Kenneth Spencer Research Library

Each week we’ll be posting a photograph from University Archives that shows a scene from KU’s past. We’ve also scanned more than 2,600 images from KU’s University Archives and made them available online; be sure to check them out!

The KU community recently mourned the death of long-time professor and internationally-recognized sculptor Elden C. Tefft. Examples of Tefft’s artwork can be seen across northeast Kansas and the KU campus, including two of its signature sculptures: “Academic Jay” in front of Strong Hall and “Moses,” Tefft’s self-acclaimed masterwork, outside Smith Hall.

Elden Tefft shortly after he began teaching at KU, 1951.
University Archives Photos. Call Number: RG 41/ Faculty:
Tefft, Elden Prints (Photos). Click image to enlarge.

Tefft working on the university seal, 1955. KU’s first chancellor, Rev. R. W. Oliver,
chose the seal in 1866, and Tefft redesigned it for the university’s centennial.
University Archives Photos. Call Number: RG 41/ Faculty: Tefft, Elden Prints (Photos).
Click image to enlarge.

Tefft working on “Academic Jay,” 1958. Lawrence Journal-World Photo.
University Archives Photos. Call Number: RG 41/ Faculty: Tefft, Elden
Prints (Photos). Click image to enlarge.

“Academic Jay” in front of Strong Hall, 1978. University Archives Photos.
Call Number: RG 0/24/1 Jawhawk Statue (Tefft) 1978 Prints: Campus:
Areas and Objects (Photos). Click image to enlarge.

Elden Tefft with his sculpture of Moses, early 1980s. University Archives Photos.
Call Number: RG 0/24/1 Moses 1980s Prints: Campus: Areas and Objects (Photos).
Click image to enlarge.

Installation of “Moses” sculpture in front of Smith Hall, 1982.
Note the stained-glass window “Burning Bush” behind Moses. Both are
prominent components of KU’s seal. University Archives Photos.
Call Number: RG 0/24/1 Moses 1982 Negatives: Campus:
Areas and Objects (Photos). Click image to enlarge.

Elden Tefft and his son Kim repairing “Academic Jay” after vandals damaged it, 1996.
University Archives Photos. Call Number: RG 0/24/1 Jawhawk Statue (Tefft) 1996 Prints:
Campus: Areas and Objects (Photos). Click image to enlarge.

Elden C. Tefft was born in Hartford, Kansas, twenty miles southeast of Emporia, in 1919. He moved with his family to Lawrence as a boy, eventually graduating from Lawrence Liberty Memorial High School and before entering KU. Service in the Army Air Corps during World War II interrupted his studies, but Tefft returned to KU to earn his bachelor’s (1949) and master’s (1950) of fine arts in design. Tefft began his teaching career at KU in 1950, founding the university’s undergraduate and graduate sculpture degree programs. Two years later, he began construction of what is believed to have been the first complete collegiate bronze sculpture studio and foundry in the nation. Throughout his career, Tefft also traveled extensively, researching bronze casting techniques and setting up bronze foundries. He is credited as the founder of the International Sculpture Center, the world’s largest sculptor’s association and research center. Tefft was awarded the State of Kansas Governor’s Award for Lifetime Achievement upon his retirement from KU in 1990.

To learn more about Elden Tefft, see the biography “Elden Tefft: An Informal Look at a Founding Father of Twentieth Century Bronze Casting in the United States” by Craig Voorhees, available online through KU ScholarWorks. KU Libraries also has several of Tefft’s published writings, which you can find by conducting an author search in the online catalog.

Caitlin Donnelly
Head of Public Services

Melissa Kleinschmidt, Megan Sims, and Abbey Ulrich
Public Services Student Assistants

Each week we’ll be posting a photograph from University Archives that shows a scene from KU’s past. We’ve also scanned more than 2,600 images from KU’s University Archives and made them available online; be sure to check them out!

Happy Lunar New Year! To learn more about this holiday, see the article “The Lunar New Year: Rituals and Legends,” published by the Asia for Educators initiative of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute at Columbia University.

Scenes from a KU Chinese New Year celebration or performance, 1994.
University Archives Photos. Call Number: RG 67/367 1994 Negatives:
Student Organizations: Chinese Student Association (Photos).
Click images to enlarge.

Caitlin Donnelly
Head of Public Services

Melissa Kleinschmidt, Megan Sims, and Abbey Ulrich
Public Services Student Assistants

Each week we’ll be posting a photograph from University Archives that shows a scene from KU’s past. We’ve also scanned more than 1,700 images from KU’s University Archives and made them available online; be sure to check them out!

We’re sharing a bonus set of photographs this week, in honor of tomorrow’s holiday. Happy Valentine’s Day to all our readers, researchers, visitors, and friends!

Giving a Valentine’s Day heart, 1950s. University Archives Photos.
Call Number: RG 71/0 1950s Prints: Student Activities (Photos).
Click images to enlarge.

Caitlin Donnelly
Head of Public Services

Melissa Kleinschmidt, Megan Sims, and Abbey Ulrich
Public Services Student Assistants

Each week we’ll be posting a photograph from University Archives that shows a scene from KU’s past. We’ve also scanned more than 1,700 images from KU’s University Archives and made them available online; be sure to check them out!

We join others around the country in remembering legendary University of North Carolina basketball coach Dean Smith, who passed away at his home in Chapel Hill on February 7.

