James Woodhouse (chemist)

James Woodhouse

James Woodhouse (born November 17, 1770 in Philadelphia , Province of Pennsylvania , † June 4, 1809 ) was an American doctor and chemist.

Woodhouse graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a bachelor's degree in 1787 and a master's degree in 1790 and received his doctorate in medicine in 1792 (On the Chemical and Medicinal Properties of the Persimmon Tree and the Analysis of Astringent Vegetables). As a medical doctor, he was a student of Benjamin Rush . During this time he was mainly interested in pharmaceutical chemistry and applications of chemistry in medicine. In 1791 he served as a military doctor in General Arthur St. Clair's expedition against Indian tribes. In 1795 he became professor of chemistry at the University of Pennsylvania, succeeding James Hutchinson after Joseph Priestley had turned it down. He died of apoplexy in 1809 (possibly caused by carbon monoxide poisoning during his laboratory experiments with coal, it was a very hot summer at the time). He was succeeded by John Redman Coxe . Woodhouse helped establish chemistry as an academic discipline in the United States and taught a generation of American chemists.

He was known as an opponent of the phlogiston theory, demonstrated this with experiments and published it in the Transactions of the American Philosophical Society. This also made him an opponent of Joseph Priestley, who was a supporter of the phlogiston theory and frequently visited the university laboratory in Philadelphia. Thanks to Woodhouse and others, the phlogiston theory could be done in the US.

He demonstrated the superiority of the anthracite coal in Pennsylvania over other coal (such as the bituminous coal from Virginia), made metallic potassium pure by reduction with carbon, analyzed minerals (and basalt), starch and the production of bread and the reaction of metals with nitric acid .

He edited a translation of the Elements of Chemistry by Jean-Antoine Chaptal (1807) and American editions of James Parkinson's Chemical Pocket Book (1802) and Samuel Parkes ' Chymical Catechism (1807). He published his research on the chemistry of natural products in plants as Observations on the Combinations of Acids, Bitters and Astringents (1793) and Experiments and Observations in the Vegetation of Plants (1802). His own Young Chemists Pocket Companion was one of the first chemistry books with laboratory instructions for students.

Woodhouse was a member of the American Philosophical Society since 1796 and founded the Chemical Society of Philadelphia in 1792, of which he was president until his death. The society had its own laboratory and published treatises on the analysis of ores, minerals and soils. However, it went out with his death. In 1811, James Cutbush founded the Columbian Chemical Society.

Robert Hare was one of his students . Other well-known chemists in what was then Philadelphia were Adam Seybert and Benjamin Smith Barton .

literature

• Edgar Fahs Smith : James Woodhouse, a pioneer in chemistry, 1770-1809, 1918, Archives

Fonts

• Young Chemist's Pocket Companion 1797

Web links

• Biography at the University of Pennsylvania