The Most Influential People Across History
Find the most influential people in 24 academic disciplines and numerous subdisciplines
Find famous and important people related to your research. This is an excellent tool for research papers, topic papers, and building a bibliography. Using our influence-based algorithm, our rankings synthesize data from Wikipedia, Wikidata, Semantic Scholar, and CrossRef.
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List of the most influential people in Chemistry,
#6301
Kees Posthumus
1902 - 1972 (70 years)
Kees Posthumus was a Dutch chemist. He was the second rector magnificus of the Eindhoven University of Technology. Biography Kees Posthumus was born in Harlingen, Friesland, as the son of a wholesaler in wood. He attended HBS and then went on to study chemistry at the University of Groningen. He attained his propaedeuse there, whereupon he moved to the University of Leiden to continue his studies. While there he came into contact with Albert Einstein and with Johan Huizinga . Upon gaining his engineering degree he took a teaching position at the Christian HBS in Leiden, while working on his doctorate under prof.dr.
Go to Profile#6302
Henry Stephen
1889 - 1965 (76 years)
Henry Stephen OBE, DSc. was an English chemist known for inventing the Stephen Reaction, a method of deriving aldehydes from nitriles . Career Leonard Henry Nelson Stephen, later known as Henry Stephen, was born at 11 Dalton Terrace, Manchester, son of John Stephen, printer, and Mary Eliza .
Go to Profile#6303
Arthur Vogel
1905 - 1966 (61 years)
Arthur Israel Vogel was a British chemist known for his Chemistry textbooks. He became the head of the chemistry department at Woolwich Polytechnic at the age of 27. Academic career Vogel's first job was at Queen Mary University of London, continuing from his BSc, working with Professor J. R. Partington and achieving an MSc. After a short spell at University College London, he joined Imperial College London and the research school of Sir Jocelyn Field Thorpe. During his time there he received a D.Sc for his research on surface tension, electrochemistry, organic synthesis and sulphur chemist...
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Traill Green
1813 - 1897 (84 years)
Dr. Traill Green M.D., LL.D was a medical doctor, scientist, and educator. Green was actively engaged with the early years of Lafayette College, serving at various times as a professor, trustee, and acting president. He was a civic leader in Easton, Pennsylvania, where he lived most of his life.
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William Garnett
1850 - 1932 (82 years)
Dr. William Garnett was a British professor and educational adviser, specialising in physics and mechanics and taking a special interest in electric street lighting. Early years Garnett was born in Portsea, Portsmouth, England in 1850, the son of William Garnett. In January 1863 he entered the City of London School, where he was a pupil of Thomas Hall. In the May 1866 examination, he obtained the first Royal Exhibition, tenable at the Royal School of Mines and College of Chemistry, and during the winter session, he studied under Dr. Edward Frankland and Professor John Tyndall, but in the following year, resigned the Exhibition and returned to the City of London School.
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David Chapman
1869 - 1958 (89 years)
David Leonard Chapman FRS was an English physical chemist, whose name is associated with the Chapman-Jouguet treatment and the Gouy-Chapman layer . He was a fellow of Jesus College, Oxford for 37 years, and was in charge there of the last college laboratory at the University of Oxford.
Go to Profile#6307
Edward Parrish
1822 - 1872 (50 years)
Edward Parrish was an American pharmacist. He was the first president of Swarthmore College. Biography He was the son of Philadelphia physician Joseph Parrish . He studied at a Friends' school, and graduated from the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy in 1842. After a course of training at his brother Dillwyn's shop , in 1843 he purchased a drug store at the northwest corner of Ninth and Chestnut Streets and began his practice. He was elected to membership in the College of Pharmacy in 1843, in 1845 a trustee, and in 1854 secretary of the College. He was appointed professor of materia medica i...
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Hope Winch
1894 - 1944 (50 years)
Hope Constance Monica Winch was an English pharmacist and academic. Biography Winch was born in the vicarage in the village of Brompton, just outside Northallerton in North Yorkshire, where her father Reverend George Winch was vicar of the village's St Thomas' Church. Her mother, Elizabeth Maude Winch was the daughter of Thomas Buston Crofton, also from the village.
