{"id":16197,"date":"2012-06-14T12:32:41","date_gmt":"2012-06-14T16:32:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.libraries.uc.edu\/liblog\/?p=16197"},"modified":"2012-06-14T12:32:41","modified_gmt":"2012-06-14T16:32:41","slug":"dr-isay-balikin-innovative-uc-teacher-and-researcher","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/libapps.libraries.uc.edu\/liblog\/2012\/06\/dr-isay-balikin-innovative-uc-teacher-and-researcher\/","title":{"rendered":"Dr. Isay Balikin: Innovative UC Teacher and Researcher"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Isay<\/a>One night in October of 1938, in Cincinnati\u2019s General Hospital (now University Hospital), there was an unusual hustle and bustle as nurses, doctors, and interns searched throughout the building for a tiny piece of uranium which had disappeared. The radium, no larger than a sugar cube, was worth $1400 and hospital staff was intent on locating it.\u00a0 During the search, it was discovered that Dr. Isay Balinkin of UC\u2019s College of Engineering had an electroscope that could be used to find uranium.\u00a0 The problem was that it was late at night, and Dr. Balinkin did not have a telephone.\u00a0 Instead, the hospital sent Postal and Western Union messengers to get Dr. Balinkin and his electroscope at his home on Auburn Avenue.\u00a0 (Yes it does seem like an odd way to fetch someone only a few miles away.)\u00a0 They did find Dr. Balinkin and Dr. Balinkin found the uranium in the trash.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0Dr. Isay Balinkin spent 40 years at the University of Cincinnati and did even more important things than locating uranium in the middle of the night.\u00a0 An enthusiastic teacher, he taught an estimated 8000 students demonstrating science with devices like bowling balls, rubber gloves, and mousetraps.\u00a0 He was also a great researcher and held 7 patents for devices he had invented.\u00a0 Some of his papers are held in UC\u2019s Archives and Rare Books Library.<\/p>\n

Balinkin was born on September 14, 1900 in Odessa, Ukraine.\u00a0 He attended Commercial High School and the Polytechnic Institute of Odessa.\u00a0 His father, Avram, owned a factory that made wood type.\u00a0 As a manufacturer and property owner, Balikin\u2019s father was labeled as a capitalist during the Russian Revolution, and, as a result, Isay was expelled from the Polytechnic Institute.\u00a0 Isay was able to escape the Soviet Union, but the remainder of his family was unable to join him.\u00a0 By the summer of 1921, he had made his way to Constantinople (Istanbul) as a political refugee.\u00a0 A relief commission assisted him in finding a job building a new electrical laboratory at Robert College, an American-sponsored college.\u00a0 The Dean of Roberts College, L.A. Scipio, befriended Balinkin and assisted him in enrolling for classes in the fall of 1921.\u00a0 Balinkin studied Mechanical Engineering.<\/p>\n

\"Balinkin<\/a>Balinkin ended up in Cincinnati by chance.\u00a0 In his senior year at Robert College, Dean Scipio exchanged positions with Professor A.L. Jenkins of UC.\u00a0\u00a0 Balinkin credited Professor Jenkins for convincing him to come to Cincinnati and pursue his master\u2019s and doctoral degrees.\u00a0 He came to the United States in 1925 and received both a master’s degree (1926) and his Ph.D. (1929) in physics from UC.\u00a0 He must have shown much promise as he was appointed Instructor of Experimental Physics at UC the same year.\u00a0 Starting in 1936, he also served as\u00a0Research Consultant for the Cambridge Tile Mfg. Co.\u00a0\u00a0 Balinkin spent 9 months each year teaching and the other 3 conducting research at the Cambridge Tile Manufacturing Co.<\/p>\n

Balinkin was described as an enthusiastic teacher known for devising models and classroom experiments to make physics understandable to the non-science major.\u00a0 He was so popular that he was even featured in an issue of Life <\/em>magazine (October 1947)<\/a>.\u00a0 His exciting demonstrations included using mousetraps and rubber balls to explain the chain reaction of an atomic bomb.<\/p>\n

\"Dr.<\/a>

Balinkn helped designed the Interchem Color Center at the 1964-1965 World's Fair<\/p><\/div>\n

Balinkin\u2019s research accomplishments were many and varied.\u00a0 He co-designed a mercury vapor lamp to be used in laboratories, he patented a process to irradiate fertile queen bees which resulted in gentler bees that produced more honey, and he designed a wave motion machine which demonstrated more than 30 forms of light, heat, and sound waves.\u00a0 Balinkin made advancements in ceramic tile technology and the study of color to ensure that variation in color between tiles were kept to a minimum.\u00a0 He patented a new method of mounting ceramic tile to a mesh-like backing, called the SETFAST Ceramic Tile Mounting Method.\u00a0 Balinkin also gave popular lectures on “Color Phenomena,\u201d and worked on the planning committee of the 1933 Chicago World’s Fair.<\/p>\n

If Isay Balinkin sounds interesting to you, check out the finding aid for his papers in the Archives and Rare Books Library on the OhioLINK Finding Aid Repository<\/a>.\u00a0 To see his actual papers, visit the Archives and Rare Books Library on the 8th<\/sup> floor of Blegen Library.\u00a0 For more information on the Archives and Rare Books Library, visit the ARB website<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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One night in October of 1938, in Cincinnati\u2019s General Hospital (now University Hospital), there was an unusual hustle and bustle as nurses, doctors, and interns searched throughout the building for a tiny piece of uranium which had disappeared. The radium, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,13],"tags":[52,66],"class_list":["post-16197","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arb","category-uclibraries","tag-uc-history","tag-university-archives"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/libapps.libraries.uc.edu\/liblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16197","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/libapps.libraries.uc.edu\/liblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/libapps.libraries.uc.edu\/liblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libapps.libraries.uc.edu\/liblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libapps.libraries.uc.edu\/liblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16197"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/libapps.libraries.uc.edu\/liblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16197\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/libapps.libraries.uc.edu\/liblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16197"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libapps.libraries.uc.edu\/liblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16197"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libapps.libraries.uc.edu\/liblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16197"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}