Arthur L. Loeb papers (SP 7.0)

Biographical note

Born in Amsterdam, the Netherlands on July 13, 1923, Arthur L. Loeb spent his formative years being educated in the Amsterdam public school system. He became fascinated with geometry and patterns as a child, noting the layout of his schools and the shapes and patterns of his grandfather’s Dutch tiles collection. Hobbies of his were making carefully organized schedules for sport’s leagues and playing piano. During his youth, he studied at the Barlaeus Gymnasium, a prominent secondary school that specializes in classical curriculum and high level pre-university studies. Loeb studied there until he was seventeen when in May of 1940, the Nazi invasion of Amsterdam pushed his family to flee on the last ship to England.

Following their escape from the violence of World War II, the Loeb family settled in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania where Arthur began to study Chemistry at the University of Pennsylvania. He graduated in 1943 with a Bachelor of Science. At just twenty years of age, he enrolled in a Master’s program at Harvard University (Boston, Massachusetts) from which he graduated with a Master of Arts in Physics in 1945 and a Doctor of Philosophy in Chemical Physics in 1949. During his time at Harvard, he resumed his piano practices with the instructor Norman Cazden and sang in the Harvard Glee Club.

In the wake of obtaining his doctor’s degree, Loeb was enlisted as a researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the Chemistry department. While there, he collaborated with the Ceramics Division of the Department of Metallurgy as well as studying at the New England Conservatory of Music with Marie Poutiatine and Gladys Miller.

At the closure of the war in Europe, a friend of his remaining in Amsterdam sent him a recorder that the Loeb family had left behind when they fled. This began a renewed interest in Renaissance music for Loeb who began a lifelong passion for playing the recorder as well as the viola da gamba, the chamber organ, and the harpsichord. Not only a part-time hobby and interest, Loeb became a serious musician outside of his work in science and immersed himself in the Boston music community. During the early 1950’s, Loeb performed a series of concerts at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts in which he utilized instruments within the museum’s collection to perform. He also became Chairman of the Boston Society of Recorded Music and performed, as well as talked, weekly on the Boston radio station WBUR with music conductor Arthur Fiedler.

In addition to his passion for music, Loeb also developed a passion for dance within this time. His interests laid in Scottish country dancing which he later taught courses on at Harvard and even published a collection of dances for the Harvard Scottish Country Dancers. He also performed as a dancer with the Cambridge Court Dancers.

Loeb’s passion for music and dancing is what helped bond his relationship with Charlotte Aarts, a trained lawyer and fellow musician. In 1956, the pair married and eventually translated two books from the Dutch on the De Stijl movement and served together as co-masters to the Harvard Dudley House from 1982 to 1988. The two were also known to perform Baroque and Renaissance era music in their living room.

A year prior to their marriage, Loeb enrolled at the Muzieklyceum in Amsterdam to study the viola de gamba with Hans Bol. Following his return to the states one year later, Loeb rejoined the faculty at MIT in the Electrical Engineering Department. In 1958, he became an Associate Professor and worked primarily with Machine-aided Analysis and Molecular Engineering. He continued his music studies during this time by providing vocals within the Alumni Chorus and the Low Madrigal.

During the 1960’s Loeb dove into his computer research, focusing primarily on crystallography from which he developed computer language capable of storing, communicating, and retrieving spatial concepts and patterns. B.F. Skinner, director of the Committee on Programmed Instruction at Harvard, invited Loeb to be a research participant within the institution. It was during his work here he developed professional relationships with Gyorgy Kepes, M.C. Escher, and R. Buckminster Fuller. Escher and Loeb became lifelong friends and collaborators while Loeb contributed to Fuller’s work by aiding in the writing of Fuller’s masterwork, Synergetics: The Geometry of Thinking.

In 1963, Loeb gave his first studio lecture at the newly minted Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts at Harvard. As Loeb’s researching intensified, he let go of his position at MIT to enable his studies and began an appointed staff scientist positon at the Kennecott Copper Company laboratory in Lexington, Massachusetts. While at Kennecott, he organized a symposium on structure in 1963 featuring both M.C. Escher and R. Buckminster Fuller. In 1969, he held a similar symposium at Kennecott on the structure and systematics of crystals. Throughout the 60’s, Loeb gave lectures on symmetry all over the world including the Netherlands, England, and Italy and solidified his reputation within the science community. In his musical double-life, Loeb joined the choir at King’s Chapel and performed with the Boston Renaissance Ensemble as well as dabbling in painting studies with Iso Papo.

Loeb began his official career at Harvard in 1970 when he was appointed as an Honorary Associate in Visual and Environmental Studies and instructed the Freshman Seminar, “Structure in Art and Science”. In 1973, he became a full-time faculty member and founded the Design Science Studio as well as serving as the Curator and Head Tutor of the Teaching Collection at the Carpenter Center. The same year, he participated in the Symmetry Festival at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts. While at Harvard, he specialized in teaching two courses: “Introduction to Design Science (VES 175)” and “Synergetics, the Structure of Ordered Space (VES 176)”. Loeb taught at Harvard for 29 years, during which time he created nine courses including ones on art, architecture, and literature (i.e. “Burgundy, the Rise and Fall of the Middle Realm”). It was his goal, as a professor and an academic, the bond the worlds of science, design, and art. In 1988, he fronted the 25th anniversary celebration of the Design Science Studio at Harvard with the Design Science 25 symposium.

Loeb continued to teach until the 90’s and remained a “Renaissance man” through his musical and professional studies for the rest of his life. In 1992, he lectured at the Art and Mathematics Conference at the State University of New York, Albany and at the Cameron University (Lawton, Oklahoma) Diversity Conference in 1993 and 1994. Loeb died on July 19, 2002, survived by his wife and his teaching legacy.