ARTHUR
BECKET LAMB: CHEMIST, EDITOR, EDUCATOR 1880-1952
by Allen
D. Bliss
There
are many old New England names in the roster of
distinguished American scientific men, and Arthur
Becket Lamb earned a place among them at an early
age. His family migrated in 1630 from near London
to Roxbury, Massachusetts.
His parents, Lois and Elizabeth (Becket) Lamb, lived
in Attleboro, Mass., where the family jewelry manufacturing
business was located. Arthur B. was born to them
on February 25, 1880, the second of three sons.
Arthur's high school record was satisfactory to
the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, but not
his mere sixteen years. Tufts College was the final
choice, after consultations with an old family friend,
Dean Leonard of the Tufts Divinity School, and he
was enrolled in the fall of 1896.
Arthur Lamb was a "biology major" in college.
When his undergraduate work was completed, he chose
chemistry for graduate work. Chemistry had been
chosen now for a career. He registered at Harvard
Graduate School. Lamb had organized his Tufts College
graduate research into a thesis, taken the examinations,
and received the Ph.D. degree from Tufts prior to
the Harvard graduation. The Harvard Faculty learned
of this and decided that it was proper to grant
him the Harvard Ph.D. also, since the two theses
embodied completely different work. Harvard appointed
him as instructor in electrochemistry.
By 1914 Assistant Professor Lamb was fairly well
settled on his new work as teacher and laboratory
director. The War Department upon the entrance of
the United States into the World War in 1917 turned
to the Harvard department for help. Lamb's first
war work was on a project coming from "Military
Intelligence”. New methods were studied for
producing and developing invisible writing. Next,
the National Research Council urged a study of the
detection and removal of carbon monoxide from air.
As the tempo of the War increased the War Department
established the Chemical Warfare Service. Lamb received
a leave of absence from Harvard in the late summer
of 1917 to join this organization. His activities
became both supervision of research and his newly
accepted editorship of the Journal of the American
Chemical Society.
Harvard's
Boylston Hall
Lamb
as Lieutenant Colonel was made Chief of the Defense
Chemical Research Section. As Chief he continued to
practice chemistry, but he became an accomplished
executive. His natural, kindly and approachable manner
and disposition were of the greatest value in cementing
friendships, and making new ones.
Although the Armistice brought rapid demobilization
of much of the War Research personnel, the final decision
was reached to establish the Research Division as
a permanent military unit at the Edgewood Arsenal.
By the end of 1920 Lamb was faced with the decision
between either remaining in Washington and resigning
from the Faculty at Harvard, or returning to the University.
He chose the latter alternative and in September of
1921 was once again active in University teaching
and research.
Harvard's
Boylston Hall had been the chemical laboratory since
1857; Josiah Parsons Cooke in the 1890's had recommended
improved quarters but without results. Immediate migration
of the Harvard chemists to the growing science campus
in quiet surroundings north of the Yard now became
Director Lamb's pressing concern, both as to planning
and as to financing. He carried on much of the work
of design and negotiation with the architects and
contractors, and he solicited the needed funds from
many sources, attested by the names of Mallinckrodt
and Converse on the buildings. Within a year or two
he was engaged in a similar task in the construction
of Byerly Hall for Radcliffe College.
On December 27 of 1923 he married Blanche Anne Driscoll.
Students and friends alike will remember their home
in Brookline as the scene of many congenial gatherings.
In 1926 David Becket was born, and Deborah Anne in
1928. Mrs. Lamb's frequent illnesses led to her death
in 1935.
The
American Chemical Society chose Arthur B. Lamb as
its President for the year 1933.
During the late 1930's Lamb served as deacon in the
First Unitarian Parish of Brookline, as a member of
the the Board of Trustees of the Brookline Public
Library and of the Winsor School.
Arthur B. Lamb was promoted to Professor in 1920,
Sheldon Emery Professor in 1925 and Erving Professor
in 1929, and in 1940 he was made Dean of the Graduate
School of Arts and Sciences. He retired from the Directorship
of the Harvard Chemical Laboratory in 1946 and from
undergraduate teaching two years later. The University
allowed him to retain his office and laboratory suite
for Journal work and several continuing research
problems. The American Chemical Society presented
him with its highest honor, the Priestley Medal, at
the 116th Meeting in Atlantic City in September of
1949.
The
veteran Editor, at 69, tendered his resignation to
the Directors, served as a member of the committee
to choose a new editor, and smoothed the transition
by continuing on the Board as Consulting Editor. The
January 1950 issue of the Journal, with testimonial
statement and his portrait, and consisting entirely
of papers by former Harvard chemists and Board members,
was planned and carried through without his knowledge,
and came as a most delightful surprise to him.
