October, 1930
INDUSTRIAL A N D ENGINEERING CHEMISTRY
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AMERICAN CONTEMPORARIES Arthur Michael
F
EW chemists, except those a-ho browse through the publications in which organic chemistry research is recorded or those who read books which review critically the progress in this branch of chemistry, know Arthur Michael, or his place among great American chemists. He has never written a book, rarely attends meetings, serves on no committees, makes no popular addrepes, nor speaks t o t h e radio public. On t h e other hand, those who have read the literature of organic chemistry know t h e productivity and versatility of Professor Michael. The wide scope and great variety of subjects in which this investigator has done authoritative work can only be realized by going over t h e author index of Centralblatt and Chemical Abstracts beginning in t h e late seventies and continuing down t o about ten years ago. It is doubtful whether any one has successfully accomplished the appalling task of reading, digesting, and becoming familiar with all of the published work of Professor Michael and his students. This sketch, therefore, does not have as its object a critical review of the work of Arthur Michael. Few men in the chemical world of today are capable of undertaking such a review, and one t h a t was properly done would require a volume of considerable size. Since those who have not read chemical literature hardly know him, and t o those who have read extensively Arthur Michael is almost a legendary figure, one of those giants of the days of the dawn of organic chemistry, this brief sketch has as its purpose the introduction of the man t o chemists of today as one of the most interesting figures t h a t has ever appeared in the scientific world. Professor Michael’s early association and recollections are characteristically American. As a small boy in Buffalo, he remembers Abraham Lincoln’s visit there, and particularly playing with Lincoln’s son, Tad. H e also knew Grover Cleveland as a n easy-going young lawyer. Young Michael attended the Buffalo Latin School, b u t in his teens his father’s business called him abroad, and the family made its temporary home in England. When a lad of eleven Michael had a laboratory of his own, playing a t chemistry much as boys of a later generation played with wireless and radio. His choice of a university was Heidelberg. There the brilliant American boy attracted the attention of the great Bunsen, and he soon brought him into his own laboratory as a n assistant. Gabriel was then a student a t Heidelberg, and he and Michael became fast friends, being generally known t o their associates as “two-thirds of the archangel trio.” Together they left Heidelberg and went t o Berlin t o work with A. W. Hoffmann. These two clever youngsters had hardly started on their work together when they prepared in a single evening a new and important organic compound, which Gabriel analyzed early the next morning and the two presented t o the astonished Hoffmann. Michael then took his own field and published several papers, being associated with several young Americans, among whom was Thomas F. Norton. Being blessed with abundant means, hlichael went wherever a great figure in chemistry attracted him. H e worked with Wurz a t Paris, and recalls LeBel perched on an enormous stepladder watching the thermometer at the top of a fractionating column of his own devising H e made a pilgrimage t o Russia t o be with Mendelejeff. Michael’s students of later years will recall t h a t his reminiscences made t o live again many of the great men who did so much t o make chemical history.
In spite of the charm of the Continent, Professor Michael was devoted t o his own country, and when he fe!t that his period of training was over he began t o look about for a permanent location in the United States. H e chose Tufts College, then a small institution under the shadow of Harvard and M. I. T., and with very little money for chemistry. For more than a quarter of a century of nearly continuous service, llichael not only taught a t Tufts under surroundings that would have been the despair of a modern research worker, but turned out the larger part of t h a t great mass of notable investigation on which his fame rests. His own money provided apparatus, chemicals, books, journals, and the salaries of his corps of assistants. An American student, Miss Helen Abbott of Philadelphia, already quite well trained in biochemistry, sought admission t o a German university. Women were not received in those days, but the question was asked: “Why do you seek t o work in Germany when you have in your own country such a great man as Xlichael?” Miss Abbott was admitted to the Tufts laboratory, and the next year as Mrs. Arthur Michael accompanied her husband on a world tour. I n 1909 Professor Michael was called t o the new Clark University as director of the Chemical Laboratory. He soon found t h a t the task of slowly building a university was not to his liking after the long years of freedom a t old Tufts, and his stay a t XTorcester was very brief. The idea of a laboratory a t his home had always appealed t o him. At one time he had lived on the Isle of \Tight. and mystified the rural population by carrying on his research at his home. Harvard University was quick t o recognize the prestige which Michael would bring to the chemistry faculty, and elected him professor of chemistry with the privilege of doing his work when and where he pleased. Probably not once a year did he visit Cambridge, but the young research workers who filled his laboratory close by his beautiful home in Newton Center had the privilege of receiving the doctor of philosophy degree from Harvard I n the latter years of the past century a very considerable number of American chemistswent to Germany for graduatework. It is very striking t o note t h a t a large proportion of Professor Michael’s assistants came t o him from Germany. While always a loyal American, and ardently devoted to the cause of the Allies, Michael often spoke very regretfully of his “boys” who had returned and who were fighting in the German army. The name of Michael recalls t o readers of chemical journals some very lively and interesting controversies with some of the best known men in Germany, and it was very rarely that the American did not win in the eyes of the chemical world. Professor Michael used t o quote with great glee two phrases, one from a lecture a t Berlin and the other from a standard work on organic chemistry: “There is a young American named Michael who holds another view,” and “The masterly researches of Michael have rendered the older theory untenable.” No student of Professor Michael found him a n easy taskmaster. Men who had been led by earlier successes t o think of themselves as “pretty good” were brought t o the verge of despair by his exacting standards both of technic and thinking. He himself was a master of manipulation and resented vigorously sloppy work and, even more so, sloppy thinking. “If you do not know why, your work is not worth a rotten apple.” “Perhaps you had better stop so much advanced reading and study an elementary text again.” Professor Michael was fond of quoting
