PERKIN MEDAL Awarded to Warren IC. Lewis for his work in chemical engineering
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HE Perkin Medal of the Society of Warren K. Lewis was born in 1882, in Chemical I n d u s t r y for 1936 was Sussex County, Del., studied in the public schools of Laurel, Del., and Newton, Mass., presented to Warren K. Lewis, professor and graduated in chemical engineering a t the Massachusetts Institute of Techfrom the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, on January 10, 1936, a t a joint nology in 1905. He served one year in meeting in New York of the American that institution as laboratory assistant in Section of the Society of Chemical Indusindustrial chemistry; then he studied for try and the AMERICAWCHEMICAL SOCIETY. two years in Germany, taking his doctofs The award was made in recognition of Prodegree in chemistry under Abegg and fessor Lewis's creative activities as the Ladenburg a t the University of Breslau. father of modern chemical engineering, and In 1909 he became chemist for the tannery his training of and inspiration to many of and leatherboard mill of t h e W. H. the present and potential leaders in the McElwain Company a t Merrimack, N. H. profession. George A. Burrell of the WARREN K. LEWIS A year and a half later he returned to the Burrell-Mase E n gin eer in g C om pan y, (Photo by Blank-Stoller, Inc.) Massachusetts Institute of Technology as under whom Dr. Lewis worked during the assistant professor of industrial chemistry war, spoke on the accomplishments of the and has been on its faculty continuously since that time. medalist, and Marston T. Bogert of Columbia University During the war, first in the Bureau of Mines and later in the made the presentation of the medal. The Perkin Medal may be awarded annually by the AmeriChemical Warfare Service, he had charge of research on gas defense. He correlated and directed the work of the various can Section of the Society of Chemical Industry for the most laboratories and cooperated in the reduction to practice of valuable work in applied chemistry, The award may be the results achieved in the manufacture of protective devices made to any chemist residing in the United States of America for work which he has done a t any time during his career, by the Gas Defense Production Division. whether this work proved successful at the time of execution Throughout his career as a teacher of engineering, Lewis has or publication, or whether it became valuable in subsequent striven to maintain close contact with the vital problems of industry, largely through consulting activities, and has endevelopment of the industry. The medalist is chosen by a committee representing this society, the AMERICAN CEWMICAL deavored not only to develop solutions of these problems in SOCIETY, the American Electrochemical Society, the Amerithe laboratory, but even more to train in the classroom men with the power to solve them. His work has focused mainly can Institute of Chemical Engineers, and the Soci6t6 de on filtration, distillation and absorption, the thermal properChimie Industrielle. (For list of achievements of each medalist up to 1934, see ties of materials, and the chemistry of colloids and amorphous materials. IND.ENG.CFIEM.,February, 1933, page 229.)
The list of medalists from the date of founding of the medal in 1906 by Sir William H. Perkin to the present is as follows: 1906 1908 1909 I910 1911 1912 1913 1914 1915 1916
Sir William H. Perkin J. B. F. Herreahoff Arno Behr E. G. Aoheson Charlea M. Hall Herman Fraseh Jamea Gayley John W. Hyatt Edward Weston Leo H. Baekeland
1917 1918 1919 1920 1921 1922 1923 1924 1925 1926
Ernst Twitehell Auguste J. Rosai F. C.Cottrell Charles F. Chandler Willie R. Whitney William M. Burton Milton C. Whitaker Frederick M. Becket Hugh K. Moore R. B. Moore
256
1927 1928 1929 1930 1931 1932 1933 1934 1935 1936
John E. Teeple Irving Langmuir E. C. Sullivan Herbert H. Dow Arthur D. Little Charles F. Burgess George Oenslsger Colin G . Fink George 0. Currne, Jr. Warren K. Lewis
