Honoring the Β in BET An Address in Presentation of Dr. Stephen Brunauer for the Kendall Award HUGH S. TAYLOR
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Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation, Princeton, N.J.
A former recipient of the Kendall Award, Paul Hugh Emmett, is flanked on each side of the initial of his surname, E , by the initials of the surnames of two Hungarians, two of many who have enriched the scientific life and increased the stature of American science in the present century. The three initials, B E T , have circumnavigated the globe in every research institute wherever it is neces sary to define the surface area of solid bodies, whether they be fine but compact particles or porous solid structures. B E T has become a shorthand notation for a measurement which has been of inestimable benefit to a wide spectrum of sci entific workers in the last 25 years. Their appreciation of this new tool for surface area measurement can never be as whole-hearted as that of those of us who, in the 25 years preceding the B E T equation, had literally to "grope in outer darkness." Indeed, such people occasionally are given to admiration, at the quality of their own intuitions, their leaps of faith, in the absence of the equation to which these three initials were given. To give a personal illustration, how could one dare to talk about "active centers on catalyst surfaces" in 1925, when there was no avail able definition of the totality of centers in the surfaces? von Neumann, Wigner, Szilard, Teller, and others came to the United States by a primrose path. With already established reputations in science, they were hospitably welcomed to these shores by one or another of the great universities. Their obvious talents guaranteed to the country of their adoption a rich and precious reward. This was not the case with the one we honor today. Born in Budapest, Hungary, on February 12, 1903, he graduated from the gymnasium in June 1921, a little over 18 years of age. Graduation in Hungary is labeled "matura," maturity. In his case, however, the designation was praeclarus maturus, outstandingly ma ture, the nearest American equivalent of which would be "valedictorian" of his class in high school. By October of the same year he had emigrated to this country and the next seven years are a heroic illustration of trials and tribulations, and also the heart warming achievement of a university education in spite of all the difficulties. Six days after arrival in New York he was at work in a factory by day, and attending evening school for immigrants to learn English by night. Eight months later, lis started to attend the City College of New York in the evenings and kept on working during the day. He passed through college in four years, because Co lumbia University granted two years of college credit on the strength of the praeclarus maturus. He earned his living in these years in three factories, in a grocery store, in a laundry, in several restaurants as bus boy. He recalls, with 2
In SOLID SURFACES; Copeland, L., et al.; Advances in Chemistry; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 1961.
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TAYLOR
Honoring the Β in BET
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modest pride, that he never washed dishes. When he had saved enough money to pay for his tuition, he attended Columbia University as a day student and worked in the evening; when the money ran out, he worked during the day and attended City College at night. In June 1925, he received an A.B. from Columbia University, majoring in chemistry and English. He learned from the Spectator, the university newspaper, that he was one of seven elected to Phi Beta Kappa. He had no idea at the time what that meant and was equally certain that he had no money to join a Greek letter fraternity. So he went to the library and read up on Phi Beta Kappa. How many members of this honor society have put forth such effort to be admitted to the select circle? It must have been, at many times, a painful discipline, but the richest rewards are so often those that are purchased dearly in toil and effort. He preferred physics and chemistry to biology. But relatives wanted him to enter medical school. Fortunately for us, he had no money to pay his tuition fees at New York University, where he had been admitted. So he went back to City College and chemical engineering. In the last semester of his chemical engineer's training program he was offered a position as junior chemist in the Department of Agriculture, which he accepted. It was March 1928, the work was in the Fixed Nitrogen Research Laboratory. It was at this time that Β joined Ε to make the B E or Ε Β combination which adorns the pages of the Journal of the American Chemical Society from 1930 to 1937. Many of us can remember the years of the Great Depression. One conse quence was that he remained a junior chemist for eight years, but rose three steps in the next six years, leaving as a chemist to join the Navy as a lieutenant in October 1942. He married Esther Caukin in 1931. There were two