{"id":110628,"date":"2017-10-24T17:40:30","date_gmt":"2017-10-24T21:40:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/?p=110628"},"modified":"2019-10-03T12:55:32","modified_gmt":"2019-10-03T16:55:32","slug":"look-what-we-found-andrew-kennedys-microscope","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/2017\/10\/24\/look-what-we-found-andrew-kennedys-microscope\/","title":{"rendered":"Look What We Found: Andrew Kennedy’s Compound Microscope"},"content":{"rendered":"

Assistant Professor of Chemistry Andrew Kennedy has a microscope in his Dana Chemistry office that he cherishes but never uses.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a gold-plated Bausch and Lomb compound microscope once owned by his great-grandfather, T. Francis Kennedy, and since passed down to him.<\/p>\n

A prominent early-20th century physician in Rhode Island, Frank Kennedy, among other good deeds, once joined a Red Cross medical response team to the great Halifax Explosion in Nova Scotia in 1917.<\/p>\n

Frank Kennedy took the microscope with him to Paris for several research stints at the Pasteur Institute before World War II.
\n\"\"<\/a>Back home, Frank Kennedy\u2019s son John Kennedy \u2014 Andrew\u2019s grandfather \u2014 used it during his own medical studies. His wife Muriel Kennedy, Andrew\u2019s grandmother, used the microscope at the House of Good Samaritan Hospital in Watertown, N.Y., where she was a nurse.<\/p>\n

The microscope continued on to Andrew\u2019s father, Thomas Kennedy, who took it to medical school in the 1960s. By then it was being used less and less \u2014 better equipment was coming onto the scene.<\/p>\n

Andrew first saw the microscope as a teenager. One time his grandmother was visiting and she reminded him, \u201cYou can see anything if it exists and you have the right instrument.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The quote is a metaphor for how Kennedy\u2019s students are discovering what\u2019s around them using the right instrument \u2014 in this case, Bates and the liberal arts.<\/p>\n

Many of his students like science, he explains, and many arrived at Bates with their heart set on medical school, \u201cbut now they\u2019ve seen new things, and are having different experiences,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s what a liberal arts college does, right? It gives you a wide range of experiences and different paths to knowing things.\u201d<\/p>\n

The microscope is a liberal arts metaphor in another way, he adds. \u201cThis object has been useful to different people in different ways, and has been owned by a scientist, by a physician, and a nurse: three professions that have commonalities.\u201d As a Bates graduate in the STEM field, Kennedy says, you can travel in many different directions.<\/p>\n

In his own research on understanding the chemical mechanisms that encode and maintain long-term memory, Andrew uses far more powerful microscopes than the antique on his desk.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut in some ways, they\u2019re less beautiful than this instrument,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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