John Johnston was an American chemist and metallurgist. He also served as Sterling Professor at Yale University from 1920 to 1927.
Background
John Johnston was born on October 13, 1881, in Perth, Scotland, the eldest of the three sons of James Johnston and Christina (Leslie) Johnston. His father was a prosperous wool factor until he suffered severe losses in the financial panic of 1893.
Education
Johnston attended Perth Academy and then entered University College in Dundee, which had just been united with the University of St. Andrews. He received a bachelor's degree in chemistry in 1903 but stayed on, as a Carnegie Scholar, for two years of postgraduate study. In 1905 he was awarded an 1851 Exhibition Scholarship to work with Richard Abegg at the University of Breslau (now Wroclaw, Poland). In 1908, he received the degree of D. Sc. from St. Andrews University.
Career
After two years in Germany, John Johnston came to the United States as a research associate in the research laboratory of physical chemistry that Arthur A. Noyes had recently established at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Johnston had planned to stay in the United States only a year, but in 1908 he joined the staff of the Geophysical Laboratory of the Carnegie Institution in Washington. There he investigated the behavior of various substances under high temperatures and pressures as a guide in interpreting geological phenomena. He became an American citizen in 1915.
Having developed an interest in the possibilities of industrial research, Johnston moved in 1916 to St. Louis to take charge of the research department of the American Zinc, Lead, and Smelting Company. But in September 1917, after America's entry into World War I, he was recalled to Washington as a consultant to the U. S. Bureau of Mines in its investigation of gas warfare. The next month he was appointed to the chemistry committee of the National Research Council, recently established as an adjunct to the National Academy of Sciences. In January 1918, he was appointed secretary of the council and chairman of the section on industrial relations. In March he also assumed the chairmanship of the division of chemistry and clerical technology. He resigned all of these posts in March 1919, but retained his chairmanship of the industrial relations section until June 1920 and remained a member of the council until 1930 and returned to it in 1932-1935 and 1941-1943.
In 1919 Johnston accepted an appointment at Yale University as Sterling professor of chemistry. In addition to teaching chemical thermodynamics, directing the work of graduate students, and holding the chairmanship of the chemistry department, he participated in the republication of the collected works of the great theoretical physicist J. Willard Gibbs, of whom Johnston considered himself a disciple. Throughout his years at Yale he maintained his industrial contacts by acting as a consultant for the Bell Telephone Laboratories.
In 1927, when the United States Steel Corporation, at the instigation of its chairman, Elbert H. Gary, created a research laboratory, Johnston was asked to organize it and to become the company's director of research. The death of Gary introduced a series of frustrating uncertainties and delays, but Johnston assembled a small, capable staff, which was housed, pending construction of a laboratory, in the office building of the Federal Shipbuilding and Drydock Company, a subsidiary of the United States Steel Corporation located in Kearny, New Jersey. The depression of 1929 and, later, the outbreak of World War II thwarted all plans to provide the laboratory with a home of its own.
As a writer, Johnston strove for precision and clarity and expected those qualities of others, often to their despair. He was an early advocate and practitioner of interdisciplinary programs in teaching and in research. Always interested in professional affairs, Johnston served on the editorial board of the International Critical Tables.
After his retirement from United States Steel in 1946, Johnston with his family moved to Southwest Harbor, Maine, on Mt. Desert Island, where they had long had a summer place. Johnston died in Bar Harbor, Maine, of hypertensive heart disease in his sixty-ninth year. He was buried in Southwest Harbor.
Achievements
Membership
Johnston was president of the American Electrochemical Society in 1933-1934.
Personality
Johnston's natural reserve tended to obscure his essential friendliness and his fine sense of humor. An interviewer once aptly described him as a "quiet, keen, long-faced man with equal parts of dourness and humor, both carefully restrained. " His high principles and his devotion to science greatly influenced his students and colleagues.
Interests
Johnston enjoyed gardening, music, and, above all, reading; he scanned a page with surprising speed but with complete comprehension and amazing retention.
Connections
On July 17, 1909, Johnston married Dorothy Hopkins of Dundee, Scotland, a talented homemaker who shared his ideals and enthusiasms. They had three children: Helen Leslie, John Murray, and William Valentine.