Portrait of Dean Smith as a member of the “Cage Team” (basketball
squad) in the Jayhawker yearbook, Winter 1953. University Archives.
Call Number: UA Ser 69/1 1953 Winter. Click image to enlarge.

Smith was an Emporia, Kansas, native who graduated from Topeka High School before attending the University of Kansas from 1949 to 1953, graduating with a Bachelor of Science in Education. During his time on KU’s varsity basketball squad, Smith played under Coach Phog Allen and was part of a team that won the national championship in 1952 and was an NCAA tournament finalist in 1953. Smith also played freshman football and varsity baseball while at KU, was a member of the Air Force ROTC detachment and the Phi Gamma Delta fraternity, and participated in K-Club and Sasnak.

Dean Smith (#22, far right) in a game against Nebraska State, 1952-1953. University Archives Photos.
Call Number: RG 66/13 Dean Smith: Athletic Department: Basketball: Players (Photos).
Click image to enlarge (redirect to Spencer’s digital collections).

Portrait of the basketball team after a game, 1953. Dean Smith is in the middle,
at Coach Phog Allen’s right shoulder. University Archives Photos.
Call Number: RG 66/13 Dean Smith: Athletic Department: Basketball: Players (Photos).
Click image to enlarge (redirect to Spencer’s digital collections).

Caitlin Donnelly
Head of Public Services

Melissa Kleinschmidt, Megan Sims, and Abbey Ulrich
Public Services Student Assistants

Tomorrow, February 12, marks Charles Darwin’s 206th birthday. To mark this anniversary, we’re sharing a letter that Darwin wrote to James E. Todd in April 1882. At the time, Todd was a professor of natural science at Tabor College, a Christian college in Tabor, Iowa, that operated from 1853 to 1927. He went on to teach geology at KU from 1907 until his death in 1922.

Letter, Charles Darwin to James E. Todd, 1882.
Call Number: MS C78. Click images to enlarge.

An article about this letter in Transactions of the Kansas Academy of Science (Vol. 48, No. 3, December 1945) describes the circumstances in which it was written, although the author’s speculation that the document was “Darwin’s last letter” appears to be erroneous.

In April 1882, James E. Todd…published in the American Naturalist (volume 16, pages 281-287) a paper, “On the Flowers of Solanum Rostratum and Cassia Chamaecrista.” The paper soon came to the attention of Charles Darwin, then in his seventy-fourth year. Almost immediately Darwin wrote the letter to Professor Todd [shown here]…

The most extraordinary feature of the letter is its date, written nine days before Darwin’s death on April 19, 1882. Darwin had been in poor health for some time and beginning in December 1881 underwent a series of heart attacks. He rallied from these attacks and, as the letter indicates, by April was still mentally active and planning work for the future. Five days after writing the letter his final illness began…

Dr. Fritz Müller, referred to by Darwin in the letter [above], carried on an extensive correspondence with Darwin for many years, although the two naturalists never met (317).

Charles Darwin spent decades gathering evidence for evolution before publishing his groundbreaking book, On the Origin of the Species by Means of Natural Selection, in 1859. As demonstrated by his letter to Professor Todd, he remained active in scientific research until the end of his life.

Want to learn more about Charles Darwin? Spencer Research Library holds copies of many of his published writings, including a first edition copy of On the Origin of Species. You can find these sources by searching the KU Libraries online catalog. Spencer’s collections also contain two additional letters from Darwin; transcriptions of both documents are available online (letter to Emma Gärtner and Charles Lyell). As always, however, anyone interested in seeing these materials in their original physical form are welcome to do so at Spencer!

Digital copies of many sources by and about Darwin are also available; see the Darwin Correspondence Project and Darwin Online.

A transcription of Darwin’s letter to Professor Todd, also from the Transactions of the Kansas Academy of Science article quoted above, follows.

April 10 1882.

Down,
Beckenham, Kent.
Railway Station
Orpington. S. E. R.

Dear Sir

I hope that you will excuse the liberty which as a stranger I take in begging a favor of you. I have read with unusual interest your very interesting paper in the American Naturalist on the structure of the flowers of Solanum rostratum, & I shd. [should] be grateful if you would send me some seed in a small box (telling me whether to plant in as annual, so that I may know when to sow the seeds), in order that I may have the pleasure of seeing the flowers & experimenting on them. But if you intend to experiment on them, of course you will not send me the seeds, as I shd. be very unwilling to interfere in any way with your work. I shd. also rather like to look at the flowers of Cassia chamaecrista.

Many years ago I tried some experiments in a remotely analogous case & this year am trying others. I described what I was doing to Dr. Fritz Müller (Blumenau, St. Catharina, Brazil) & he has told me that he believes that in certain plants producing 2 sets of anthers of a different colour, the bees collect the pollen from one of the sets alone. He wd. [would] therefore be much interested in your paper, if you have a spare copy that you could send him. I think, but my memory now often fails me, that he has published on the subject in Kosmos.

Hoping that you will excuse me, I remain, Dear Sir
Yours faithfully
Ch. Darwin

P. S. In my little book on the Fertilization of Orchids, you will find under Mormodes ignea, an account of a flower laterally asymmetrical, & what I think that I called right-handed or left-handed flowers.

Caitlin Donnelly
Head of Public Services