There are three stories here, the first from the New York
Times, the second from the Chicago Tribune, and the third from the Chicago Sun-Times. Be sure to read all of them.
But first, a few photos of Dr. McCrone, contributed by Jim Shoffner. Click on picture to get an enlarged version ---
July 26, 2002
Walter McCrone, Debunker of Legends, Dies at 86
By PAUL LEWIS
Walter C. McCrone, a chemical analyst who used his microscope to conclude that the Shroud of Turin never enveloped the body of Jesus and that a famous ancient map belonging to Yale University is probably a fake, died on July 10 in Chicago, long his hometown. He was 86.
Dr. McCrone, a pioneer in the art of chemical microscopy, also produced evidence contradicting the theory that Napoleon was poisoned on St. Helena by agents of the re-established French monarchy: the arsenic levels he found in the emperor's hair were simply too low.
On the other hand, when he put samples of Beethoven's hair under a microscope, he discovered that the composer had suffered from lead poisoning, possibly contracted at health spas. That exposure might explain the alternating fits of depression and towering rages that Beethoven suffered in later life, and perhaps his deafness.
In 1978, Dr. McCrone declared that his examination of the Shroud of Turin, a 14-foot strip of linen bearing the shadowy imprint of a dead man, was not the cloth in which Jesus was buried after the Crucifixion, contrary to what pious pilgrims had believed for centuries, but instead a "fantastic work of art" from the Middle Ages.
The image, he found, had been painted onto the cloth in medieval times with red ocher and vermilion pigments. Dr. McCrone speculated that this had probably been done by priests hoping to create a "relic" for their church that would attract pilgrims and their donations.
In 1988, independent carbon dating concluded, as Dr. McCrone had, that the linen dated from a time about 13 centuries after the Crucifixion. A 1999 analysis of pollen grains taken from the shroud, however, placed its origin near Jerusalem before the eighth century.
Some four years before his finding on the shroud, Dr. McCrone had broken some bad news to Yale: its famous Vinland Map - which had been regarded as evidence that at the time of Columbus, some Europeans already knew of a vast land across the Atlantic between Europe and Asia - was, he said, a forgery.
While the parchment the map was drawn on was medieval, Dr. McCrone showed that the ink used contained a crystalline form of titanium dioxide, rare in nature and not commercially available as a pigment until the 1920's.
The university, which was given the map by a rich benefactor, now reluctantly admits that Dr. McCrone was probably right.
"Although the Vinland Map continues to have supporters as well as detractors, there is increasing scientific evidence suggesting it is a 20th-century production," Robert Babcock, curator of early manuscripts at Yale's Beinecke Library, said yesterday.
Walter Cox McCrone was born on June 9, 1916, in Wilmington, Del. He received his undergraduate degree and doctorate in chemistry at Cornell University.
He taught microscopy and materials science beginning in 1944 at what is now the Illinois Institute of Technology, leaving in 1956 to set up his own research company, McCrone Associates, in Chicago. The company undertook analytic work for businesses, museums, art collectors and law enforcement agencies.
He later founded McCrone Accessories and Components, which advised on the design of microscopes.
Dr. McCrone, who published some 600 articles about microscopic analysis, was also editor and publisher of a professional journal, The Microscope.
He is survived by his wife, the former Lucy Beman.
Copyright 2002 The New York Times Company
WALTER C. McCRONE JR., 86
Microscopy giant debunked validity of Shroud of Turin
By James Janega
Tribune staff reporter
Published July 21, 2002
Walter C. McCrone Jr., 86, an artist with a microscope who confirmed for the Vatican that the Shroud of Turin was created 13 centuries after Jesus Christ was buried; used a lock of Ludwig van Beethoven's hair to identify lead poisoning as the cause of the composer's death; and poured cold water on suspicions that Napoleon Bonaparte was poisoned with arsenic, died Wednesday, July 10, of congestive heart failure in his Near South Side home.
