'We live in what may pre-eminently be called the age of the press, in which everybody can put his ideas in print, why should we not then use this powerful weapon for good...'
-Fr. William Rigge, Chapter 14
FATHER William Rigge, S.J. was one of Creighton's finest faculty members. His contributions to early physics and astronomy are well noted in history and even today his name is visible through the Rigge Science Building and his spirit ever-present through the landmark of Creighton's Observatory, where he spent many nights.
In the following 14 Chapters, you will find over 100 pages of text written by Fr. Rigge on subjects that vary from the Great Flu Epidemic to the frequent visits of John A. Creighton to the Observatory. Much care has been made to restore the text to the same version as the one printed in the Creighton Alumnus (a prior Alumni magazine) from December 1937 through June 1939 (Reinert/Alumni Memorial Library - LD1401 C749P73 1935-40). Optical Character Recognition has been used to digitize the text and much care has been taken to correct the mistakes that inevitably result from this method. If you would like to report a misquotation, please write to webmaster@creighton.edu.
Editor's Note
For two decades, after the turn of the century the Rev. William Rigge, S.J. was known to the world as an internationally-famous scientist, especially in the field of astronomy. For 49 years he was known to several generations of Creighton students and alumni as a brilliant teacher, a genial friend, and one of the keenest of observers.
The Creighton Alumnus deems it a rare privilege to bring to you the personal memoirs of Father Rigge, beginning with this issue. Lost for many years after his death, the memoirs were discovered last month by Frank E. Pellegrin, Publicity Director, in a search through one of the university's storerooms.
The memoirs are presented here exactly as they came from the pen of Father Rigge. In addition to their value as entertaining reading, they shed considerable light on the minutiae of the early days of Creighton's history.
Perhaps no one could write of early Creighton as intimately and authoritatively as Father Rigge. A member of the original Creighton faculty in 1878, his tenure continued until his death in 1927 - 49 years later. Throughout that intensely interesting period of nearly half a century he was in the midst of Hilltop activities, seeing with the trained and discriminating eye of the scientist and recording with the honest and objective pen of the teacher.
Here are the memoirs of Creighton's most famous professor. We hope, through this medium, to record them for posterity.