Winged Seed is a fascinating, intertwined tale of science and art—the fusion of Dr. John E. Christian's quest to conduct research with radioactive isotopes and to live in a Frank Lloyd Wright–designed home.
Christian established Purdue University's Bionucleonics Department in 1959 and, later, the School of Health Sciences. All the while, he and his wife, Catherine, painstakingly stewarded the creation of their one-of-a-kind Usonian home in West Lafayette, Indiana, named Samara. The word samara means "winged seed," the papery pod that falls from a tree. Design elements resembling the shape of a winged seed are evident throughout the house, which is today a national historic landmark open for tours.
Christian, a registered pharmacist, helped usher in what he called the "Nucleonic Age." In 1946, the first shipment of radioactive isotopes for biochemical research released from the Manhattan Project's Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and produced in a nuclear reactor, arrived at Purdue. Christian was the first civilian to obtain radioactive isotopes from the Oak Ridge facility, personally greeting the train in downtown Lafayette to collect the material for his research.
A samara flutters and spins in the wind, landing far from its originating tree. John E. Christian was a samara—a winged seed sending his research and his students into the world to take root, grow, and change lives for the better. Christian died in 2015, but his impact on both science and art lives on today.
