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INDUSTRIAL A N D ENGINEERING CHEMISTRY
Vol. 23, No. 1
AMERICAN CONTEMPORARIES Moses Gomberg H E subject of this sketch was born in Russia and passed be dealing with a product extremely susceptible to oxidation, his childhood on an estate amid pleasant surroundings and set out to devise means of carrying out his reactions in in the small town of Elizabetgrad. He attended the such a way that there could be no possibility of contact with gymnasium there until he was eighteen Years of age, when an oxygen. The result was the discovery of the elusive triphenylabrupt change became necessary. His father was accused of methyl and Gomberg’s rise to fame as the discoverer of trivalent being a political conspirator and, although with the help of carbon, although it was several years before his position was friends he escaped from Russia and to the United States, his firmly established. property was confiscated. The son was Doctor Gomberg has remained as a also old enough t o come under suspicion teacher of organic chemistry at the Univerand fled soon after the father. Neither of sity of Michigan since 1890, rising through them had a knowledge of English and they the various ranks to a professorship in 1904. both worked in Chicago at whatever ocMore than two thousand students have recupation they could find. I remember that ceived their first instruction in organic on the appearance of the startling book, chemistry from him, and none of them “The Jungle,” by Upton Sinclair, with its will ever forget the interesting and logical indictment of conditions in the stockyards presentation by the modest lecturer who of Chicago, Doctor Gomberg told me that never by any possibility referred to his own he could testify from personal experience work more directly than to intimate that that many of the conditions were not some of the research bearing on a particular overdrawn. subject had been performed “in this laboratory.” If the class has done poorly on an He found time to complete his high-school course in Chicago and matriculated as a examination, it is the teacher who feels he must have failed in his presentation of the freshman a t the University of Michigan in subject. An unusually close bond has al1886. H. S. Carhart, then professor of ways existed between “The Professor” and physics a t the university, was fond in later his advanced students. years of telling how he was approached by The only break in his teaching career a freshman who wished to take physics and came during the war, when like many chemwas much disappointed when informed that ists Doctor Gomberg was asked to leave the Moses Gomberg he could not begin physics until he had completed a course in trigonometry. The freshuniversity for war work. He joined the man had not studied trigonometry, but asked if he might have group of civilian chemists working on gas warfare under the the privilege of taking an examination in the subject three days direction of the Bureau of Mines prior t o the organization of the later. Professor Carhart told him that it was impossible to Chemical Warfare Service. The first task was connected with the synthesis of mustard gas, and after his particular problem was obtain a necessary knowledge of trigonometry in that time, but that he might try if he wished to. Three days later young solved he was commissioned as major in the Ordnance DepartGomberg returned, passed the examination- in trigonometry, and ment and spent a second year as technical advisor in the manufacture of smokeless powder and high explosives. started the course in physics. Many honors have come to Doctor Gomberg in recent yearsDuring his college course he became assistant to Prof. A. B. Prescott, a pioneer in organic chemistry in this country, a t a membership in the National Academy of Sciences, the Nichols, Willard Gibbs, and Chandler Medals, and now the presidency of time when almost all emphasis was placed upon methods of CHEMICAL SOCIETY.He has never been back t o analysis and very little upon synthesis. After graduation Gom- the AMERICAN berg remained as a graduate student and assistant in organic Russia, but one of the honors which he especially appreciated chemistry and four years later received his doctorate, his dis- was an invitation to be a guest speaker a t the International Congress of Pure and Applied Chemistry planned for St. Peterssertation being on some reactions of caffeine. Two years later a leave of absence permitted him a period of European study, burg in August of 1914. Accompanying this invitation was a special dispensation from the Russian government guaranteeing two semesters a t Munich in Baeyer’s laboratory and one semester at Heidelberg under Victor Meyer. At Heidelberg he received him safe conduct while in the country. He and his sister started for this congress with great expectations, but the outbreak of the much praise for his synthesis of tetraphenylmethane, a problem whose solution had been unsuccessfully attempted by so many war spoiled all plans. He has never married, although his sentimental fondness for earlier workers that Victor Meyer himself had become conyoung ladies has always been a matter on which his friends feel vinced that it was a n impossibility. Returning to Ann Arbor in the fall of 1897, he attempted free to joke him. His younger sister Sonia joined him early in t o follow this synthesis of tetraphenylmethane with that of the his Ann Arbor career, and the two live in a charming cottage, It was expected which in its setting of old apple trees harmonizes with the simnext member of the series, hexaphenylethane. t o be a fairly easy task, but the experiments did not behave plicity of their tastes and indicates the quiet happiness of their properly. I well remember his discouragement when he told me lives. A small group of friends who have February birthdays one day t h a t he thought he knew how to make an ultimate are accustomed t o hold a gala dinner on some evening during analysis, but that he had obtained what ought t o be a hydrocar- that month, and the informality and gayety with which Brother bon, in which the percentages of carbon and hydrocarbon fell and Sister enter into the hilarity of that occasion would be a far short of 100 per cent. He convinced himself that he must revelation to those who know only their public demureness.
