Cyrus Moors Warren was an American chemist, inventor, and manufacturer.
Background
Cyrus Moors Warren was born at Fox Hill, West Dedham, Massachussets, the eighth of the eleven children of Jesse and Betsey (Jackson) Warren, both parents being of old colonial stock. His father, a descendant of Arthur Warren who emigrated to Massachusetts before 1638, was a blacksmith and the inventor of the swivel or side-hill plough. In 1829 he established a plough factory and foundry at Peru, Vt. , and in 1837 moved to Springfield, Vt. , where two years later his iron foundry was wholly destroyed by fire, to the complete impoverishment of the family.
Education
Cyrus and his next older brother, Samuel, who obtained their first education in country schools, were ambitious of higher learning and pursued their studies privately, supporting themselves meanwhile by teaching school in winter and by farm work in summer. He moved to Cambridge, Massachussets, to begin the study of chemistry and zoology in the Lawrence Scientific School. He graduatied with the degree of B. S. in 1855. He studied chemistry first at Paris, then at Heidelberg under Robert Bunsen, at Freiberg in Saxony, at Munich under Justus Liebig, at Berlin under Heinrich Rose, and finally at London.
Career
In 1846 Samuel began the manufacture of tarred roofing in Cincinnati and in the following year asked Cyrus to join him. The business succeeded so well that the two brothers were soon enabled to realize their ambition of securing a college education. In 1852 Cyrus moved with his family to Cambridge, Massachussets. He made here the acquaintance of Louis Agassiz, who became his close friend and adviser. In 1855, he took his family to Europe. In 1863 he established in Boston a well-equipped private laboratory where he devoted himself to important researches upon the hydrocarbon constituents of tars. Since the Warren brothers were using various tars in their business, Warren's investigations upon the separation of their components by his improved process of "fractional condensation" were of great industrial importance. The process was afterwards applied by Warren to a careful study of the complex mixture of hydrocarbons in Pennsylvania petroleum which may be said to mark the beginning of modern exact research in this field. Later, when the brothers turned to the use of Trinidad asphalt as a roofing and paving material, Warren invented processes of purification. The commercial and industrial development of these enterprises led to the establishment of the Warren Chemical and Manufacturing Company in Boston and the Warren-Scharf Asphalt Paving Company in New York, with Warren as president and treasurer. He took out various patents for processes of fractional distillation, and for improvements in asphalt roofing and paving, and devised an improved apparatus for determining vapor densities and an improved process of organic elementary analysis. In 1866-68 he held the chair of organic chemistry in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, but the demands of his business enterprises obliged him to resign. The long severe strain to which he was subjected during the business depression of the seventies, and the death of his brother and partner, Herbert M. Warren, in 1880, threw additional burdens upon his shoulders that finally caused a weakening in health. He suffered a paralytic stroke in 1888 and three years later died at Manchester, Vt.
Achievements
He was the author of thirteen scientific papers, published in Poggendorff's Annalen der Physik, the American Journal of Science, and the Proceedings and Memoirs of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He left bequests for the promotion of science to Harvard University and to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. A grant from the C. M. Warren Fund of the American Academy assisted Charles Frederic Mabery in his classic researches upon the composition of American petroleums.
Personality
Among self-made successful businessmen, Warren was an unusual type, his energy, persistence, and administrative ability being coupled with a strong capacity for study and scientific research. He always lamented that the exigencies and entanglements of business prevented him from giving exclusive attention to chemical research.
Connections
He married Lydia Ross on September 12, 1849. He and his wife had four daughters and three sons.
