Background
Arie Jan Haagen-Smit was born on December 22, 1900 in Utrecht, the Netherlands, the son of Jan Willem Adrianus Haagen-Smit, a chemist, and Maria Geertruida van Maanen.
Arie Jan Haagen-Smit was born on December 22, 1900 in Utrecht, the Netherlands, the son of Jan Willem Adrianus Haagen-Smit, a chemist, and Maria Geertruida van Maanen.
Haagen-Smit received his Bachelor's degree (1922), Master's degree (1926), and Doctor of Philosophy degree (1929) from the University of Utrecht.
In 1929, Haagen-Smit began his career as chief assistant in organic chemistry at the University of Utrecht, serving there until 1936, when he came to the United States to lecture in biochemistry, at Harvard University. The next year he became associate professor of biochemistry at California Institute of Technology. He was promoted to professor of bio-organic chemistry in 1940, and in 1965 he became director of the plant environmental laboratory. He retired in 1971.
Haagen-Smit's early work extended his doctoral research on plant hormones, and while at Utrecht, he synthesized some naturally occurring plant hormones. He continued this work in California, and in 1944 he received a patent for a synthetic hormone that aided the body in healing wounds. Two years later he patented another hormone that helped in the healing of wounds in plants.
During the 1940's, Haagen-Smit became interested in the structure and usefulness of essential oils in plants. He analyzed the flavors of volatile oils contained in fruits and vegetables and established their chemical structures, work valuable to the food industry. Later research led to discoveries useful in industry and medicine. The development of paint products resulted from his study of oil of turpentine, for example. Haagen-Smit's interest in the usefulness of plant compounds prompted a study of alkaloids found in cacti, some of which are effective in treating nervous disorders. During his career he expanded his research to include a variety of plants. The work that brought Haagen-Smit to public prominence resulted from his residence in southern California.
After World War II, Los Angeles began to experience serious air pollution. It was obvious to almost everyone that the smog hanging over the city was more than an aesthetic nuisance; it threatened the health of millions of persons. While many accepted smog as an inevitable product of industry, the city adopted its first air pollution ordinance in 1946. This measure was ineffectual because it assumed that the easily identified sulfur compounds in the air were the major problem.
In 1949, as a member of the city's air pollution committee, Haagen-Smit accepted the task of determining the composition of the brown haze choking the city. His early studies showed that automobile exhaust was a major contributor, and cleanup measures quickly focused on reducing hydrocarbons.
By 1955, Haagen-Smit argued that more efficient combustion in auto engines was insufficient because it would not reduce production of nitrogen oxides, formed when automobile engines heat nitrogen in the air.
By 1958, Haagen-Smit had begun to proclaim the fundamentals of a science of ecology. In Science he argued for sweeping conservation measures to control pollution. He warned that the "principal elements" of modern human society (air, water, space, and carbon-based energy) are limited and urged a broad-based response to air pollution including engineers, scientists, economists, and lawyers. He cautioned that the nationwide effort required would cost billions. Any proposed solutions would need close scrutiny. Although atomic energy provided an alternative energy source, Haagen-Smit expressed serious concerns over the environmental dangers it posed. Pollution control devices on automobiles, touted by some as a panacea, would never be as effective for average drivers as in laboratory tests. To gauge the effects of air pollution on "the average person" was meaningless, he concluded, because the population affected was "so varied in reactions and responses" that the standard must be "the oversensitives - the sick, the young, and the very old. "
On a 1959 television program, "The Next Hundred Years, " Haagen-Smit explained that civic planning on the broadest scale was necessary. Efforts should be directed toward "creation of more and larger breathing spaces in the form of extensive parks and the complete revision of our thinking on public transportation. Even relocation of industry may be necessary. " Arie Jan Haagen-Smit died on March 17, 1977, in Pasadena, California, of lung cancer.
Arie Jan Haagen-Smit started his air pollution research in 1948, when Southern California residents suffered stinging eyes and respiratory irritation from smog. His original interest stemmed from damage to crop plants smog was causing in the Los Angeles Basin, and he had received many requests from government agencies to investigate air pollution. Using techniques originally developed in his work on the biosynthesis of essential oils, Haagen-Smit showed that smog primarily resulted from a photochemical reaction of the unburned hydrocarbons, ozone, and nitrogen oxides from automobile exhaust and industrial fuel combustion.
By the mid 1950s, the connection between automobiles and smog in Los Angeles became widely accepted in scientific circles. Haagen-Smit worked with Arnold Beckman, who developed various equipment for monitoring smog.
Arie Jan Haagen-Smit was a member of the editorial boards of Excerpts Medica, Atmospheric Environment, and the Air Pollution Control Association of America.
Haagen-Smit was a Fellow of the New York Academy of Sciences and the Royal Academy of Sciences of the Netherlands and a Trustee of the American Chemical Society.
Arie Jan Haagen-Smit was an optimistic person.
In 1930, Arie Jan Haagen-Smit married Petronella Francina Pennings. They had a son, Jan Willem Adrianus, who was born only three months before Petronella died in 1933.
On June 10, 1935, Haagen-Smit married Maria "Zus" Wilhelmina Bloemers, a graduate student of botany in the University of Utrecht. They had three daughters: Maria Van Pelt, Maria Daniel, and Joanne Demers.