Background

Ira Remsen was born on February 10, 1846, in New York City. His father, James Vanderbilt Remsen, came from a long line of Dutch ancestors, early settlers in Long Island. His mother, Rosanna (Secor) Remsen, was of Dutch and Huguenot descent. When Remsen was eight, he was sent with his mother, who was in frail health, to a farm in Rockland County, New York, and he spent two years in rural surroundings.

Education

Remsen attended country schools in Rockland County, New York. It does not at all follow, as has been intimated (Harrow, post), that the instruction he received was inferior in quality. Often intimate contact with the teacher and the freedom and initiative permitted to the pupils more than compensated for the less formal character of the studies. After two years, and the death of his mother, he returned to New York. There he attended New York schools and the Free Academy, which later developed into the College of the City of New York. He did not graduate from the Academy, however, but after he had become one of the most distinguished chemists in America he was given a bachelor's degree by the College as of the class of 1865.

His father wished him to become a physician, and he, therefore, attended a homeopathic medical school for some time. He had previously made an excellent record in Latin and Greek but had received very little instruction in science. In the medical school, he was directed to read a book on chemistry and he later told, in one of his public lectures, of an amusing and disastrous incident when on his own initiative he attempted to try out the action of nitric acid on copper. He was dissatisfied with the instruction is given at homeopathic college and in later life had little patience with homeopathic doctrines. After some time he induced his father to send him to the College of Physicians and Surgeons, where he graduated in 1867, receiving a prize for his thesis, "The Fatty Degeneration of the Liver," although it had been written on the basis of what he could find in available medical books, with no observations of the disease in hospital clinics. The award was doubtless due to the facility in writing English which characterized him throughout his life, making his lectures a delight to those who listened and his textbooks extremely useful.

With his doctor's degree at the age of twenty-one, he was supposed to be ready to enter upon medical practice and was offered a desirable partnership with a prominent physician in New York City. Having reached his majority, however, he felt justified in disregarding his father's wish and went to Germany to study chemistry. Not knowing that Liebig was devoting his time to writing and no longer worked with students in the laboratory, he went to Munich, where, instead of working with the great master, he studied with a talented Privatdocent, Jacob Volhard, who gave him, for a year, thorough instruction in analytical chemistry. He doubtless attended Liebig's lectures and read chemical books, which he could now do to advantage with the background of his intensive work in the laboratory. In the spring of the following year, Volhard obtained for him an interview with Wuhler, who had come from Göttingen for one of his friendly visits with Liebig, and it was arranged that Remsen should go to Göttingen. There, in the fall, he began research work in organic chemistry under the direction of Rudolph Fittig. Two years later (1870) he received the degree of Ph. D. from Göttingen.

Career

In 1870 Professor Fittig was called to Tübingen, and he asked Remsen to go with him as his assistant. Nearly all the leading chemists in Germany were then engaged in developing the science of organic chemistry with the aid of a correct system of atomic weights, based on Avogadro's Law and the theories of valence and of the structure of carbon compounds given by Frankland, Couper, and Kekule. Thus since first going to Germany Remsen had lived in the atmosphere of intense devotion to research characteristics of German laboratories, and he returned home in 1872 imbued with an earnest desire to devote his life to research.

After some delay, during which time he published Wuhler's Outlines of Organic Chemistry (1873), translated from Fittig's eighth German edition, and wrote Principles of Theoretical Chemistry (published in 1877), he was appointed a professor of chemistry and physics at Williams College.

The atmosphere of the college was not conducive to research and many Americans returning from Germany to similar conditions at this period fell into lives of routine teaching. Remsen succeeded, however, in obtaining a small laboratory and continued to work much as he had in Germany. The excellent quality of his Theoretical Chemistry received immediate recognition, and it was soon translated into German and Italian.