An energetic man with a love of feeding squirrels and making paradigm-shattering pronouncements, Mr. McCrone boasted that under his microscope he could identify on sight individual tree pollens, fly ash, aspirin, TNT, cholesterol, calcite, wool and remnants of the singular blue pigment used by Claude Monet to paint water lilies.
He said all were among the 30,000-odd substances he'd seen beneath his lenses in a 60-year-plus career; he confided that he debunked the authenticity of formerly priceless works of art for the thrill of the chase.
Along with a 17th Century microscope built by Antony van Leeuwenhoek and a rack holding dangling bow ties, it wasn't unusual to find in Mr. McCrone's office an original Vincent Van Gogh or a puzzling bit of crime scene evidence. His laboratories in Chicago and Westmont played host over the decades to everything from lunar dust to fragments of Leonardo da Vinci's "Last Supper."
"Most of the world never sees what I see," he told the Tribune in 1998. "It is more beautiful than anything outside the microscope."
He was, in the words of many professional microscopists, a giant in a very small world, publishing 600 papers on microscope work, and 16 books and book chapters, including "The Particle Atlas" in 1970, still recognized as one of the best handbooks for materials analysts.
"Anyone who's gone through a graduate program in art conservation knows him, his name, has his pigment handout, or their teacher was taught by him," Eugena Ordonez of the Museum of Modern Art in New York told the Tribune in 1998. "In your first year, it's McCrone, McCrone, McCrone."
A native of Wilmington, Del., Mr. McCrone hoped to follow his father into civil engineering but flunked engineering classes at Cornell University. Shifting gears after a course under legendary microscopist Emile Chamot, Mr. McCrone wound up with a chemistry degree in 1938, a PhD in organic chemistry in 1942, and two years of post-doctoral work, all at Cornell.
Beginning in 1944, he did research and taught microscopy and materials science at what is now the Illinois Institute of Technology, leaving in 1956 with his mind set on becoming an independent consultant. He met the former Lucy Beman on a consulting visit to Massachusetts; they were married in 1957.
Beginning in 1956, he based his operations from McCrone Associates, an industrial problem-solving lab, on the Near South Side, and opened research and teaching laboratories in London and Chicago. He later founded McCrone Accessories and Components in Westmont to aid others in the design of microscopes. Before long, he was the premier investigator of all things tiny.
"It's a very direct method, and you can see things happening. You can see solutions to problems. You can see answers to questions," his wife said. "He loved it. He took pleasure and satisfaction in solving problems."
In 1978 he joined the team of 30 scientists who analyzed the Shroud of Turin, the 3-by-14-foot piece of cloth believed by many to be Jesus Christ's death shroud.
Mr. McCrone was the first to conclude through scientific experiments that pigments on the cloth were red ochre, not blood, and dated to 1355. He regarded it as "a beautiful painting by an inspired medieval artist."
Other findings followed: The Vinland Map, reputed to show the New World as discovered by Leif Ericson centuries before Columbus sailed from Spain, contained a pigment that didn't exist until 1920. A hair snipped from Beethoven's head after his 1827 death contained a high concentration of lead. A similar investigation of Napoleon's locks found very little evidence of arsenic, helping establish, to the chagrin of conspiracy theorists, that he probably wasn't poisoned after all, at least not that way.
Mr. McCrone helped tie Wayne Williams to the Atlanta murders of 29 young men and boys in 1982 and won awards for such work, including the 1982 Certificate of Merit from the Forensic Science Foundation.
He also received the 1999 Emile Chamot Award and the 2002 August Kohler Award from the State Microscopical Society of Illinois, and the American Chemical Society National Award in Analytical Chemistry in 2000 for his study of the Shroud of Turin, among numerous professional accolades.
Though he prided himself until last year on working 15-hour days, 365 days a year (he walked to work as early as 3 a.m. and kidded as "lazy" his wife of 45 years, a microscopist who herself worked 80 hours a week), he had a soft heart and a keen social conscience that led him to civic volunteerism.
He had been on the board at Ada S. McKinley Community Services since 1951 and was its president from 1964 until 1995. The agency dedicated a new facility to Mr. McCrone in 1997.
