Frederick Gardner Cottrell was an American physical chemist and inventor.
Background
Frederick Gardner Cottrell was born on January 10, 1877 in Oakland, California, United States. He was the younger of two surviving sons of Henry and Cynthia L. (Durfee) Cottrell. Both parents were descended from English families that had settled in Rhode Island in the seventeenth century. The father had begun in the shipping business in New York, probably as a clerk, but in 1873 moved to San Francisco, where at the time of the boy's birth he was the paid secretary of the Union Club; he later worked for an oil company. A talented amateur photographer who developed and printed his own plates, he probably helped stimulate his son's later interest in chemistry. The mother's difficult personality led to an estrangement from her sons, and the household was managed by her older sister, Mary. Both "Aunt Mame" and Frederick's father encouraged the boy's enthusiasm for hobbies that included photography, electricity, telegraphy, job printing, and publishing a weekly newspaper, the Boys' Workshop. The intensity and diversity of these childhood interests were characteristic of Cottrell's later life as well.
Education
After two years in the Oakland high school, he was admitted, by examination, to the University of California at Berkeley, where he completed the course requirements in three years and received the B. S. degree in 1896. He was awarded a Le Conte Fellowship.
He received the Ph. D. degree from Leipzig in 1902, summa cum laude, with a dissertation on the problem of determining diffusion rates of salts in solution by the use of electrolytic cells.
Career
Three years of teaching chemistry at the Oakland high school enabled him to finance further graduate work in Germany.
Convinced that the richest opportunity for fundamental new developments in science lay in the ill-defined border between two established disciplines, he chose the relatively new field of physical chemistry.
He worked first (1900) under Jacob Henry van't Hoff in Berlin and the following year under Wilhelm Ostwald in Leipzig.
Returning to the United States in the autumn of 1902, Cottrell accepted a fellowship at Harvard and began studying under Theodore Richards; but, finding himself in a state of lassitude and irresolution, he resigned after a few weeks and returned to the University of California to become instructor in physical chemistry (1902 - 1906) and later assistant professor (1906 - 1911). As a teacher, Cottrell inspired his students with much of his own enthusiasm for research, but he sometimes overwhelmed them by the proliferation of his ideas. Similarly, in later years, scientists working under Cottrell's direction complained of his laying out a lifetime of research in a few minutes of consultation.
In 1905 Cottrell began studying ways of dealing with the corrosive fumes--particularly sulfuric acid-emitted by chemical and smelting plants in the vicinity of San Francisco Bay.
By 1907 he was able to apply for a patent on a method that used electrical precipitation to dispose of the noxious particles in dust and smoke. Essentially, his technique involved passing a high-voltage direct current through a conductor or electrode from which the charge leaked, carrying the particulate matter with it, to the neighboring electrode. The deposited matter, in some installations, could be retrieved as valuable minerals or chemical compounds. To obtain financial backing for continuing and applying this research, Cottrell and a few associates formed the International Precipitation Company. Over the next few decades his inventions found many commercial applications and reduced pollution from chemical plants and smelters. Cottrell also adapted the precipitation process to dehydrate petroleum. His patents covering the separation and collection of liquid and solid particles from gases and liquids proved extremely valuable. Cottrell had a deep conviction, however, that the results of research should be used for the public good, not for private profit.
He demonstrated the strength of this belief when in 1912 he created a nonprofit organization, the Research Corporation, and, with the consent of his associates, turned over to it all his patents. Administered by a distinguished board of directors who served without fee, the corporation used the income from its patents to support further research and the practical application of that research to benefit mankind. Over the years the corporation gave basic aid to such important projects as Ernest O. Lawrence's pioneer investigations of atomic nuclei, the development by Lawrence and others of the cyclotron, and Robert J. van de Graaff's development of the electrostatic generator. It also helped support the production of cortisone by Edward C. Kendall of the Mayo Clinic, and the synthesis of vitamin B1 by Robert R. Williams and his associates. Patents derived from some of these and other projects were assigned to the Research Corporation, as Cottrell had hoped would be the case.
By 1952, forty years after its founding, the corporation's annual grants were approximately $900, 000. Cottrell's strong interest in applied science led him to resign his professorship in 1911 in order to organize and administer the San Francisco office of the federal Bureau of Mines.
In 1916 he was named the bureau's chief metallurgist and moved to Washington, D. C. During World War I he was one of a number of scientists and engineers who contributed to the development of a commercial process for the cheap production of helium for use in dirigibles. Newspapers, to his discomfort, exaggerated his role in the project, which brought a sensational reduction of the price of helium from $1, 700 to one cent per cubic foot.
Cottrell served for eight months in 1920 as temporary director of the Bureau of Mines, and then resigned to become salaried chairman (1921 - 1922) of the Division of Chemistry and Chemical Technology of the National Research Council.
He resigned from the Agriculture Department in 1930 in order to take a more active part in the affairs of the Research Corporation. He accepted a salary about one-fourth of what he could have earned in industry, but he chose work that he believed contributed most to the public welfare.
Through his nitrogen research he became involved in the disposition of the government's wartime nitrogen plants at Muscle Shoals and the associated Wilson Dam.
In an address to the Western Society of Engineers in 1937, when it presented to him the Washington Award for his social vision, Cottrell urged engineers to leave private corporations and associate themselves with enterprises, exemplified by his own Research Corporation, in which the profit motive could be subordinated to concern for social utility and improved working conditions.
Another of his commitments was the promotion of international cooperation, especially by means of the international language Esperanto. Some of Cottrell's colleagues thought his interests spread too wide and his focus and concentration shifted too often.
In 1944 he moved from Washington to Palo Alto, California, where in spite of poor health Cottrell continued to work on problems of nitrogen fixation. He died of a coronary thrombosis at the age of seventy-one while attending a meeting of the National Academy of Sciences in Berkeley. His remains were cremated. A grove of California redwoods was dedicated to his memory.
Achievements
Views
Quotations:
"I . .. don't feel the ties of kinship in as forceful a way, compared to the ties of humanity as a whole, as many people".
Membership
In 1939 the National Academy of Sciences elected him a member.
Personality
Cottrell was memorable for his eccentricities (he occasionally wore several pairs of dimestore glasses simultaneously), but even more so for his restless energy. Although intervals of nervous depression or ill health plagued him throughout his life, he always retained his enthusiasm for research and his dedication to social and scientific goals.
Connections
Cottrell married Jessie Mae Fulton, a college classmate, on January 1, 1904. Their only two children died at birth.