Education
He was awarded an honorary Doctor of Science degree from Columbia University in the Department of Chemical Engineering and Applied Science where he was a Senior Staff Associate.
He was awarded an honorary Doctor of Science degree from Columbia University in the Department of Chemical Engineering and Applied Science where he was a Senior Staff Associate.
Samuel Ruben got his start in electronics when he became a licensed ham radio operator and built radios with spare parts. Samuel Ruben met Professor Bergen Davis of Columbia University who tutored him and allowed him to sit in on some Columbia classes. He also taught at Harvard as a lecturer in chemistry.
While he had no college degree, withdrawing from college after a short time due to stress, Ruben received several honorary degrees.
Samuel Ruben established Ruben Laboratories in the early 1920s, when Bergen Davis persuaded Electrochemical"s main investor Malcolm Clephane to finance a private laboratory for Ruben in lower Manhattan. Ruben moved himself and the lab to New Rochelle, New York, where he would stay for the next 60 years.
Clephane would finance the project for 50% of any future royalties. Throughout his lifetime his work accumulated over 300 patents.
Ruben teamed with Philip Mallory to create what would become Duracell International.
Ruben developed the mercury button cell in 1942 to replace the zinc-carbon batteries at a request from the Army Signal Corps. With over 100 inventions credited to him personally, one of the most important was the dry electrolytic aluminum capacitor, the solid-state magnesium/cupric sulfide rectifier (a device that converted regular household electric current for use in radios), and the vacuum tube relay, the quick heater vacuum tube, and the concept of a balanced-cell mercury battery. Ruben worked as a researcher from 1918-1921 for the Electrochemical Products Company.
He endowed a scholarship for Chemical Engineering at the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn (1968–1972).
He was awarded the Acheson Award by the Electrochemical Society in 1970.