Dr. Walter Jennings

In the ensuing years, my graduate students and I first concentrated on flavor chemistry; that is, the isolation, identification, and biosynthesis of natural flavor compounds in a variety of fruits. Our studies on the Bartlett pear (Europeans know this as the Williams pear) were particularly successful, and attracted the attention of a Swiss group that was organizing a symposium on fruit flavors. When they offered to cover my expenses, I happily agreed to present our findings at their 1965 meeting in Zurich. It was a well-attended meeting, our presentation was very well received (particularly by Givaudan scientists), and I made a number of contacts and connections.

Back in the laboratory, we graduated from packed to open tubular columns, and in 1966–1967, probably as a result of the Swiss exposure, I spent a sabbatical year in Vienna working under the auspices of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) identifying the products of food irradiation. We had an apartment in the city close to Schoenbruhn, my three children were enrolled in Viennese schools, and my laboratory was in the suburb of Seibersdorf, which housed the atomic reactor and a team of about 100 scientists from myriad countries. The common language was German, and it was such an atrocious German that it was difficult for my wife (a German war bride) to avoid breaking into merry laughter on many social gatherings. Taste panels that sampled the irradiated food were composed of volunteers that were usually in short supply, but a senior scientist, Dr. Harry Gorseline, insisted on personally sampling all irradiated products. There was a beautiful young Viennese receptionist reigning at the lobby desk in Vienna, and when the 80-year-old Harry eloped with her, it precipitated a flood of volunteers for the tasting panel. In subsequent years, the IAEA gave me short assignments into several eastern European countries — Poland, Bulgaria, and Czechoslovakia — in the days when the iron curtain was very real; some of those assignments were pleasant, while others were like bad dreams. After each such assignment, I was debriefed in Vienna, and then made my way into Germany to visit my wife's relatives before returning home.