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January, 1931
INDUSTRIAL AND ENGINEERING CHEMISTRY
The bright eyes, quizzical lurking smile, and smooth shaven face of Doctor Gomberg still convey the impression of youth, Only two years ago, while driving home from the university, he was accosted by a traffic officer a t a stop street and cautioned that he should have made “a more complete stop.” His reply
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was a query, “What can be done t o a stop t o make it more complete?” and he swells with pride when relating that t h e traffic officer retorted, “Now, young man, don’t give me any of your lip.” ALFRED H. WHITE
BOOK REVIEWS The Development of Physiological Chemistry in the United States. BY RUSSELLH. CHITTENDEN.A. C. S. Monograph Series. 419 pages. The Chemical Catalog Company, Inc., New York, 1930. Price, $6.00. Professor Chittenden’s history of American biochemistry is presented in the form of a narrative of the personal achievements of more than one hundred and fifty individuals. Since nearly all of these contributors are still living, the book may be described as a sort of “Who’s Who.” In part it is also something of a memorial volume to the Sheffield laboratory and to the hosts of men and women who have obtained their Ph.D.’s in biochemistry a t Yale. The story begins with Chittenden’s first trip to Heidelberg and the establishment of the first college laboratory in the United States for teaching and research in biochemistry. The Sheffield laboratory was started in 1874 and was put under the charge of Chittenden, then eighteen years of age. After forty-eight years of service Chittenden retired in 1922, and the following year the Sheffield laboratory was abolished and the Department of Physiological Chemistry transferred to the Yale Medical School Chittenden remained America’s only professor of physiological chemistry for about a quarter of a century and it was not until the late nineties that any general demand for teaching and productive scholarship in biochemistry began to materialize in the United States. Even a t Yale the granting of the Ph.D. degree in biochemistry seems to have been a rather late development. Just who is America’s first home-bred Ph.D. in biochemistry is not stated (Mendel’s degree dates from ’93). The work is divided into 12 chapters, a t the head of each of which is given a very full index. The basis for these divisions is rather indefinite, but in most of these chapters will be found much biochemical information presented in a style so simple, yet vivid, that most readers will find i t entertaining as well as instructive. The period covered ends about 1928. The propriety of writing a book in just the form selected for this one is probably debatable, or certainly would be if anyone but Chittenden had been the author. A goodly number of persons are sure t o feel slighted. One past president of the American Society of Biological Chemists seems t o be among the forgotten, probably on technical grounds, while a young pupil of his is included. s. M. Babcock, the picturesque early pioneer, whose name is almost as significant as that of Kjeldahl, is mentioned only in a footnote.-OTTO FOLIN Artificial Sunlight-Combining Radiation for Health with Light for Vision. BY M. LUCKIESH. 254 pages. D. Van Nostrand Company, Inc., New York, 1930. Price, $3.75. This book deals with the production and use of artificial sunlight in its larger sense. It considers the ultra-violet and infrared components of sunshine as well as the visible light, from the standpoint of health as well as vision. The author shows that production of artificial sunlight is far ahead of its utilization. He gives detailed physicochemical data of interest to the physiologists and others dealing with the utilization of sunlight. Much new original work is reported and is combined with the pertinent data of others to make it the most complete and modern compilation of physical data on the subject at the present time. The chapters on Solar Radiation, Transmitting Media, Reflection of Ultra-Violet Radiation, and Permanence of Materials will interest many who use or design photochemical equipment, and the volume might well become a handbook of reference because of the completeness of the present available evidence on these subjects. Most of the book is written around the new mercury vaportungsten filament bulb called the s-1type lamp, and many of the data consist of measurements of this lamp and comparisons with