children, Kathryn in 1938 and Betty in 1942. There was an M.S. at George Washington University in 1929, and a Ph.D. degree at Johns Hopkins in 1933. A year's leave of absence from the department served to meet the residence and language re quirements, the preliminary and oral examinations, a joint paper with Joseph and Maria Mayer, and election to Sigma Xi. The dissertation was performed, by per mission, at the Fixed Nitrogen Research Laboratory. It has always seemed appropriate to this writer that the elbow in the adsorp tion isotherms of nitrogen on finely divided materials at liquid air temperatures should have been called Point B, because it was the outcome of a brilliant series of experimental measurements of such isotherms by the man we honor today. It was correctly identified as the approximate position of the completion of a mono layer of adsorption on the surface of the material and the beginning of multilayer adsorption. It is now common knowledge to students of even elementary physical chemistry that, in 1938, a theory of adsorption of gases in multimolecular layers was published. Point Β was merged into the B E T equation. The Washington Section of the American Chemical Society made him the Hillebrand prize winner in 1945 for this work. It is in the record that the application for a commission in the United States Navy soon after the war broke out was rejected, with the statement that there was no need for a man of his qualifications. Fortunately for them, the Navy changed its mind and the call to active duty came in October 1942. The delay permitted the completion of the manuscript on "Adsorption of Gases and Vapors." I am happy to relate that it was started, at my persuasion, 21 months previously; I was instrumental in having it published at Princeton University Press in this country and at Oxford University Press in England. The manuscript was sent to Princeton on the day that the commission in the Navy was received. For that In SOLID SURFACES; Copeland, L., et al.; Advances in Chemistry; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 1961.
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ADVANCES IN CHEMISTRY SERIES
reason, we can be thankful that the commission was delayed, more thankful because, though now nearly 20 years old, it has never been supplanted by a worthier successor. One casualty of the war was a second volume which was to deal with "Chemisorption" by the same author. His publication with Emmett in 1940 displays the quality which such a volume would have revealed. High explosives research and development in which the next eight and a half years were spent, four in uniform and the remainder as a civilian, recall the Phi Beta Kappa episode. At the outset, the sum total of his background was that he knew the terms T N T and dynamite. By the end of the war, he was supervising the work of 45 persons and many more indirectly. Among his list of consultants, listed in alphabetical order, were Richard Courant, Albert Einstein, Henry Eyring, George Gamov, Jack Kirkwood, and John von Neumann. He rose from lieutenant to lieutenant commander, commander, then received the Commendation Ribbon of the Navy and, like myself, was made an Officer in the Order of the British Empire for services rendered to the United States, one of Britain's allies in World War II. We should perhaps draw a discreet veil over the years immediately preceding September 1951, or stand for a silent moment in tribute to one who not only served his country well and faithfully but was also persecuted by his country. Catalysis, adsorption, explosives, and like activities lost, simultaneously, a gifted scientist, but the Portland Cement Association was the gainer in its senior research chemist, its principal research chemist, and, since July 1958, its manager of the Basic Research Section. Esther Caukin, who shared the bitter years, died in June 1959, but we welcome his new wife and wish for them both long years of happiness together. We could continue indefinitely, comparing and contrasting the pre-1940 and the post-1951 stages. We would come up always with the same answer. It would be of a man who could attain Phi Beta Kappa as an A.B. majoring in chemistry and English, one who might have enriched medical science but went through chemical engineering to illuminate physical chemical research in ways undreamed and unanticipated by him. This symposium by friends who have gathered to do him honor is vivid testimony to the quality of man who came to this country, unheralded and unsung, in the summer of 1921, and 40 years later receives from his peers in the science of chemistry one of their most distinguished awards. He has spoken to me often of the friendship and inspiration that has been his from his friends in the ups and downs of his life. I am proud that he asked me to be your spokesman in the conferring of the Kendall Award, expressing for you and, from the bottom of my heart also, our appreciation of the quality, yes, the nobility of the life of Stephen Brunauer
In SOLID SURFACES; Copeland, L., et al.; Advances in Chemistry; American Chemical Society: Washington, DC, 1961.
