I. M. Kolthoff
Universitv of Minnesoto Minneawolis
A biographical note
I
am grateful for having been invited to talk about the life and accomplishments of Nathaniel Howell Furman. He was a man of many talents and virtues, an internationally recognized leader in the development of scientific analytical chemistry, an outstanding teacher, and a devoted, unselfish friend. When Dr. R. M. Burns introduced Dr. Furman as the 1953 Palladium Medallist of the American Electrochemical Society he quoted a distinguished Princeton classmate of Furman, who said: "To my mind Howell's outstanding trait is his unselfishness." Many of us know by experience how freely he would give and how little he demanded in return. When my thoughts turn to my late friend, I think of another very obvious and impressive trait, his extreme modesty. On several occasions M n . Furman witnessed my almost explosive reaction when I would beg her husband not to underestimate his own valuable contributions, of which he would talk slightingly. The dry sense of humor with which he spiced his formal and especially his informal talks was a delight to his listeners. A characteristic example was his including a comment on his early years in an autobiographical paragraph in a family history. Hissinging the familiar primary Sunday School song, "Hear the pennies dropping.. . He will get them all," was always accompanied by questions in his mind as to the exact mechanism whereby the pennies got to t,heir alleged recipient.
The paper here presented is based upon remarks by Professor Kolthoff on the occasion of the N. Howell Furmsn Memorial Svm~osium.oreanized hv t,he Division of Analvtical chemist& a t the i52id ~ e e t , i of n ~the ACS, New ~ & k , September, 1966.
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I might point out. that thus in childhood he was already interested in the mechanism of very involved reactions. His students speak with a great deal of affection about their professor and their indebtedness to him. Professor R. N. Adams of Kansas, as a spokesman for his students, has said,
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N. Howell Furmon
Probably the most inspiring thing about Dr. Furman was his initiative and drive. One could hardly goof off while working with him when you could drive past his home on Prospect Street six nights a week and see him in his study till 11-12 P.M. He was also very interested in the non-scientific side of his students. He and Mrs. Furman were a delightful couple to know and almost always seemed like parents to my wife and me. While he was a truly distinguished man, he could always have fun with anyone.
Many honors came to him, and his acceptance in turn gave prestige to the award. When the Fisher Award in Analytical Chemistry was established in 1948, its first
recipient was N. H. Furman. He held honorary membership in the Society for Analytical Chemistry and a D.Sc. (Hon.) from Boston University. N. H. Furman, a native of New Jersey, graduated from Princeton in 1913, wearing a Phi Beta Kappa key. He immediately began his graduate studies there. He sewed as a teaching assistant and later as a holder of a Procter Fellowship. His doctorate was awarded in 1918. He spent the years 1917-1919 as an instmctor a t Stanford, and returned to his a h a mater in 1919 as an assistant professor. He rose through the academic ranks to be named in 1945 to the Russell Wellman Moore Professorship. Princeton recognized his adrniuistrative talents, and from early 1951 to June 1954 he sewed as Chairman of the Department of Chemistry, as the successor of his intimate friend Sir Hugh Taylor, who in 1951 became Dean of Princeton's Graduate School. Every analytical chemist and most other chemists in this country, and many abroad, associate Furman with Princeton University and vice-versa. The American Chemical Society was another object of Dr. Furman's unselfishness and loyalty. His services to the Analytical Division, ACS, are well known by all. Less known is the fact that in 1933 he served as Secretary and in 1935 as Chairman of the Division of Physical Chemistry of the ACS. This involved much activity; analytical chemists were then an important faction of the group, and it was the policy to choose alternatively physical and analytical men as chairmen until a separate Analytical Division was formed. With typical Furman modesty there is only one sentence in his biography on his election as President of the ACS for the year 1951, hut the editorial obituary in the Ang. 9, 1965 C&E News characterized Furman as ACS President in the following way: That year (1951) the American Chemical Society held its Diamond Jubilee celebrations. Dr. Furman had been nominated by petition to stand for election against the two nominated hy the usual procedure. After he was elected there was concern in aome quarters that this quiet, almost shy professor might lack the force of public presence, desirable in the ACS President who was to reign over the Diamond Jubilee pageantry. It was gratifying to observe that he carried himself with a grace, firm assurance, and sound sense of proportion that made s lasting mark in the minds of those who took part in the ceremonies of that jubilee year.
Both as Chairman of the Department of Chemistry and as President of the ACS he gave much thought to the problems that confront academic institutions, particularly educational problems and student-teacher relationships. He remained interested in such problems during his entire academic career and even after his retirement. Furman's outstanding success as a teacher is so well known that I shall not elaborate on it in detail. The textbook "Elementary Quantitative Analysis," written jointly with H. Willard and published in 1933, soon became one of the leaders in the field and has sewed with success in the education of several generations of chemists. A fourth revised edition, with C. E. Bricker as coauthor, was published in 1956. When there appeared a need for a good textbook on "A Short Course in Quantitative Analysis," Willard and Furman, with J. F. Flagg as coauthor, published such a text under this title in 1943 and a new edition with E. K. Bacon as coauthor in 1957.