other artificial sunshine sources. Many of these measurements are expressed in “erythema effectiveness per foot candle” and the “FCM” and “MPE” units. (“FCM” = foot-candle minutes and “MPE” = minimum perceptible erythema.) These new units add to the already too numerous complications of ultraviolet measurements. It is surprising that so exact a scientist as the author should advocate the adoption of a new method of measurement based on erythema formation which is one of t h e most variable of all known physiological effects of radiation. I n fact the author himself seems to have difficulty in applying. this measure, since he is frequently compelled, as on page 175, to use the more definite and satisfactory physical quantities such as microwatt-minutes per square centimeter of radiation of certain groups of wave lengths, and on page 82 he says that no fundamental relation of erythema to biological benefit has been discovered. Moreover, the use of the foot-candle basis of measuring visible light to express ultra-violet intensity which has a variable relation to the visible light is frequently misleading. For instance, in the table on page 151 the reader who is not intimately familiar with the sources is led to believe that a bulb lamp will do in 70 hours what a carbon arc will do in 75 hours. Carbon arcs used for this purpose frequently have a n intensity of 20,000 footcandles and operate forty times as rapidly as the table implies. The discussion of biological effects is confined chiefly to those of infra-red radiation from heated tungsten filaments themselves such as are usually enclosed in glass bulbs and to pigment and erythema production and antirachitic effect of the 2800-3200 band of the ultra-violet. A spectral-energy distribution diagram of this new S-1 type lamp as a whole or data with which to construct it are conspicuously absent.-M. J. DORCAS Transactions of the American Institute of Mining and Metallurgical Engineers. Milling Methods. 554 pages. Published by the American Institute of Mining and Metallurgical Engineers, 29 West 39th St., New York, 1930. Price, $5.00. This work represents papers on the various phases of milling, assembled by the Committee on Milling Methods, G. H. Clevenger. chairman. These papers were presented a t meetings held a t New York in February, 1928, 1929, and 1930; a t San Francisco in October, 1929; and a t Spokane in October, 1929. They are grouped under five headings : Grinding and Classification; Gravity Concentration (Pneumatic) ; Flotation; Testing and Calculations; and Cyanidation. In the first group there is a series of three papers by Gross and Zimmerley, of the Salt Lake Station of the Bureau of Mines. There is developed a dissolution method for measuring surface of quartz particles. These surface measurements are correlated with sieve measurements, and the work input is found to vary directly with the new surface measured by this test. These papers are followed by the report of a laboratory investigation of ball milling by Gow, Campbell, and Coghill, in which size of mill and speed were the chief variables. Fahrenwald has presented a n experimental study of classifier efficiency. Banks and Johnson have applied differential grinding to the treatment of Wac0 tailings, offering a specific field application of grinding and classification problems. Dorr and Marriott have contributed several illustrations to show the importance of classification in fine grinding. In the second group Taggart and Lechmere-Oertel present an extended series of tests on the operation of the pneumatic table in which the effect of change in each of the several adjustments is measured by its effect on a given coal. In the third group three papers contributed by Taggart, Taylor, Knoll, and Ince present a chemical study of flotation reagents. Three more papers, of which Ralston is the senior author, present specific behavior of pyrite and sphalerite which are being prepared
