Leonard Parker Kinnicutt was an American educator, chemist, and sanitary engineer. He served as a professor of chemistry at Worcester Polytechnic Institute and as a consulting chemist of the Connecticut sewage commission.
Background
Leonard Parker Kinnicutt was born on May 22, 1854 in Worcester, Massachusetts, United States, the youngest of the six children of Francis Harrison and Elizabeth Waldo (Parker) Kinnicutt. His father, a prosperous hardware merchant, was descended in the seventh generation from Roger Kinnicutt who emigrated from Devon, England, about 1650. On his mother's side he was descended in the eighth generation from Samuel Lincoln, who came to Hingham, Massachusetts, from Hingham, England, in 1637.
Education
Young Kinnicutt received his early education in the schools of Worcester, graduating from the high school in 1871. He went at once to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he devoted himself chiefly to the study of chemistry. Following his graduation in 1875, he spent four years in professional studies in Germany. At Heidelberg he came under the inspiring influence of Bunsen, from whom he acquired an appreciation of the value of careful and accurate analysis. Here also under Bunsen's guidance he was initiated into the refinements of gas analysis. At this time organic chemistry was developing with tremendous rapidity especially in Germany. Bunsen had passed the zenith of his career and was not in sympathy with the new tendency which was manifesting itself in chemistry. It is not surprising, therefore, to find young Kinnicutt leaving Heidelberg and matriculating at Bonn, where Kekulé was lecturing with such success that Kinnicutt was captivated by the spirit and beauty of organic chemistry and devoted himself diligently to its study.
He was fortunate in being accepted into the private laboratory of the master, where he became associated with Richard Anschütz, at that time lecture assistant, but later, after the retirement of Kekulé, director of the Chemical Institute at Bonn. In collaboration with Anschütz he published a number of papers, chiefly on phenyl-glyceric acid. This association ripened into a lasting friendship. Returning to the United States in 1879, he spent a year in study with Ira Remsen at the Johns Hopkins University, and then three years at Harvard, where he served as instructor in quantitative analysis and as private assistant to Wolcott Gibbs, at that time Rumford Professor of Chemistry. In 1882 he received from Harvard the degree of doctor of science.
Career
In September 1882 Kinnicutt accepted an appointment as instructor of organic chemistry at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute. In the following January he became assistant professor of chemistry, three years later he was made full professor, and from 1892 he was director of the department.
As early as 1885 Kinnicutt began to give attention to the question of sewage disposal and sanitary problems. He paid particular attention to the examination of water and watersheds, the contamination of rivers and ponds by trade wastes and sewage. After 1894 he visited England on an average every other year, familiarizing himself with the work done in that country, and the results were embodied in various articles which he published on the subject. He paid special attention to the subject of the pollution of streams by wool-washings, and made a careful study of this problem at Bradford, England, where a greater amount of wool was washed annually than in any other city in England or in the United States.
He was employed as an expert in numerous cases regarding the pollution of streams and ponds. In 1903 he was appointed consulting chemist of the Connecticut sewage commission, a position which he retained up to the time of his death.
He was a frequent contributor to scientific periodicals and the proceedings of learned societies upon topics relating to his specialty. In 1910, in collaboration with Prof. C. E. A. Winslow of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and R. Winthrop Pratt of the Ohio state board of health, he published a book entitled Sewage Disposal.
He was deeply interested in the sanitary problems of his native city, Worcester, and kept a careful watch upon the city's water supply. During the "water famine" of the winter of 1910-1911 he directed from his sickbed the tests to be made, had daily reports brought to him, and outlined the policy by which, in his opinion, the city's health might be best safeguarded. He also devoted a great deal of time and money to secure a pure milk supply in summer for the babies in needy families, and at the time of his death he was a member of the Worcester Medical Milk Commission. While a student in Germany he had discovered that he had incipient tuberculosis. For a long time it seemed to have been arrested, but at length it developed and after a lingering illness he died in his fifty-seventh year.
Kinnicutt was twice married but had no children. His first wife was Louisa Hoar Clarke, daughter of Dr. Henry Clarke, whom he married June 4, 1885. On July 9, 1898, he married Frances Ayres Clarke, daughter of Josiah Clarke, and a cousin of his first wife.