As teacher, research director, editor, consultant
and citizen, his services extended over half a century.
By decades Arthur B. Lamb spent the first serving
his apprenticeship as teacher and executive, and much
of the second in the service of his country as scientist
and coordinator of men. The third and fourth decades
were devoted largely to his adopted University and
to his professional Society. Then, instead of retiring
quietly, he spent the fifth decade serving all of
them: as teacher, researcher, consultant, editor,
administrator, and friend in the interests of his
university, society, country and fellow men. His personality
and teaching reached and permeated all of chemistry,
and his contributions to and influence on chemistry
will long outlive all of us who knew, admired and
loved him.
From the Journal of the American Chemical Soceity
Volume 77, Nov. 20, 1955
Arthur Becket Lamb
From the Harvard University Faculty Minutes
Arthur
Becket Lamb was born on February 25, 1880, in Attleboro,
Massachusetts. Before he was sixteen he had shown
signs of the wide-ranging interest, practical skill,
imagination, and leadership that were to characterize
his scientific career. It is recorded that he and
some friends were well on the way toward observing
all the double stars within the range of the high
school telescope until their parents objected to
the late hours involved. At the same period Lamb
constructed a good microscope with the aid of the
machinery in his father's jewelry factory. He read
all the mathematics and chemistry books available
in the school library, and with a group of school
friends he produced, in 1895, a simple X-ray photograph
using a Crookes Tube and a static machine at hand
in the school physics laboratory.
At Tufts College his interest turned at first to
biology because of his familiarity with the microscope.
Lamb's first published article was in biology, but
by the end of his senior year he had decided that
his real interest was in chemistry. For two years
he carried on research first in inorganic and then
in organic chemistry, under Arthur Michael, a famous
iconoclast whose versatile publications on organic
chemistry appeared in the journals over a period
of sixty-seven years. By the end of the second year
Lamb fixed upon physical chemistry, then an immature
science, as the field of his choice.
In 1902, on the eve of his intended departure from
Tufts for further study at Johns Hopkins University,
he met T. W. Richards, with whom one conversation
was sufficient to divert Lamb to Harvard. Having
already enough material for a Ph.D. thesis at Tufts,
he embarked on new studies at Harvard and, completing
the requirements at both institutions in 1904, he
was awarded the Ph.D. simultaneously by Harvard
and Tufts. After a year in Europe, chiefly at Ostwald's
laboratory under Luther, and a year as instructor
at Harvard, Lamb became Assistant Professor and
Director of the Havemeyer Chemical Laboratory at
New York University. In 1912 he returned to a similar
appointment at Harvard, becoming Professor on the
death of Professor Sanger in the same year.
As might have been expected from the breadth of
Lamb's early intellectual activities, he remained
interested in science on a wide front. Although
his own researches were concerned with phenomena
of the pure chemist's laboratory, his uncommon ability
for solving practical problems came to the fore
repeatedly in war research and in his activities
as a consultant throughout his life.
In the summer of 1917 he secured leave from the
University to devote himself to war research, first
on secret writing, then on removal of carbon monoxide
from air, and finally as Chief of the Defense Chemical
Research Section of the Chemical Warfare Service
with the rank of lieutenant colonel. He became greatly
interested in the human problems which this effort
presented. He often cited later what he considered
his greatest success in this field: getting Professor
E. P. Kohler to go to Washington to bring about
more orderly development in the Offense Section.
His own section achieved marked success in the development
of a protective canister for gas masks, and his
work was applied in peace time to safety appliances
for use in mines.
Returning from a mission to Europe at the end of
the war, Lieutenant Colonel Lamb obtained passage
on a crowded transport, to find himself the ranking
military officer aboard and automatically in command
of all the troops. This responsibility was smoothly
discharged with the aid of a regular army major
whom Lamb quickly located and invited to share his
luxurious suite.
During the period of demobilization, Lamb declined
an offer from the Westinghouse Electric Company
to assume the directorship of its research laboratory.
He also declined a peacetime commission in the Chemical
Warfare Service, but consented to serve during the
transition period as Director of the Fixed Nitrogen
Research Laboratory whose purpose was to work out
the peacetime use of the new national facilities
for the fixation of nitrogen. In this position one
of his notable contributions was a voluntary trust
for patent rights which he devised. The trust, which
protected the rights of the Government while offering
incentive to the individual both to develop his
own inventions and to cooperate in developing those
of his neighbors, diminished some of the less attractive
aspects of Government service for scientists.
In 1921 he returned to the University and for the
next twenty-eight years he devoted himself to his
chosen enterprise - teaching Chemistry A (now Chemistry
1), directing the laboratory and the research of
his students, and editing the Journal of the
American Chemical Society. From 1923 to 1928
he guided the planning and construction of the Mallinckrodt,
Converse and Byerly laboratories with meticulous
care. His graduate students, twenty-two in all,
were an exceptionally devoted group. He was appointed
Erving Professor of Chemistry in 1929 and Dean of
the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences from 1940
to 1943. He was one of the original Associates of
Winthrop House.
