Elmer Peter Kohler

Elmer Peter Kohler (born November 6, 1865 in Egypt (Pennsylvania) , † May 24, 1938 ) was an American chemist ( organic chemistry ). He was a professor at Harvard University .

Kohler came from a family of Pennsylvania Dutch farmers (he grew up bilingual). He attended Muhlenberg College in Allentown with the degree in 1886 and received his doctorate in chemistry in 1892 with Ira Remsen at Johns Hopkins University . He then taught for 20 years at Bryn Mawr College for Women, where he became a professor in 1900. In 1912 he became a professor at Harvard (his faculty board only offered him a position as assistant professor, which he turned down and only after the intervention of the Harvard president did he come to the university as a full professor).

Kohler was a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences . In 1926 he became a member of the Leopoldina .

James B. Conant was one of his students . According to Conant, he was a master of experimental organic chemistry (especially fractional crystallization ) and an excellent teacher, although he did not publish any books and, due to a psychological inhibition, gave no public lectures (except lectures to his students and in small groups) and did not attend any scientific congresses. He was particularly interested in unsaturated compounds and those with carbonyl groups and often with aromatic groups (which had the properties Kohler wanted: crystallizability, solubility in organic solvents, melting points between 50 and 200 degrees Celsius). He liked to experiment with his own hands in his laboratory.

Web links

• James B. Conant: Elmer Peter Kohler (1865–1938), Biographical Memoirs National Academy 1952, pdf

Individual evidence

1. ^ Biographical data, publications and academic family tree of Elmer P. Kohler at academictree.org, accessed on January 1, 2018.
2. ↑ Member entry of Elmer Peter Kohler at the German Academy of Natural Scientists Leopoldina , accessed on February 21, 2016.