A few years later Daniel Coit Gilman was called upon to organize the first institution in America designed primarily not to impart information but to develop men of initiative and ability to add to the knowledge of the world. Seeking suitable professors for the new institution, he was impressed by Remsen's persistence in productive research under discouraging conditions and chose him as the first professor of chemistry at the Johns Hopkins University. Here he lectured on inorganic chemistry during the first semester and on organic chemistry, the second. Both graduates and undergraduates attended these lectures, which they found to be excellent preparation for teaching science. To those students who were well prepared in general chemistry and in analysis, Remsen gave work in both inorganic and organic preparations and then assigned problems requiring experimental work in the laboratory.

This work he watched from day to day as it progressed. Both in his lectures and in his conduct of research he followed the methods of the German laboratories, and the work became the joint product of professor and student as it had been in Liebig's laboratory at Giessen. With the aid of the fellowship system instituted at Johns Hopkins, Remsen soon surrounded himself with a group of brilliant, eager students, who were training themselves for academic positions. It would be hard to over-estimate the effect of this group on the development of chemistry in America. Some of the men entered industrial work and a few of these rose to positions of commanding importance.

The chemical investigations which Remsen had continued during his stay at Williams College and which he conducted with his students in Baltimore mostly grew directly or indirectly from problems which he had studied under the direction of Fittig at Göttingen and Töbingen.

He discovered that a group in the ortho position with reference to a methyl group in a derivative of benzene protects the methyl from oxidation by the usual oxidizing mixture of sulfuric and chromic acids. It might easily have been supposed that the ortho group interferes with the action of the neighboring methyl by a relation known as steric hindrance, but Remsen carefully refrained from a statement of this sort. When it was discovered that ortho methyl groups are oxidized by potassium permanganate and by other alkaline agents, it became evident that the neighborhood of the groups is not a sufficient explanation for the phenomena. This protection of methyl and other groups from oxidation was thoroughly established by a series of studies and is still known as "Remsen's Law."

During the early years of his work in Baltimore, a young man named Fahlberg, who had already taken his doctor's degree in Germany, was given an opportunity to work in the laboratory and undertook, at Remsen's suggestion, a study of the oxidation of the sulfamide of toluene by means of potassium permanganate. Instead of the sulfamide of benzoic acid, which was expected, he obtained the anhydride of that compound and this was named benzoic sulfinide. By a happy accident, Fahlberg discovered that the compound is intensely sweet, and some years later it became an article of commerce under the name of saccharin.

Remsen's discovery of the sulfone phthaleins was intimately connected with his previous work on the oxidation of sulfamide derivatives of benzene, as was the case with his study of conditions under which the diazo group is replaced by the ethoxy or methoxy group instead of by hydrogen.

While studying the literature of chemistry in writing his textbook Inorganic Chemistry (1889), he formulated the following generalization: "When the halide of any element combines with the halide of an alkali metal to form a double salt, the number of molecules of the alkali salt which are added to one molecule of the other halide is never greater and is generally less than the number of halogen atoms in the latter." Very few exceptions to this rule have been found, but Remsen's theoretical explanation for the rule has not been accepted and has been replaced by Werner's theories explaining complex inorganic salts and by recent electronic interpretations.

In 1879 Remsen established the American Chemical Journal to make American researches in chemistry available for American readers. Although supported in part by the Johns Hopkins University, it soon became representative of American chemists and was quickly recognized, both at home and abroad, as a worthy medium of publication for important work. The Journal had a very important influence on the development of chemical research. It was continued through fifty volumes and then incorporated with the Journal of the American Chemical Society. By a series of textbooks both of organic and of inorganic chemistry, he extended his influence to thousands of students at home and abroad. These included: An Introduction to the Study of the Compounds of Carbon; or, Organic Chemistry (1885), An Introduction to the Study of Chemistry (1886), The Elements of Chemistry (1887), Inorganic Chemistry (1889), A College Text-book of Chemistry (1901), and two laboratory manuals; several of his books were translated into German, Russian, and other languages.

Up to the time of his retirement from teaching, Remsen consistently refused to undertake chemical work for private parties or for corporations. On several occasions, however, he undertook work for municipalities and for the United States government.