Of all Lamb's activities, the one closest to his
heart was the Journal of the American Chemical
Society. To it he devoted an amount of time
which, as he always felt, set serious limits upon
the scope of his research program. Editor from 1917
to 1949, he continued to serve as Consulting Editor
until his death. In his hands its size increased
fourfold, its scientific importance perhaps even
more. The Journal became truly a monument
to its editor's rare tact, kindness, judicial spirit,
and ability to elicit the best from contributors,
co-editors, and referees. Uncompromising in his
determination to be fair, he was a tireless interlocutor
between authors and anonymous referees. It was never
too late for an author to submit a rebuttal, nor
for the editor to secure one more reader's opinion.
The more prominent the author, the more rigorously
must his papers run the gauntlet. Veteran contributors
not infrequently rebelled, feeling that they should
have outlined the application of such procedures
to them. When this happened, Lamb would devote himself
to mending the breach without compromise of his
standards, and in the long run he nearly always
regained the friendship and respect of his rebels.
Among Lamb's many professional honors were: election
to the National Academy of Sciences in 1923, the
honorary degree of Doctor of Science (Tufts) in
1923, and election as President of the American
Chemical Society in 1933. He was awarded the Nichols
medal (1943), the Priestly medal (1949), the first
Ballou medal established to recognize distinguished
Tufts alumni in 1944, and the Patterson award. As
a final honor, he presided at the banquet of the
XIIth International Congress of Pure and Applied
Chemistry in September, 1951.
He was married to Blanche Anne Driscoll in 1923
and was the father of two children, David Becket
and Deborah Anne. He enjoyed billiards and bridge
indoors and mountain climbing and tennis outdoors
until his physical activity was curtailed. He served
his community as Trustee of the Brookline Public
Library and secondary education as President of
the Trustees of Winsor School.
Retirement brought as little change in Lamb's routine
as he could arrange. He went to his office daily
and continued in a number of professional activities
occupying his own full time and that of a secretary
and a research assistant. Death came suddenly on
May 15, 1952, at the close of a day of normal activity.
The Faculty accepted these Minutes and it was understood
that they would be spread upon the records of the
Faculty.
American National Biography,
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1999).
Unitarian
Note
The
presentation of the Joseph Priestley Medal of the
American Chemical Society symbolizes the creative
union of the natural sciences and the Unitarian
celebration of the world. Priestley was not only
the discoverer of the element oxygen but a Unitarian
minister who served in Birmingham, England and Northumberland,
Pennsylvania. Benjamin Franklin was one of his hearers
and admirers. Priestley’s gift to Thomas Jefferson
of his harmony of the synoptic gospels of the New
Testament inspired President Jefferson to prepare
his own Harmony with the New Testament which
is repeatedly issued now as The Jefferson Bible.
Upon being awarded the Priestley Medal, Arthur Lamb
said: "I am particularly happy to receive a
medal bearing Priestley's name. His personality
and character have always awakened my warmest admiration.
A poor, provincial teacher and preacher of an unpopular
denomination, kindly and likable, with an active
omnivorous mind that led him, while still a young
man, to proficieney in eight languages and to the
publication of scores of books and pamphlets on
subjects as diverse as, for instance, the History
and Present State of Discoveries Relating to Vision,
Light, and Color (two volumes); a Course of Lectures
on Oratory and Criticism; a General History of the
Christian Church (six volumes); A Treatise on Civil
Government; a Harmony of the Evangelists in Greek;
A Familiar Introduction to the Theory and Practice
of Perspective; and Discourses on the Evidences
of Divine Revelation (three volumes).
"Then a chance meeting with Benjamin Franklin
stimulated Priestley to undertake original experiments
in natural science. Whereupon this happy and enthusiastic
amateur, in the springtime of our science, as in
a garden where no one else- had ventured, quickly
gathered a garland of wonderful discoveries which
will keep his name fresh in the minds of men forever.
Later, his bold and enthusiastic support in sermons
and pamphlets of the cause of the American Colonists,
of the French Republic, and of human liberty and
justice everywhere, brought him great unpopularity,
and led to his resignation from the Royal Society,
to the burning of his church and home and laboratory
by a mob, and forced him into hiding and ultimately
to flee from England to this country. Nevertheless,
in spite of all these vicissitudes, near the end
of his life at his home on the Susquehanna, he could
say: "Few persons, I believe, have enjoyed
life more than I have." Both as chemists and
as Americans we owe Priestley our homage and affection."
