THE POWER OF BEQUESTS — GIFTS FROM OUR CUPOLA ERA ALUMNI
Marguerite “Rita” Wieland (1925–2019)
PHOTO ESTATE OF RITA WIELAND
Rita gave a bequest to the Department of Chemistry of $1.9M. $1M will create the Rita Wieland Opportunity Fund in Chemistry; $900K will be used to create the Rita Wieland Chemistry Department BUILDER Enrichment Fund. of
BERKELEY
Rita at UC Berkeley in the 1940s.
Rita Wieland (B.S. ’46, Chem) was born in Fresno, Ca. Her father’s family was German-Austrian. Her mother was French. Rita’s father, William Augustine Wieland, was a first generation American who graduated from UC Santa Barbara receiving a B.L. in Social Science in 1915. After serving in World War I, he started out as a high-school teacher eventually becoming a high-school principal in San Francisco. He met and married Florence Buckett in London in 1924 after the war. They returned to the United States and first lived in the central valley of California before settling in San Francisco. Florence raised the family and volunteered at Kaiser Hospital and the De Young Museum. Rita went to Lowell High School in San Francisco and started at UC Berkeley in 1943 during the College’s World War II era. G.N. Lewis was dean and Glenn Seaborg and other faculty and students from the College were working on the Manhattan Project at the time. After receiving her B.S., Rita started her lifelong career as a researcher at Shell Development Co. in Emeryville. The Emeryville Research Center was a major research facility of Shell Oil in the U.S. from 1928 until 1972. The facilities were
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located on close to 27 acres, included nearly 90 buildings at peak, and employed a staff of 1,500. The center did research on Tricresyl phosphate (TCP) and other gasoline additives; desulfurization methods and standards for gasoline and motor oil; and pioneering fingerprinting techniques to identify oil spill origins, among many other innovations. Though Shell self-identified as a conservative employer, many Shell scientists were politically progressive, championing causes such as the Sierra Club and no-growth economic strategies. Shell Development’s senior scientific ranks included scientists who had been graduate students of Glenn Seaborg, a UC Berkeley scientist who pioneered techniques to create and verify transuranium elements. Shell Development also bore the indirect imprint of the physicist Robert Oppenheimer who was the director of the Manhattan Project and who was interested in the well-being of the workers at the facility. Rita had many personal interests including memberships in the Mt. Diablo Ski Club and The Sierra Club. She enjoyed traveling throughout the world learning about different cultures. She became a member of UC Berkeley’s Benjamin Ide Wheeler Society in 2006 establishing a deferred charitable gift. We are very grateful to Rita for her gift to the College.
