Rowdy Karsik’s Reviews > A Whiff of Death > Status Update

Asimov is, in fact, aware of the old baseball player.

We have now met Doris, Louis's wife, and heard tell of their daughter, Ginny.

We also learn of Ralph's first choice of research professor, a Professor Otto Ranke, who seems to be a rather unpleasant man from the descriptions of his behavior towards students who fail to meet his expectations.

I will note that a character seems to be named "Cap Anson". I do not know if Asimov was aware of the turn of the century baseball player of the same name.

Louis Brade, 42, an assistant professor of chemistry, walks into a student laboratory looking for hydrochloric acid for an experiment but instead finds... Death!

He comes across the corpse of one Ralph Neufeld, a bright young graduate student, seemingly poisoned to death.

Both a doctor from the adjacent medical school (Ivan Schulter) and the police come to the same conclusion: Cyanide.

A Jack Doheny appears.