Ellie on Planet X

An anonymous reader asked in the comments if the Strang Institute is affiliated with Washington University in St. Louis. I answered in the comments section, but I thought I’d add the answer here too in case anyone missed it. I didn’t know why Anonymous asked that until I Googled Washington U. So everyone knows what I’m talking about, the Strang Institute logo from 1966 (like what appears on the Symposium announcement from the last post) looks just like Brookings Hall, the main gate, at Wash U in St. Louis. I was told that the gatehouse at the Institute was designed after Trinity College at Cambridge University in England. Well, sort of. Here’s what I found out:

More fun things I didn’t know. It’s always assumed that Carver Agricultural College and Carver Hall are named for botanist George Washington Carver. Though that makes a good story, Carver was only just out of college when the agricultural college was built. It’s actually named for Aloysius Carver, a local and very successful farmer who bred new and “interesting” produce. He created the college from his success. When he died he bequeathed a portion of the campus to his good friend Cornelius Strang for his own research projects. The rest is history. Carver Agricultural College still maintains a small presence on the campus of the Strang Institute and their gardens provide all of the produce for the institute. Some of it very “interesting”.

So there you go!