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INDUSTRIAL A N D ENGINEERING CHEMISTRY
the phrase in Goethe’s “Faust” in which “a little word” is said t o take the place of missing ideas. One is particularly struck in the work of Michael with the constant emphasis on principles. H e was never content t o make compounds, however interesting and valuable. Unless a problem had in i t the possibility of establishing a principle, i t was soon abandoned for one more promising. As he went on Michael grew as a chemical philosopher-in fact, a number of his papers published in recent years had t o do very largely with fundamental physical chemistry. Many of his students have spoken of his marvelous memory, and his ability t o cite articles by journal, year, and even page. They were still more impressed by what one man has called his “almost uncanny ability t o predict the course of an organic chemical reaction,” and refer t o it as a “chemical instinct” and a “sixth sense” with which few men, even great research workers, have ever; been blessed. Professor Michael has done little active laboratory work in the last ten or twelve years. For many years before that time he had begun t o transfer some of his interest t o several most delightful hobbies. There are few more beautiful grounds in all the suburbs of Boston than those of Professor Michael in the Newtons. To the west of his lovely house there is a great grove of magnificent trees, and nearby a little summer house. His tulips rival those of the Public Gardens. During the outdoor season his flower beds are gorgeous, and even in the dead of winter his greenhouse yields its treasures for his desk and table. Being a most enthusiastic golfer, Professor Michael would occasionally desert his laboratory in the late winter for a few weeks at Pinehurst. H e once rigged up a complicated canvass
Vol. 22, No. 10
screen and a small putting green in his laboratory attic in order not t o get “off his game” in the winter. He is a member of the “hole-in-one” fraternity. The Michael home in Newton is a perfect treasure house of the most discriminatingly chosen and varied museum pieces. There are a few paintings, chief among them a Blakelock; there are jade carvings and lacquered chests; there is a great cabinet full of silverware, masterpieces of early American skill; but the most valuable of all are innumerable Chinese and Japanese paintings on scrolls and screens. Professor Michael is no amateur as a collector. Much of this material was gotten from out-of-the-way places of the earth, where the dealer in antiques never penetrates. Professor Michael will be remembered by his students as a perfect host, and dinner at his home was an event t o be treasured as a memory. No matter how heavily he had ‘:landed” on a student for some mistake or lack of thought, in his home he was always charming and delightful. Hardly a part of the world where he had not been; few great works of a r t he had not seen; most operas were familiar t o him; a keen student of world affairs, his conversation was an education in itself t o younger men. The progress of chemistry for four decades owes much t o Arthur Michael. Scores of men were trained in his laboratory. He will always be a memorable figure in the scientific world. With all of this, the few who have been privileged t o know him will remember him as a broad and well-rounded citizen of the world.
W. T. READ
AMERICAN CHEMICAL INDUSTRIES The Champion Fibre Company A sulfite-pulp mill was erected t o accomT IS a little more than twenty-two years pany the soda mill and the extract plant since operations began at The Champion in order t o make use of the supply of hemFibre Company’s plant at Canton, N. C. lock and spruce wood from the higher alThe location of a pulp plant in the mountitudes of the surrounding mountain region, tains of western North Carolina was someand thus enable the plant as a whole t o furthing of an adventure and a departure from nish all the essential wood pulp for the prothe path which up t o that time led the pulp duction of higher grade paper at the plant industry westward from New England. Alof the parent organization, The Champion though the potential lumber resources of the Coated Paper Company, at Hamilton, South were, and still are, enormous, most Ohio. In 1917 a sulfate-pulp mill was of the standing timber in the southern Aperected alongside the other two pulp mills, palachians is chestnut wood, which is rich t o produce kraft pulp from short-leaf pine, in tannin and not suitable for pulp unless which is available in large quantities from the tannin is first extracted. the lower altitudes within easy reach :of The Champion Fibre Company’s objective Canton. was primarily the production of soda and Because of an interruption in the supply sulfite wood pulp, but t o employ chestnut of chlorine in the early days of the Great wood as the raw material for soda pulp inWar, it became imperative t o build an volved the construction of a plant t o exelectrolytic plant for the production of this Reuben B. Robertson President, tract the tannin and prepare the wood for The Champion F i b r i Company very necessary material for the bleaching the soda-pulp mill. Side by side with the of Dulp. So for several years The Champion pulp mill the largest single unit for the - manufacture of tannin extract was built, having a capacity of 500 Fibre Company has produced its own chlorine from a plant having a capacity of 70 tons daily and i t has available a supply of caustic barrels of liquid tannin extract per day. This combination of plants, one t o serve the paper industry and the other t o serve the soda which is produced in liquid, solid, and fused forms and furnished t o the southern textile mills. The other by-product of the tanning industry, was unique in the history of industrial development. The coordination of the requirements of these two separate electrolytic plant, hydrogen gas, is now being recovered and will be used for hydrogenated products. and distinct industries presented many difficulties a t the outset, The next development was the erection of a mill for t h e p r o but as experience was gradually gained the products of the reduction of book, bond, tablet, and envelope papers.,After spective plants achieved a high distinction for quality.
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