Special Collections: Robert E. Rose Pinelands Photographs

This collection contains images taken by Dr. Robert E. Rose. These slides contain some of the earliest known color images of the New Jersey Pinelands. The majority of the 62 glass plate slides in this collection are color-positive images, taken in about 1938 of New Jersey nature – flora and fauna. Most of the slides are labeled with a description. A few of the images depict people, notably Dr. Rose.

Born in Sicily, Italy in 1879, Robert Evstafieff Rose was a renowned textile dye chemist. He earned his Ph.D. from Leipzig University in 1903 and then went on to teach chemistry at various institutions, including the University of St. Andrews (Scotland), University College (Nottingham, England), University of Washington, and Mellon Institute. Beginning in 1917, he was employed as an organic chemist at E.I. du Pont & Nemours Company, Inc., where he was the director of the Dyestuff Application Laboratory at Deepwater Point, New Jersey. He held numerous patents and was an expert on dyes for textiles.

Among his published works are Molecules and Man, published in 1920 by Du Pont & Nemours, which uses the chemical structure of atoms to explain their impact on human life and to explain the contemporary events of World War I. Also in 1920, Dr. Rose published through the US Department of the Interior Bureau of Education Treasure Hunting of Today and Chemistry in Our Schools, which makes a case for chemistry education at the high school level. Other publications were more technical descriptions of chemicals and their properties.

He married Glenola Behling on August 27, 1915, in Seattle, Washington. She too was a published chemist. Dr. Rose was also well-known as a naturalist and photographer. He and his wife traveled extensively and photographed wildlife and flowers in many places, including Greece, Albania, Yugoslavia, Alaska, and New Jersey. Dr. Rose died in San Mateo, California in 1946.

While Stockton University’s Bjork Library’s Special Collection and Archives owns the collection, Stockton may not own the copyright for all of the items. Researchers wishing to reproduce materials are responsible for obtaining the proper permissions.