Claude Wintner, Professor Emeritus of Chemistry, 1938-2023

Professor Emeritus of Chemistry Claude Wintner, 84, passed away on March 30, 2023. He had suffered from peritoneal cancer for nearly ten years but was able to maintain an active life until shortly before his death. He will be remembered for his dedication to learning across decades of teaching and scholarship.

Born in Princeton, New Jersey, to Irmgard Hoelder Wintner and the well-known mathematician Aurel Wintner, he grew up in Baltimore, where he attended the public schools which he always credited with giving him an outstanding elementary and secondary education. He then graduated from Princeton with a degree in chemistry, Summa Cum Laude, in 1959, and received his Ph.D. in Chemistry at Harvard in 1963. He completed his thesis in organic chemistry under Robert Burns Woodward, the acknowledged leader in the field at that time.

After serving for five years as an instructor and assistant professor at Yale, and another year at Swarthmore, he accepted a post here at Haverford where he taught, carried out research, and served in a number of administrative capacities through 1995, first as associate and then as full professor. During that time, he also spent three sabbatical years writing and in research at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich. From 1995 through 2001, he taught a large organic chemistry course at Harvard where, in addition to his interaction with the undergraduate students, he had the opportunity to mentor and encourage the many graduate student teaching fellows who worked with him in the course to consider teaching as a career. In 2002, he returned to Haverford as adjunct, and then emeritus, professor.

Wintner was widely acknowledged as one of the most effective communicators of organic chemistry of his era. "When I arrived to teach at Haverford in the fall of 1975," recalls Terry Newirth, professor emeritus of chemistry, "Claude immediately took me under his wing. Although that year I taught Superlab in the fall and advanced courses in the spring, he invited me to sit in on his organic classes, which I did, and took copious notes. Thus right from the beginning, I learned how to teach organic chemistry, which I also loved, from the master, Claude Wintner. There is no doubt Claude’s passion for organic chemistry was contagious to our students, and his mentorship of young faculty was without peer."

Ted Love '81, M.D., who has gone on to build a distinguished career in biotechnology, agrees. "Claude was the quintessential professor. He taught, challenged and inspired me, and changed my life's trajectory!" Wintner’s dedication to his students inspired Love to establish the Wintner/Love Fellows Endowed Fund, which will support annual stipends to students underrepresented in the sciences by providing living expenses and summer earnings for students' summer research in the fields of science, technology, and mathematics and expenses associated with graduate entrance exam preparation and fees and graduate school application fees.

"Claude Wintner‘s zest for life was almost unstoppable," says Haverford president Wendy Raymond, who lives on campus with her husband, Dave Backus '82. "Shortly after Dave and I arrived on campus, Claude knocked on our door to welcome back his former student from intro chem 40 years earlier! Claude’s love and care for Haverford, especially for his colleagues and former students, never ended. I could always count on Claude for a lively conversation about campus happenings, research and teaching, racial equity, former students we knew in common, or colleagues new and enduring. These last years of his life were a special blessing for me."

Students and faculty colleagues remember Wintner for his ability to explain complex ideas in understandable terms. He attributed this to his being “not a genius,” as he would put it, but one who had to work hard himself to understand difficult concepts and he considered it a vocation to search for new and better ways to transmit them. A well-known anecdote among his former students involves two graduate students who were discussing the merits of their respective undergraduate organic chemistry professors, each — one from Haverford, the other from Harvard — insisting that his was the best. As it turned out, they were arguing about the same person: Claude Wintner. Writing on Twitter, Adam Cifu '89, now a physician-researcher at the University of Chicago, credits Wintner for delivering the most important lecture he ever attended. "About half my class failed our first organic chemistry class freshman year of college. Our professor, Claude Wintner, responded with an hour-long lecture on time management and study skills…Not sure where I’d be without it."

Don McClain ’73, P ‘11, professor of endocrinology and metabolism at Wake Forest, agrees. "Claude Wintner delivered possibly the best lecture(s) I have been privileged to hear in 50 years now of academia. These were the blackboard/chalk days, and he would finish one of his tour de forces at the very lower right corner, totally programmed to perfection. You almost wept at the beauty of what you had just witnessed."

"I was a rather aimless student," says Art Palmer '79, now a biochemistry professor at Columbia, recalling his first-year experience in the Fall of 1975, "unsure of whether my interests were more in chemistry or physics. I had taken chemistry in high school, but greatly disliked it. In the spring semester, I had Claude Wintner for organic chemistry and he changed my life. After that course, I knew I was a chemist and I continue to think of myself as a Haverford-trained chemist, even as my research has veered towards biophysical chemistry and biophysics. The beauty of chemistry as an intellectual discipline and the excitement of chemistry as an exploration of discovery infused Claude’s lectures, which in themselves were beautifully constructed edifices of clarity and insight. I am only one of the many Haverford students who remember Claude with the deepest appreciation of what he gave to us. A giant has left us."

Toward the end of his career, Wintner recorded a set of reference lectures on organic chemistry specifically for streaming video on the internet. Recorded in 2000-2001, Prof. Newirth says they show that he was ahead of his time in envisioning how the internet can be a learning tool, and that he "considered them the summation of a life’s effort to communicate the essence and the beauty of the subject he so loved. Claude was a brilliant thinker who never hesitated to give his honest opinion or share his wisdom."

Wintner married Martha Hollis Calhoun, of Swarthmore, in 1967. She survives him, with their two sons, Edward Aurel (Jennifer) and Thomas Hoelder (Suzanne), and four grandchildren: Anya, Sasha, Virgil, Emily Anne. From childhood, he spent summers with his family in a cabin in Tamworth, New Hampshire, where he maintained a large circle of friends and was active in various conservation efforts. He loved trees, and constantly was planting and caring for them, both in Haverford and in Tamworth. Another great love of his was hiking, in many places in America and abroad, but above all in the White Mountains of New Hampshire.

Memorial contributions may be made to either Haverford College LIFTFAR Program, ℅ Lauren Portnoy, 370 Lancaster Avenue, Haverford, PA 19041 or Chocorua Lake Conservancy, PO Box 105, Chocorua, NH 03817.

Burial will take place in Tamworth at the convenience of the family. A campus memorial service will take place during Alumni Weekend 2023 on Sunday, May 28, in Zubrow Commons, beginning at 11:45 a.m.