Background

Edward Kremers was born on February 23, 1865 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, United States. He was the oldest son of Gerhard and Elise (Kamper) Kremers, German immigrants who had come to the United States after the revolution of 1848. His father was secretary of the Milwaukee Gas Light Company.

Education

Kremers received his primary education in the public schools of Milwaukee, in largely German-speaking classes, and at the age of fourteen began his high school work in the "college department" of the Mission House, a German Reformed Church theological school in Sheboygan, Wisconsin. There he studied chemistry and the natural sciences as well as Latin and Greek. When his father's illness curtailed the family finances, Kremers left school to become a pharmacist's apprentice. His preceptor, a cultured Milwaukeean who had obtained his training at the University of Munich, provided the youth with a liberal education along with a knowledge of medicinal drugs.

Kremers received his certificate at the end of two years instead of the usual three, and in the fall of 1884 entered the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy. He was dissatisfied, however, with the limited opportunity for laboratory work and after the winter term returned to enroll at the recently established college of pharmacy of the University of Wisconsin, in Madison. Kremers received his diploma as a graduate in pharmacy in 1886.

Discovering that a degree in pharmacy commanded little respect in the academic world--an experience that helped impel his later efforts to reform pharmaceutical training--Kremers next enrolled at the university as an undergraduate and received the Bachelor of Science degree in 1888. He then went to Germany, where he studied under the chemists Otto Wallach and Friedrich Kekulé at Bonn and later with Wallach at Göttingen, receiving the Doctor of Philosophy from Göttingen in 1890 with a thesis on "The Isomerism within the Terpene Group. "

Among the honors that came to Kremers were the Doctor of Science degree from the University of Michigan (1913).

Career

Kremers worked as a laboratory assistant to Frederick B. Power, who had organized the department.

In 1890 Kremers became an instructor in pharmacy at the University of Wisconsin, and in 1892, when Powers resigned, he was made professor and director of the pharmacy program. Kremers's experience in Germany had strengthened his resolve to reform the teaching of pharmacy, which in the United States was then largely governed by the apprentice system and by private colleges run by druggists. Few colleges of pharmacy required more than a grammar school education, and the training rarely included laboratory work.

In 1892 Kremers lengthened the pharmacy course at Wisconsin from four terms to six--the equivalent of two full academic years--and limited the enrollment to high school graduates.

Kremers carried his message of reform to meetings of the American Pharmaceutical Association. Though his ideas met with some resistance, by 1896 five other state universities had followed his lead by initiating an optional four-year pharmacy course. As Kremers's reputation spread, advanced students came to Wisconsin to work under his direction. The first Master of Science degrees in the school of pharmacy were given in 1899; in 1902 the university conferred its first Doctor of Philosophy in pharmaceutical chemistry upon one of Kremers's students, Oswald Schreiner, and in 1917 the first Doctor of Philosophy in pharmacy. In time nearly sixty students earned their doctorates under Kremers and went on to become leaders in pharmaceutical research both in this country and abroad. His own interests lay in the fields of structural organic chemistry and, particularly, phytochemistry (plant chemistry).

In 1908 he began growing medicinal plants in his own garden, and a year later, in cooperation with the United States Department of Agriculture, he was able to devote an acre of university land to the project. This was the forerunner of Wisconsin's state-supported Pharmaceutical Experiment Station, established in 1913; it functioned until 1933, when the depression forced the withdrawal of state funds. Among the accomplishments of the research were the development of horsemint as a source of thymol and a new method of purifying digitalis. Kremers served as editor (1896 - 1909) of the Pharmaceutical Review and in 1898 established the Pharmaceutical Archives.

Achievements

• Kremers offered a pioneering elective four-year program leading to a Bachelor of Science degree, the requirements including the study of botany, physics, and inorganic and organic chemistry and a graduation thesis based on original laboratory research. He initiated the formation of a historical section of the American Pharmaceutical Association. In 1887 he published a paper on the chemistry of the volatile oils of pennyroyal and citronella for which he received the Ebert Prize of the American Pharmaceutical Association. Among the honors that came to Kremers were the Remington Medal of the American Pharmaceutical Association (1930). He was made honorary president of the American Pharmaceutical Association in 1933 and of the American Institute of the History of Pharmacy in 1941.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Bulletin of the Lloyd Library of Botany, Pharmacy and Materia Medica; No. 6, 1903, Reproduction Series No. 3

    ( About the Book Biology is a natural science that examin...)

  • The volatile oils

    (This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. T...)

  • A Bibliographic Guide For Students Of The History Of Pharmacy...

    (This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. T...)

  • History of Pharmacy 2nd Edition
  • Kremers and Urdang's History of Pharmacy

Connections

Kremers married Laura Haase of Milwaukee on July 6, 1892. Their four children were Roland Edward (who became a food chemist), Elsa, Laura Ruth, and Carl Gerhard.

Father:

Gerhard Kremers

Mother:

Elise (Kamper) Kremers

Spouse:

Laura Haase of Milwaukee

Daughter:

Laura Ruth

Daughter:

Elsa

Son:

Carl Gerhard

Son:

Roland Edward

chemist