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Johann Friedrich Klotzsch
1805 - 1860 (55 years)
Johann Friedrich Klotzsch was a German pharmacist and botanist. His principal work was in the field of mycology, with the study and description of many species of mushroom. Klotzsch was born in Wittenberg. Originally trained as a pharmacist, he later enrolled in pharmaceutical and botanical studies in Berlin. In 1830–32 he was curator of William Jackson Hooker's herbarium at the University of Glasgow. Beginning in 1834 he collected plants in Saxony, Bohemia, Austria, Styria and possibly Hungary. In 1838 he replaced Adelbert von Chamisso as curator and director of the Royal Herbarium in Berli...
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William C. Goggin
1911 - 1988 (77 years)
William C. Goggin was an American chemist, business manager and business theorist, noted for developing the concept of Multidimensional organization at Dow Corning. Biography Born in Alma, Michigan, Goggin obtained his BS in chemistry, Physics and Mathematics at Alma College in 1933, and at the University of Michigan his BS in Electrical Engineering in 1935 and his MS in Electrical Engineering in 1936.
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Kennedy J. P. Orton
1872 - 1930 (58 years)
Kennedy J. P. Orton was a British chemist. Initially he studied medicine at St. Thomas' Hospital, but there he became interested in chemistry and moved to St. John's College, Cambridge. He then obtained a Ph.D. summa cum laude in Heidelberg under Karl von Auwers, before working for a year with Sir William Ramsey at University College, London. He was then lecturer and demonstrator of Chemistry at St. Bartholomew's Hospital, before in 1903 being appointed Professor of Chemistry at University College of North Wales, Bangor, where he headed the department until his death. He was elected a Fellow ...
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Ali ibn Sahl Rabban al-Tabari
838 - 870 (32 years)
Ali ibn Sahl Rabban al-Tabari , was a Persian Muslim scholar, physician and psychologist, who produced one of the first Islamic encyclopedia of medicine titled Firdaws al-Hikmah . Ali ibn Sahl spoke Syriac and Greek, the two sources of the medical tradition of Antiquity which had been lost by medieval Europe, and transcribed in meticulous calligraphy. His most famous student was the physician and alchemist Abu Bakr al-Razi . Al-Tabari wrote the first encyclopedic work on medicine. He lived for over 70 years and interacted with important figures of the time, such as Muslim caliphs, governors, and eminent scholars.
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Tom Cottrell
1923 - 1973 (50 years)
Prof Tom Leadbetter Cottrell DSc FRSE was an influential Scottish chemist. He is best remembered as a co-founder and first Principal of the University of Stirling, and founder of the Macrobert Arts Centre in Stirling. He wrote several popular academic textbooks on the subject of chemistry.
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Edmund Załęski
1863 - 1932 (69 years)
Edmund Załęski was a Polish chemist, agrotechnician, and plant breeder. He was a professor at the Agricultural University of Dublany, as well as a professor at Jagiellonian University, where he also served as rector from 1930–1931.
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James Eights
1798 - 1882 (84 years)
James Eights was an American physician, scientist, and artist. He was born in Albany, New York, the son of physician Jonathan Eights and Alida Wynkoop. James also became a physician and was appointed an examiner at a local engineering school which is now known as Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
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E. J. Bowen
1898 - 1980 (82 years)
Edmund John Bowen FRS was a British physical chemist. Early life and wartime career E. J. Bowen was the eldest of four born to Edmund Riley Bowen and Lilias Bowen in 1898 in Worcester, England. He attended the Royal Grammar School Worcester.
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Cyril G. Hopkins
1866 - 1919 (53 years)
Cyril George Hopkins was an American agricultural chemist who initiated the Illinois long-term selection experiment in 1896. He was also noted for his extensive research and writings on the soil of Illinois.
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Arlie W. Schorger
1884 - 1972 (88 years)
Arlie William Schorger was a chemical researcher and businessman who also did work in ornithology. His chemistry work of note largely involved wood and waterproofing. His only chemistry book was The chemistry of cellulose and wood, but he had 34 patents.
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Max Tishler
1906 - 1989 (83 years)
Max Tishler was president of Merck Sharp and Dohme Research Laboratories where he led the research teams that synthesized ascorbic acid, riboflavin, cortisone, pyridoxine, pantothenic acid, nicotinamide, methionine, threonine, and tryptophan. He also developed the fermentation processes for actinomycin, vitamin B12, streptomycin, and penicillin. Tishler invented sulfaquinoxaline for the treatment for coccidiosis.
