AMERICAN CONTEMPORARIES
C. F. Burgess IΝ WRITING about C.
F. Burgees I hope to bring to those who have not had the good fortune to know him personally a picture other than would be conveyed by a recital of his many scientific achievements. These were set forth in considerable detail in Industrial and Engineering Chemistry [24, 247 (February, 1932)] following the presentation of the Perkin Medal to him. When Dr. Burgees left the teaching pro fession after 18 years to become an entre preneur he did the unusual and, when it is considered that the business he was pro moting was an experiment to prove that research could be made to pay for itself when business had not yet "gone scientific", the step must be regarded as most extraor dinary. But I am not writing about an ordinary person, but about one whose vision, energy, enthusiasm, knowledge of fundamentals, and keen powers of obser vation and analysts, combined with the courage of his convictions, often lead him to do what is considered unusual and unorthodox. In 1913, when he resigned from the Uni versity of Wisconsin, he was a full profes sor directing the Department of Applied Electrochemistry and Chemical Engineer ing. He then had found it advisable to devote his entire time to the growing busi ness of the Northern Chemical Engineering Laboratories which he, with three of his assistants, had incorporated three years previously to carry on his consulting and development work. These laboratories (later called C. F. Burgees Laboratories) were established as a step in a program based on his conviction that research could be made to "provide its own endowment". This conviction was founded on 15 years' experience in teaching, research, develop ment, and consulting work, including a very limited amount of business experience in commercializing and marketing some of his inventions. After being convinced that research could be made to pay he had the courage of his convictions, and in characteristic fashion put all of his own resources and whatever he could borrow into this ven ture, or, as he calls it, "experiment". Then, when he had cut loose from the security of a university professorship, the transition from teacher to business man had been completed—he was atrueentre preneur.
The outcome of that experiment is well known. Other companies of the Burgess group now are Burgess Battery Co., Bur gess Cellulose Co., Burgees-Parr Co., and Thordarson Electric Manufacturing Co. in the United States, and the Burgess Prod ucts Jo., Ltd., and Burgess Zeolite n
