Henry M. Leicester

Henry Marshall Leicester (born December 22, 1906 in San Francisco , † April 29, 1991 in Menlo Park ) was an American biochemist and chemical historian.

Leicester went to school in San Francisco and, after graduating from high school at the age of 16, studied chemistry at Stanford University with a bachelor's degree in 1927, a master's degree in 1928 and a PhD in organic chemistry in 1930. During the time of the Great Depression he traveled extensively to Europe (where he did research in Zurich and London), was a temporary instructor at Oberlin College , Stanford University, the Carnegie Institution in Washington DC and Ohio State University. At the latter, he began to be interested in Russian scientific history (especially the history of chemistry), corresponded with Russian scientists (but never traveled there) and built up an extensive library, which he later donated to Stanford University. From 1951 until his retirement in 1971 he was Professor of Biochemistry at the Dental School of the University of the Pacific . Since the 1940s he was active in the History Section of the American Chemical Society (ACS) and was this from 1947 to 1951.

He published on Russian chemists in the Journal of Chemical Education and in Great Chemists (Interscience 1961) by Eduard Farber and later biographies of chemists for the Dictionary of Scientific Biography and various encyclopedias such as the Encyclopedia Britannica. He published several books on the history of chemistry (including a collection of sources) and a standard work on the biochemistry of teeth, for which he was considered an expert. He also translated classic Russian works on chemistry such as that of Mikhail Wassiljewitsch Lomonossow , for whom he was considered an expert in the USA.

In the 1950s and 1960s he was an active advocate of the fluorination of drinking water for dental prophylaxis against tooth decay and gave many lectures about it in California.

In 1962 he received the Dexter Award . He was one of the founders and editors of Chymia (Annual Studies in the History of Chemistry).

In 1941 he married Leonore Azevedo (1914–1974) and had a son (Henry M. Leicester Jr., Professor of Literature at the University of California at Santa Cruz) and two daughters.

literature

• George B. Kauffman , obituary in Bulletin Hist. Chem., 10, 1991, 15, pdf

Fonts

• The Historical Background of Chemistry, Wiley 1956, Dover 1971, Archives
• with Mary Elvira Weeks : Discovery of the Elements, Verlag Journal of Chemical Education, 7th edition 1968
• Development of Biochemical Concepts from Ancient to Modern Times, Harvard UP, 1974
• Editor and translator: Mikhail Vasil'evich Lomonosov on the Corpuscular Theory, Harvard UP 1970
• A sourcebook in chemistry 1900-1950, Harvard UP 1968
• with Herbert S. Klickstein: A sourcebook in chemistry 1400-1900, Mc Graw Hill 1952, Harvard UP 1963
• Biochemistry of the teeth, St. Louis: Mosby 1949