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Edwin R. Gilliland
1909 - 1973 (64 years)
Edwin Richard Gilliland was an American chemical engineer and Institute Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Gilliland was born on July 10, 1909, in El Reno, Oklahoma and moved with his family to Little Rock, Arkansas in 1918. He graduated from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign with a B.S. in 1930 and an M.S. from the Pennsylvania State University in 1931. He received his Sc.D. from MIT in 1933 under the direction of Thomas Kilgore Sherwood for work on a wetted-wall column technique used in mass-transfer. With Professor Warren K. Lewis, Gilliland developed math...
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Wilhelm Steinkopf
1879 - 1949 (70 years)
Georg Wilhelm Steinkopf was a German chemist. Today he is mostly remembered for his work on the production of mustard gas during World War I. Life Georg Wilhelm Steinkopf was born on 28 June 1879 in Staßfurt, in the Prussian Province of Saxony in the German Empire, the son of Gustav Friedrich Steinkopf, a merchant, and his wife Elise Steinkopf .
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Hertha Sponer
1895 - 1968 (73 years)
Hertha Sponer was a German physicist and chemist who contributed to modern quantum mechanics and molecular physics and was the first woman on the physics faculty of Duke University. She was the older sister of philologist and resistance fighter Margot Sponer.
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George Wallace Kenner
1922 - 1978 (56 years)
George Wallace Kenner FRS was a British organic chemist. He was born in Sheffield in 1922, the son of Prof. James Kenner. During his childhood, he went to Didsbury Preparatory School in 1928 and moved to Manchester Grammar School in 1934. He was appointed to the first Heath Harrison Chair of Organic Chemistry at the University of Liverpool 1957–1976. He did his MSc and PhD degrees under Lord Todd at Manchester and Cambridge Universities in UK. He married Jillian Bird in 1951 and they had two daughters both born in Cambridge. He was faculty member at the Cambridge University for 15 years befor...
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Paul Flory
1910 - 1985 (75 years)
Paul John Flory was an American chemist and Nobel laureate who was known for his work in the field of polymers, or macromolecules. He was a leading pioneer in understanding the behavior of polymers in solution, and won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1974 "for his fundamental achievements, both theoretical and experimental, in the physical chemistry of macromolecules".
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Henry Eyring
1901 - 1981 (80 years)
Henry Eyring was a Mexico-born United States theoretical chemist whose primary contribution was in the study of chemical reaction rates and intermediates. Eyring developed the Absolute Rate Theory or Transition state theory of chemical reactions, connecting the fields of chemistry and physics through atomic theory, quantum theory, and statistical mechanics.
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Irving Langmuir
1881 - 1957 (76 years)
Irving Langmuir was an American chemist, physicist, and engineer. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1932 for his work in surface chemistry. Langmuir's most famous publication is the 1919 article "The Arrangement of Electrons in Atoms and Molecules" in which, building on Gilbert N. Lewis's cubical atom theory and Walther Kossel's chemical bonding theory, he outlined his "concentric theory of atomic structure". Langmuir became embroiled in a priority dispute with Lewis over this work; Langmuir's presentation skills were largely responsible for the popularization of the theory, although the credit for the theory itself belongs mostly to Lewis.
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Robert S. Mulliken
1896 - 1986 (90 years)
Robert Sanderson Mulliken was an American physicist and chemist, primarily responsible for the early development of molecular orbital theory, i.e. the elaboration of the molecular orbital method of computing the structure of molecules. Mulliken received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1966 and the Priestley Medal in 1983.
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Izaak Kolthoff
1894 - 1993 (99 years)
Izaak Maurits Kolthoff was an analytical chemist and chemistry educator. He is widely considered the father of analytical chemistry for his large volume of published research in diverse fields of analysis, his work to modernize and promote the field, and for advising a large number of students who went on to influential careers of their own.
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Henry Gilman
1893 - 1986 (93 years)
Henry Gilman was an American organic chemist known as the father of organometallic chemistry, the field within which his most notable work was done. He discovered the Gilman reagent, which bears his name.
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Stephen Brunauer
1903 - 1986 (83 years)
Stephen Brunauer was an American research chemist, government scientist, and university teacher. He resigned from his position with the U.S. Navy during the McCarthy era, when he found it impossible to refute anonymous charges that he was disloyal to the U.S.
