Oregon State UniversitySpecial Collections & Archives Research Center

Roger Hayward Papers, 1899-2007

Timeline for Roger Hayward

1899 Roger Hayward is born into an artistic family (his grandfather is the painter William Preston Phelps) on January 7 in Keene, New Hampshire. His father, Robert Peter Hayward, is a local businessman whose hobbies include building and repairing time pieces. His mother, Ina Kittredge (Phelps) Hayward, is an artist. The Hayward family will come to include four children - a daughter, Hilda, and three sons, Roger and twins Julian and Peter.
1906 Receives his first sketchbook.
1917 Graduates from Keene High School and enters the Naval Reserve.
1918 Enters the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he studies architecture.
1922 Graduates from MIT, after taking a year off due to illness. Receives a number of awards and accepts a position at Bellows and Aldrich, a Boston architectural firm.
In September, marries Elizabeth ("Betty") Hatfield, originally of Green County, Iowa.
1925 Begins working at Cram and Ferguson, a Boston architectural firm specializing in gothic design.
1926 Sponsored by Cram and Ferguson, Roger and Betty travel to Europe to sketch classical buildings and learn more about European gothic architecture.
1928 Hayward's watercolor paintings are first shown to the public, an event which reinforces his growing reputation as a talented artist. Soon, he becomes a mainstay in the Boston art scene.
1929 Moves to Pasadena, California to assume the position of chief designer at the S.E. Lunden architecture firm in Los Angeles. He becomes friends with various members of the Caltech faculty and, before long, meets Linus Pauling with whom he will collaborate on several projects. Aided by his new acquaintances at Caltech, Hayward educates himself in atomic theory and molecular structure. In his later life, he will also be involved in the construction of several buildings on the Caltech campus.
The U.S. stock market crashes and the Great Depression is soon to arrive. During the Depression years, work in architecture disappears. Hayward seeks out employment any way possible, including as a puppeteer.
1933 Receives an award from the American Institute of Architects for his artwork displayed over the main entrance to the Doheny Memorial Library at the University of Southern California.
1934 Sculpts a 38-foot model of a section of the moon which was commissioned by the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles.
1936 Develops a walnut cracker for the California Walnut Growers Association.
1938 Procedures in Experimental Physics, written by John D. Strong and illustrated by Roger Hayward, is published.
Becomes the basic designer for the University of Southern California's Allen Hancock Biology Laboratories.
1939 Accepts a year-long position as consulting physicist with National Technical Laboratories, which would later become Beckman Instruments.
1941 Accepts a position as consultant for A. O. Beckman and National Technical Labs.
Relocates to a different address in Pasadena, California.
After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hayward volunteers to assist the war effort at the Mount Wilson optics laboratory by designing gun-sight optics, anamorphic lenses, roof prisms and other optical devices for use in warfare.
1946 General Chemistry, written by Linus Pauling and illustrated by Hayward, is published. It is the first of four books that the duo will develop together.
1948 Illustrates Harper Frantz's book A Laboratory Study of Chemical Principles and George Beadle's article The Genes of Men and Molds .
1949 Hayward becomes a partner in the architectural firm Lunden, Hayward, and O'Connor.
That same year, Hayward is hired as replacement artist for the "Amateur Scientist" column in Scientific American.
1950 College Chemistry, authored by Linus Pauling and illustrated by Hayward, is published.
1954 A popular audience paper titled "The Structure of Protein Molecules" is published in Scientific American. This paper is the first to include Hayward as a co-author - with Linus Pauling and George Beadle - rather than an illustrator.
1956 Hayward is hired as a consultant to Disney Productions
1957 The architectural firm Lunden, Hayward, and O'Connor dissolves.
1958 Signs a ten year contract to illustrate exclusively for W.H. Freeman Publishers. Although the arrangement provides Hayward with a fair amount of freedom and financial stability, he grows tired of it and prematurely ends the deal.
1964 The Architecture of Molecules by Linus Pauling and Roger Hayward is published.
1968 Begins writing articles and drawing for the Worm Runners Digest, a publication with which he will be associated for almost ten years.
1973 Hayward's involvement with the Amateur Scientist column is terminated due to his deteriorating eyesight.
Roger and Betty move to Merced, California.
1975 Hayward is hospitalized for an extended period of time; he returns home in a weakened state.
1979 On October 11, at age 80, Roger Hayward dies of complications from emphysema. He is survived by Elizabeth Hayward, his wife of nearly fifty-seven years.

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