In the fall of 1881 the water supply of Boston was contaminated with something which gave to the water a disagreeable taste and odor; he was fortunate enough to discover the cause of the trouble, which proved to be temporary and soon passed away, but he did not discover a method of preventing its return. As a member of the National Academy of Sciences, he was called on to direct certain investigations for the federal government, and by President Roosevelt, he was asked to act as chairman of a commission that carried out important investigations of subjects connected with the administration of the Pure Food Law.

The publicity and some unfortunate personal enmities which arose in this connection were most distasteful to him. After the Baltimore fire of 1904, he acted as chairman of a board that supervised the installation of a modern system of sewage disposal for the city. The financial trust involved in this undertaking was probably more economically administered than any trust of a similar magnitude in the country.

In 1901 Remsen was appointed a president of Johns Hopkins University, to succeed President Gilman. While the University was in difficult circumstances because of the depreciation of some of its invested funds, he was able, with the help of certain public-spirited citizens of Baltimore, to secure a magnificent new site in the northern part of the city; and during his administration, with the aid of an appropriation made by the State of Maryland, a school of engineering was established. Otherwise, no very noticeable change was made in the organization or conduct of the institution. The emphasis on research and on the instruction of graduate students continued to be the most distinctive characteristic of the work done by the faculty, and in spite of the burdens of the presidential office.

He retired from the presidency of the Johns Hopkins University in 1913, and in the years that followed was employed for some time as an expert by a large industrial corporation.

Achievements

• Remsen's greatest achievement was in his extensive chemical research which culminated in the discovery of the super-sweetener saccharine, made with a colleague. For his remarkable contribution, he received the Willard Gibbs Medal and was also awarded a Priestley Medal of the Society for Chemical Industry.
  
  Another Remsen's achievement was in becoming a founder of the American Chemical Journal in order both to promote the research being done at Johns Hopkins and elsewhere in the United States and to make this work widely available to American readers. It was the first American journal devoted to chemistry and quickly became recognized for its excellence both at home and abroad. It later merged with the Journal of the American Chemical Society.
  
  Also, his laboratory was a prolific source of well-prepared organic chemists. As a result, he was selected as the second president in 1901 on the retirement of the founding president Daniel Coit Gilman. In the course of his academic career, which also involved a period as president of the University of California, Gilman had exerted a revolutionary influence on higher education in the country. He served as the first president of the Carnegie Institution in Washington, D.C., founded in 1902.
  
  In order to commemorate the centenary of Remsen, the Maryland chapter of the American Chemical Society began awarding the Remsen award since 1946, in his honor. A hall in Queens College is also named for him and a bronze memorial tablet dedicated to Remsen was placed in the newly renamed Remsen Hall.
  
  

Works

More photos

• book

  • American Chemical Journal

    (Volume 41)

    1909
  • American Chemical Journal

    (Volume 44)

    1910
  • American Chemical Journal

    (Volume 27)

    1902
  • American Chemical Journal

    (Volume 29)

    1903
  • American Chemical Journal

    (Volume 50)

    1913
  • Theoretical Chemistry: With Special Reference to the Constitution of Chemical Compounds 1887
  • A Laboratory Manual, Containing Directions for a Course of Experiments in General Chemistry 1889
  • Principles of theoretical chemistry, with special reference to the constitution of chemical compounds 1887
  • An Introduction to the Study of the Compounds of Carbon, Or, Organic Chemistry 1885
  • A college text-book of chemistry 1903
  • An Introduction to the Study of Chemistry 1886
  • Inorganic Chemistry 1846

Religion

Remsen was, like most men of his education and experience, very reticent about his religious life, but he evidently retained a simple religious faith.

Views

Quotations: "Faith is called for at every turn in scientific matters as well as spiritual. It would be as illogical to give them [atoms] up as it is, in my opinion, to deny the existence of a power in the universe infinitely greater than any of the manifestations familiar to us; infinitely greater than man; a power that 'passeth all understanding."

"We would be glad to have your friend come here to study, but tell him that we teach Chemistry here and not Agricultural Chemistry, nor any other special kind of chemistry... We teach Chemistry."