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Takeru Higuchi
1918 - 1987 (69 years)
Takeru Higuchi was an American chemist who was widely known as "the father of physical pharmacy". He invented the time-release medication capsule, which would release medicine slowly into the bloodstream.
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Arthur V. Tobolsky
1919 - 1972 (53 years)
Arthur Victor Tobolsky was a professor in the chemistry department at Princeton University known for teaching and research in polymer science and rheology. Personal Tobolsky was born in New York City in 1919. On September 7, 1972, Tobolsky died unexpectedly at the age of 53 on September 7, 1972, while attending a conference in Utica, N.Y.
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Melville Wolfrom
1900 - 1969 (69 years)
Melville Lawrence Wolfrom was an American chemist. Early life, education, and career Melville Wolfrom's grandfather Johann Lorenz Wolfrum immigrated to the United States from Aš in 1854, and was of Sudeten German descent. His son Friedrich Wolfrum married Maria Louisa Sutter. Melville Wolfrom was born on April 2, 1900, the youngest of nine children. His father died when Melville was seven years old. Three of his brothers acquired a patent for a horse harness snap, and as a teen, Melville helped manufacture them out of the family home. He graduated from Ohio's Bellevue High School in 1917 as salutatorian and began working for the National Carbon Company.
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Walter Gordy
1909 - 1985 (76 years)
Walter Gordy, was an American physicist best known for his experimental work in microwave spectroscopy. His laboratory at Duke University became a center for research in this field, and he authored one of the definitive books on the field.
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Charles Phelps Smyth
1895 - 1990 (95 years)
Charles Phelps "Charlie" Smyth was an American chemist. He was educated at Princeton University and Harvard University. From 1920 to 1963 he was a faculty member in the Princeton Department of Chemistry, and from 1963 to 1970 he was a consultant to the Office of Naval Research. He was awarded the Nichols Medal by the New York Section of the American Chemical Society in 1954.
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Gilbert N. Lewis
1875 - 1946 (71 years)
Gilbert Newton Lewis was an American physical chemist and a dean of the college of chemistry at University of California, Berkeley. Lewis was best known for his discovery of the covalent bond and his concept of electron pairs; his Lewis dot structures and other contributions to valence bond theory have shaped modern theories of chemical bonding. Lewis successfully contributed to chemical thermodynamics, photochemistry, and isotope separation, and is also known for his concept of acids and bases. Lewis also researched on relativity and quantum physics, and in 1926 he coined the term "photon"...
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Robert Burns Woodward
1917 - 1979 (62 years)
Robert Burns Woodward was an American organic chemist. He is considered by many to be the preeminent synthetic organic chemist of the twentieth century, having made many key contributions to the subject, especially in the synthesis of complex natural products and the determination of their molecular structure. He also worked closely with Roald Hoffmann on theoretical studies of chemical reactions. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1965.
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Willard Libby
1908 - 1980 (72 years)
Willard Frank Libby was an American physical chemist noted for his role in the 1949 development of radiocarbon dating, a process which revolutionized archaeology and palaeontology. For his contributions to the team that developed this process, Libby was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1960.
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Peter Debye
1884 - 1966 (82 years)
Peter Joseph William Debye was a Dutch-American physicist and physical chemist, and Nobel laureate in Chemistry. Biography Early life Born Petrus Josephus Wilhelmus Debije in Maastricht, Netherlands, Debye enrolled in the Aachen University of Technology in 1901. In 1905, he completed his first degree in electrical engineering. He published his first paper, a mathematically elegant solution of a problem involving eddy currents, in 1907. At Aachen, he studied under the theoretical physicist Arnold Sommerfeld, who later claimed that his most important discovery was Peter Debye.
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George C. Pimentel
1922 - 1989 (67 years)
George Claude Pimentel was a preeminent chemist and researcher. He was also dedicated to science education and public service. the inventor of the chemical laser. He developed the technique of matrix isolation in low-temperature chemistry. He also developed time-resolved infrared spectroscopy to study radicals and other transient species. In the late 1960s, Pimentel led the University of California team that designed the infrared spectrometer for the Mars Mariner 6 and 7 missions that analyzed the surface and atmosphere of Mars.