The best indicator of Furman's success as a teacher is the leadership exerted by his students, either in ac* demic, industrial, or government positions. "By their fruit ye shall know them." Twenty of his 26 Ph.D. students have taught at one time or another during their postdoctorate lives and a t present half are committed to the training of a second generation of students. Several are recognized leaders in modern analytical chemistry. The complete list in chronological order is: Nelson Allen, Irl C. Schoonover, George W. Low, W. M. Murray, Clark 0.Miller, Harold M. State, Robert C. Newton, John F. Flagg, Clark E. Bricker, Edward L. Stanley, Kenneth G. Stone, William B. Mason, Bmce McDuffie, Gilbert P. Haight, Jr., George H. Morrison, Walter Charles Cooper, Daniel R. Norton, Charles N. Reilley, Ralph N. Adams, Robert V. Dilts, Robert P. Taylor, Rudolph S. Bottei, A. James Fenton, Jr., John D. Voorhies, Louis J. Sayegh, George W. Latimer, Jr., and two postdoctoral fellows: W. D. Cooke and Edward D. Moorhead. Contributions to Analytic01 Chemistry
My association with Furman dates hack to 1924 when
I visited this country to deliver some lectures on potentiometric titrations and related subjects. At that time he had published papers on the use of the oxygen electrode and its applications to acid-base titrations. When I was in Princeton in 1924 we had long discussions on electroanalytical chemistry. I n those days analytical chemistry textbooks mentioned only classical quantitative electrodeposition. By theendof thenineteenth century physical and biochemists had developed the principles of potentiometric, conductometric, and amperometric titrations and of pH determinations, but analytical chemists, with some exceptions, remained ignorant of the fact that modern physical chemistry provided the fundamentals of scientific analytical chemistry. After my return to Holland in 1924, Furman and I kept in touch with each other and our correspondence became more abundant after he agreed to coauthor a book on "Potentiometric Titrations." Recognizing the importance of principles of elementary physical chemistry for analytical chemistry, he translated two books, one dealing with acid-base indicators and one with volumetric analysis, books in which particularly the analytical importance of chemical equilibria and several other physicochemical principles were emphasized. His was a leading role in the development of modern electroanalytical chemistry. His original contributions and his masterly reviews in the Biannual Reviews of Analytical Chemistry are outstanding. Possibly less known, but not less important, are his papers on the use of concentration cells in quantitative analysis. His classical paper with G. W. Low, Jr., in 1935 on the estimation of chloride concentration is still the basis of the potentiometric determination of traces of chloride. Many analytical chemists were slow to realize the potentialities of polarography, but Furman started his first polarographic studies a t the end of the thirties. His first papers in this field were published in 1942 with C. E. Bricker, followed by several papers with the late K. G. Stone. Of theoretical importance was his paper with W. C. Cooper in 1952 on the diffusion coefficients of certain metals in mercury. The years between 1950 and 1953 were a particularly creative period in Furman's Volume 44, Number 6, June 1967
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career, whenmany fundamental electroanalytical papers were published with C. N. Reilley and W. D. Cooke, and later with R. N. Adams. A thorough understanding of the principles of voltametry led to a complete understanding of derivative polarographic titrations, often denoted as potentiometric titrations at constant current. He and the same coauthors then made penetrating studies of coulometric analysis and titrations, a subject to which Furman has contributed so much, especially in connection with titrations on a micro- and submicroscale. It should not be inferred that Furman's field of interest was limited to electroanalytical chemistry. His broad command of analytical chemistry is evident, for example, by his acting as editor-in-chief of and contributor to several chapters of "Scott's Standard Methods of Chemical Analysis." He devoted much of his time to maintaining the high standards of this classic, which for years has been a bible to industrial and academic analytical chemists. "Old-timers" will remember the appearance in 1928 of the first of a series of 12 papers on applications of ceric sulfate to volumetric analysis. This one-electron-acceptor oxidant has many advantages over the classical permanganate. It must have been a source of great satisfaction to Furman that ceric sulfate has become universally adopted as the popular oxidizing agent in titrimetry. His studies on the use of mercury as a reducing agent should also be mentioned. I n his first paper on this subject with W. M. Murray, Jr., in 1936 it was shown that hydrogen peroxide was formed in
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the interaction of mercury with oxygen in the presence of hydrochloric acid. Of quite a d i e r e n t nature was his research with J. F. Flagg on the analytical use of organic reagents. Doubtlessly, we owe Flagg's book on this subject to the inspiring influence of Furman. Of the many other pieces of research by Furman, his contributions to the Manhattan District Project must be mentioned. Between 1943 and 1946 Fnrman and his group started with a study of analytical methods for the detection and determinationof practically any other element in purified uranium oxides, salts, or the metal. Later, methods were developed for the determination or estimation of traces of uranium in anything that it might come in contact with during its processing from ores to highly purified metal. I n this work, much use was made of micro- or submicromethods, including njicropolnn)q~pliii:, speetroscol)ir, cl~n)rn:~rogrupl~iv, and, j~nrtirulwly,ertr:~ctiontech~ques. \Vcll known 3rr hisstudi~sontl~c elcctrosrpr~mtior~ of rrucwof metals in the form of amalgams on a small mercury cathode followed by the polarographic and spectrophotometric identification and estimation of the metals in the residue after distilling off the mercury. For years to come references to the work of Furman will be made in the literature. His many students and friends will always cherish the memory of this unselfish, friendly man and scientist. To him can be applied the inscription over the fieplace in the Frick Chemical Library a t Princeton-attributed to Ptolemy-which reads in translated form: "He is not dead who hath given new life to knowledge."