"Be a physical chemist, an organic chemist, an analytical chemist, if you will; but above all be a Chemist."

"Liebig taught the world two great lessons. The first was that in order to teach chemistry it was necessary that students should be taken into a laboratory. The second lesson was that he who is to apply scientific thought and method to industrial problems must have a thorough knowledge of the sciences. The world learned the first lesson more readily than it learned the second."

"While reading in a textbook of chemistry… I came across the statement, “nitric acid acts upon copper.” I was getting tired of reading such absurd stuff and I determined to see what this meant. Copper was more or less familiar to me, for copper cents were then in use. I had seen a bottle marked “nitric acid” on a table in the doctor’s office where I was then “doing time.” I did not know its peculiarities, but I was getting on and likely to learn. The spirit of adventure was upon me. Having nitric acid and copper, I had only to learn what the words “act upon” meant… I put one of them [cent] on the table, opened the bottle marked “nitric acid”; poured some of the liquid on the copper; and prepared to make an observation. But what was this wonderful thing which I beheld? The cent was already changed, and it was no small change either. A greenish-blue liquid foamed and fumed over the cent and over the table. The air in the neighborhood of the performance became colored dark red. A great colored cloud arose. This was disagreeable and suffocating - how should I stop this? I tried to get rid of the objectionable mess by picking it up and throwing it out of the window, which I had meanwhile opened. I learned another fact - nitric acid not only acts upon copper but it acts upon fingers. The pain led to another unpremeditated experiment. I drew my fingers across my trousers and another fact was discovered. Nitric acid acts upon trousers. Taking everything into consideration, that was the most impressive experiment, and, relatively, probably the most costly experiment I have ever performed."

"He talked to us for an hour on what was ahead of us; cautioned us against giving up the desire to push ahead by continued study and work. He warned us against allowing our present accomplishments to be the high spot in our lives. He urged us not to wait for a brilliant idea before beginning independent research and emphasized the fact the Lavoisier's first contribution to chemistry was the analysis of a sample of gypsum. He told us that the fields in which the great masters had worked were still fruitful; the ground had only been scratched and the gleaner could be sure of ample reward."

Membership

Remsen was a member of the American Chemical Society where he also served as a president at different times. he was also a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Society for Chemical Industry (English), and the National Academy of Sciences.

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  American Chemical Society , United States

Personality

Remsen was known for his rather strict personality, he was also noted for his clear and straightforward teaching style, as well as for his devotion to his students.

Connections

On April 5, 1875, Ira Remsen married Elizabeth H. Mallory of New York City, whose acquaintance he had made in Williamstown. Two sons were born to them.

Father:

James Vanderbilt Remsen

Mother:

Rosanna Secor Remsen

1823–1856

Spouse:

Elizabeth Hilliard Mallory Remsen

1851–1934

collaborator:

Constantin Fahlberg

22 December 1850 in Tambov – 15 August 1910 in Nassau, was a Russian chemist who discovered the sweet taste of anhydroorthosulphaminebenzoic acid in 1877–78 when analysing the chemical compounds in coal tar at Johns Hopkins University for Professor Ira Remsen.

In 1879 Remsen invited Constantine Fahlberg, who had taken the Ph.D. at Leipzig, to continue the study of the oxidation of substituted benzene rings. Remsen had shown that ortho groups could be oxidized by potassium permanganate, and Fahlberg, working in Remsen’s laboratory and at Remsen’s suggestion, oxidized orthotoluene sulfamide by potassium permanganate to produce orthobenzoyl sulfimide. Fahlberg found the compound, later named saccharin, to be intensely sweet, and with the help of A. List patented the process for commercial manufacture.

Son:

Ira Mallory Remsen

1876–1928

Son:

Charles Mallory Remsen

1879–1969

Friend:

William Ramsay

Remsen had met and begun a life-long friendship with the young Scotchman who later became Sir William Ramsay.

teacher:

Rudolph Fittig

References

• Dictionary of Scientific Biography Volume 11
  1975
• Memoirs Of The National Academy Of Sciences Volume 14
  2015