Charles D. Hurd

Charles Hurd begins the interview with information and anecdotes about his childhood in upstate New York and his stepfather's career in administering boarding schools and colleges. He discusses his undergraduate education at Syracuse University, his research during World War I in the Chemical Service Sector on poison gas, and a summer job working with Thomas Edison for the Naval Consulting Board. Hurd then describes his graduate work at the University of Minnesota and Princeton University, during which he began his work on ketenes and pyrolysis. This work continued during his instructorship at the University of Illinois, which culminated when Hurd was recruited to Northwestern University by Frank Whitmore. Hurd describes his career at Northwestern and discusses his interests in nomenclature, his work on sugar chemistry and his numerous consultancies in industry. Hurd names many of the graduate students with whom he worked and describes the dynamics of his relationship to them as mentor and his introduction of "Molecular Models" as a teaching tool. Hurd discusses the media's "chemophobia" and negative portrayal of the chemical industry, and describes his own published effots to dispel this negative image and his writings for encylclopedias and dictionaries. Hurd concludes the interview by briefly examining other resaerch projects, patents and colleagues.

Thomas A. Edison's Laboratory, West Orange, New Jersey

1917 - 1917 Laboratory Assistant

United States Army

1918 - 1918 Chemical Service Section

University of Illinois

1921 - 1924 Instructor, Chemistry Department

Northwestern University

1924 - 1928 Assistant Professor, Chemistry Department

Northwestern University

1928 - 1933 Associate Professor, Chemistry Department

Northwestern University

1933 - 1949 Professor, Chemistry Department

Northwestern University

1949 - 1951 Morrison Professor, Chemistry Department

Northwestern University

1951 - 1965 Clare Hamilton Hall Research Professor

Northwestern University

1965 - 1998 Clare Hamilton Hall Research Professor, Emeritus

James J. Bohning

James J. Bohning is professor emeritus of chemistry at Wilkes University, where he was a faculty member from 1959 to 1990. He served there as chemistry department chair from 1970 to 1986 and environmental science department chair from 1987 to 1990. Bohning was chair of the American Chemical Society’s Division of the History of Chemistry in 1986; he received the division’s Outstanding Paper Award in 1989 and has presented more than forty papers at national meetings of the society. Bohning was on the advisory committee of the society’s National Historic Chemical Landmarks Program from its inception in 1992 through 2001 and is currently a consultant to the committee. He developed the oral history program of the Chemical Heritage Foundation, and he was the foundation’s director of oral history from 1990 to 1995. From 1995 to 1998, Bohning was a science writer for the News Service group of the American Chemical Society. He is currently a visiting research scientist and CESAR Fellow at Lehigh University. In May 2005, he received the Joseph Priestley Service Award from the Susquehanna Valley Section of the American Chemical Society.