His wife is his only immediate survivor.
His memorial service will be held at the facility, 1863 S. Wabash Ave., at 10 a.m. Sept. 9.
Copyright © 2002, Chicago Tribune
Walter McCrone: Proved Shroud of Turin was Fake
Chicago Sun-Times, July 18, 2002
by Gary Wisby, Staff Reporter
Known as "the father of microscopy", Walter C. McCrone Jr. exposed the Shroud of Turin as a fake by showing that it was created in the 13th century.
He headed McCrone Associates, an analytical consulting firm with 2,000 clients, and founded the McCrone Research Institute, which has taught more than 20,000 students in all facets of microscopy.
Dr. McCrone, 86, died July 10 at his home in the Douglas neighborhood on the South Side.
He was born in Wilmington, Del., and grew up in the state of New York. He received a bachelor's degree in chemistry in 1938 and a Ph.D. in organic chemistry in 1942 from Cornell.
After two post-doctoral years at Cornell, he took a position as microscopist and materials scientist at Armour Research Foundation, (now the Illinois Institute of Technology Research Institute) in Chicago, rising to assistant chairman of the chemistry and chemical engineering department. He left in 1956 to become an independent consultant, and he built McCrone Associates from a one-man service to a world-renowned facility dedicated to microscopy, crystallography and ultramicroanalysis.
In 1960, Dr. McCrone founded the McCrone Research Institute, a nonprofit organization devoted to the teaching and research of light and electron microscopy. He expanded its activities to include McCrone Scientific, a sister facility in London.
He also was editor and publisher of The Microscope, an international journal.
In 1978, McCrone achieved world fame with his conclusion that the Shroud of Turin was painted during the Middle Ages. Ten years later, his work was vindicated by carbon-14 dating, and in 2000, it was honored by the American Chemical Society National Award in Analytical Chemistry.
He was asked to look at other religious relics but refused because he didn't want to cast doubt on people's faith.
"I think it does no harm to believe in relics, and in fact does a lot of good," he said in a Chicago Sun-Times interview in 1988. "Let's let them be."
He also debunked the Vinland Map, supposedly drawn by the Vikings 52 years before Christopher Columbus came to the Americas, by showing it was created after 1917.
Dr. McCrone was one of the first to be profiled in the Bill Kurtis series "The New Explorers."
Nancy Daerr, assistant director of the McCrone Research Institute and his associate for 30 years, said, "Dr. McCrone lived a very modest life. He walked to work every day, carrying peanuts to feed a squirrel on the way in.
"He lived on the 21st floor of a high-rise and took the stairs up and down. Until he got sick a year ago, he was at work at 3 in the morning seven days a week, leaving about 6. His life was microscopy. His vocation and avocation were right here."
Dr. McCrone served on the board of Ada S. McKinley Community Services from 1951 and was its president from 1964 to 1995. In 1997, the agency named for him its new facility that houses 120 clients in a sheltered workshop program and provides intake, evaluation and job placement for more than 1,000 people a year.
He also was on the boards of VanderCook College of Music and the Campbell Center for Historic Preservation Studies in Downstate Mount Carroll.
Dr. McCrone and his wife, Lucy, recently donated funding for a professorship in the College of Arts and Sciences at Cornell.
He received awards from the American Microchemical Society in 1970; the New York Microscopical Society in 1977; the Association of Analytical Chemists in 1981; the Forensic Foundation in 1982; the Criminalistics Section of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences in 1984; the VanderCook College of Music in 1988; the National Asbestos Council in 1990; the California Association of Criminalists in 1991, and the Chicago Section of the Microscopical Society of Illinois in 1993. He was the only person to receive both the Emile Chamot Award, in 1999, and the August Kohler Award, in 2002, from the State Microscopical Society of Illinois.
Dr. McCrone is survived by his wife, also an accomplished microscopist, who worked alongside him for 40 years. A memorial service will be at 10 a.m. Sept. 9 at the Walter C. McCrone Industries Facility of Ada S. McKinley Community Services, 1863 S. Wabash.
7/20/02