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Frederick Rossini
1899 - 1990 (91 years)
Frederick Dominic Rossini was an American thermodynamicist noted for his work in chemical thermodynamics. In 1920, at the age of twenty-one, Rossini entered Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh, and soon was awarded a full-time teaching scholarship. He graduated with a B.S. in chemical engineering in 1925, followed by an M.S. degree in science in physical chemistry in 1926.
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Walther F. Goebel
1899 - 1993 (94 years)
Walther Frederick Goebel was an American immunologist and an organic chemist, a member of the National Academy of Sciences. Goebel was known for his research of polysaccharides. Awards and distinctions member of the National Academy of Scienceshonorary degrees from Rockefeller University in 1978 and Middlebury College in 1959
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Luis Federico Leloir
1906 - 1987 (81 years)
Luis Federico Leloir was an Argentine physician and biochemist who received the 1970 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his discovery of the metabolic pathways by which carbohydrates are synthesized and converted into energy in the body. Although born in France, Leloir received the majority of his education at the University of Buenos Aires and was director of the private research group Fundación Instituto Campomar until his death in 1987. His research into sugar nucleotides, carbohydrate metabolism, and renal hypertension garnered international attention and led to significant progress in understanding, diagnosing and treating the congenital disease galactosemia.
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J. R. Partington
1886 - 1965 (79 years)
James Riddick Partington was a British chemist and historian of chemistry who published multiple books and articles in scientific magazines. His most famous works were An Advanced Treatise on Physical Chemistry and A History of Chemistry , for which he received the Dexter Award and the George Sarton Medal.
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Paul L. Kirk
1902 - 1970 (68 years)
Paul Leland Kirk was a biochemist, criminalist and participant in the Manhattan Project who was specialized in microscopy. He also investigated the bedroom in which Sam Sheppard supposedly murdered his wife and provided the key blood spatter evidence that led to his acquittal in a retrial over 12 years after the murder. The highest honor one can receive in the criminalistics section of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences carries Kirk's name.
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A. D. Walsh
1916 - 1977 (61 years)
Arthur Donald Walsh FRS FRSE FRIC was a British chemist, who served as Professor of Chemistry at the University of Dundee. He is usually referred to as Donald Walsh. He was the creator of the Walsh diagram and Walsh's Rules.
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Frederick George Mann
1897 - 1982 (85 years)
Frederick George Mann was a British organic chemist. Academic career He completed his doctoral studies at Downing College, Cambridge under Sir William Pope, graduating in 1923. He continued at Downing as an assistant lecturer until 1930, when he was appointed to a lectureship at Trinity College. He spent his entire academic career at Cambridge, retiring in 1964.
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Géza Zemplén
1883 - 1956 (73 years)
Géza Gusztáv Zemplén, Ph.D. was a notable Hungarian chemist, organic chemist, professor, and chemistry author. He was a recipient of the Kossuth Prize, a member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, and was the brother of Professor Győző Zemplén. His major field of research was structural chemistry and biochemistry including the synthesis of naturally occurring flavonoid-glycosides .
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N. Howell Furman
1892 - 1965 (73 years)
Nathaniel Howell Furman was an American professor of analytical chemistry who helped develop the electrochemical uranium separation process as a member of the Manhattan Project. Background and career Furman was born in the Lawrenceville section of Lawrence Township, Mercer County, New Jersey in 1892. He attended Lawrenceville School, where he was a model student, graduating with a Master's Prize from his high school in 1909. He enrolled in Princeton University, where he received Phi Beta Kappa honors and graduated in 1913. He received an M.S. in 1915 and a Ph.D. from Princeton in 1917. Furman served in World War I in the Army Chemical Warfare Service.
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Samuel C. Lind
1879 - 1965 (86 years)
Samuel Colville Lind was a radiation chemist, referred to as "the father of modern radiation chemistry". He gained his B.A in 1899 at Washington and Lee University, Lexington, Virginia. After a short spell at MIT he moved to study chemistry at Leipzig University in Germany, carrying out research into the kinetics of chemical reactions, where he was awarded a Ph.D in 1905. He then returned to work at the University of Michigan until 1913, studying the chemical reactions induced by ionizing radiation. From 1913 to 1925 he worked at the US Bureau of Mines, concerned with extraction of radium from carnotite ore.
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