of World War II, Dr. Burdick was the American Red Cross Field Director with the 10^th Air Force in Bengal Province, India. Earlier he was instrumental in establishing what was later the School of Nursing and Health Care at Alfred University.

One of his daughters, Carol Burdick, is an Assistant Professor of English at Alfred University and he has another daughter Judith B. Downey of Camp Hill, PA.

Previous Lectures:

• 2007 - Playing a Wing Instrument: Solo Performance by a Rainforest Bird. Dr. Kimberly Bostwick, Research Associate and Curator of the Cornell University Museum of Vertebrates.
• 2006 - Maps, Medicine, Microbes: Predicting and Preventing Cholera. Dr. Michael Emch, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health & Society Scholar, Columbia University.
• 2005 - Writing Science in the Post-Secular Age. Sue Hubbell, Science and Nature Writer.
• 2004 - Sandwalk, a two-person play about Charles and Emma Darwin. Presented by the Vermont Players Guild.
• 2003 - The Emporer's New Clothes: Biology and the Social Construction of Race in America. Dr. Joseph L. Graves, Professor of Evolutionary Biology, Department of Life Sciences, Arizona State University West.
• 2002 -A Sense of Wonder, a two-act play based on the life and works of Rachel Carson, written and performed by actress Kaiulani Lee, star of Broadway, movies and television.
• 2001 -Dr. Ronald J. Doyle, Professor of Microbiology and Immunology at the Louisville School of Medicine: History, Misery and Microbes. (Dr. Doyle was a Sigma Xi National Lecturer)
• 2000 -Dr. Ana M. Soto, Associate Professor of Cell Biology, Department of Anatomy and Cellular Biology, Tufts University School of Medicine: Environmental Hormone Mimics and Human Health. (Dr. Soto was a Sigma Xi National Lecturer)
• 1999 -Dr. Bonnie Steinbock, Chair, Department of Philosophy, SUNY Albany: Ethical Issues in Human Cloning.
• 1998 -Dr. Eugenie Scott, Executive Director of the National Center for Science Education, El Cerrito, California: Creationism and Public Education. (Dr. Scott is a member of Sigma Xi)
• 1997 -Dr. Thomas Eisner, Jacob Gould Schurman Professor of Chemical Ecology, Cornell University: The Hidden Value of Nature
• 1995 -Dr. Peter Dodson Professor of Anatomy and Geology, School of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania: Gone but not Forgotten - The Disappearance of the Dinosaurs. (Dr. Dodson was a Sigma Xi National Lecturer)
• 1994 -The Sandwalk, a two-person play presented by the Vermont Players Guild, depicting the interactions of a personal, social and religious nature between Charles Darwin and his creationist wife Emma in anticipation of the publication of The Origin of the Species.
• 1993 -Dr. Robert Johnson, (Alfred University, 1968) Professor of Clinical Pediatrics and Psychiatry, and Director of Adolescent and Young Adult Medicine at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey: Adolescent Medicine - A Response to The Challenges of the 21st Century.
• 1992 -Dr. John Moore, Professor Emeritus of Biology at the University of California at Riverside: Science Education - Human Welfare and Survival. (Dr. Moore was the editor and author of most of the chapters in the widely acclaimed series – Science as a Way of Knowing – published by the American Society of Zoologists) (Dr. Moore was a member of Sigma Xi)
• 1990 -Dr. Thomas Eisner, Jacob Gould Schurman Professor of Chemical Ecology, Cornell University: The Naturalist as Explorer. (Dr. Eisner is a member of Sigma Xi and recipient of the coveted Proctor Prize)