ACS

Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier studied at the Académie des Sciences de l'Institut de France (then "Collège Mazarin") from 1754 to 1761. He was elected to the Royal Academy of Sciences in 1768, where he presented his important studies on oxygen in chemistry. These began with a "pli cacheté" of Nov. 2, 1772, and, after he experimentally proved the chemical composition of water by the quantitative method, culminated in his abandoning of the phlogistic theory in 1785.

Around 1907, Belgian-born chemist Leo Hendrik Baekeland took two ordinary chemicals, phenol and formaldehyde, mixed them in a sealed autoclave, and subjected them to heat and pressure.

The sticky, amber-colored resin he produced in his Yonkers laboratory was the first plastic ever to be created entirely from chemicals, and the first material to be made entirely by man.

When Arnold Beckman, a professor of analytical chemistry at the California Institute of Technology, was asked to devise a way to measure acidity in citrus fruit, the resulting “acidometer” revolutionized chemical instrumentation. The innovative features of the pH meter, including its use of integrated electronic technology and all-in-one design, were the basis for subsequent modern instrumentation developed by Beckman and his company.

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Bread is considered a basic foodstuff; eaten down through the ages, it continues to be a staple of the modern diet. The development of baking powder made baking easier, quicker and more reliable for bakers in the mid-19th century. Eben Horsford’s unique formula was an important innovation and made the making of biscuits, cookies and other quick baking products simpler than before.

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Founded in 1957, Raychem Corporation was the first company to successfully apply the new science of radiation chemistry to commercial use. This accomplishment led to the creation of tough new materials and high-performance products such as irradiated polyethylene insulated wire and heat-shrinkable tubing through the crosslinking of polymeric materials.

Monroe Wall, Mansukh Wani and colleagues at the Natural Products Laboratory of the Research Triangle Institute discovered and elucidated the structure Taxol®and camptothecin, two life-saving compounds for the treatment of cancer. These natural products kill cancer cells via unique mechanisms of action and in ways scientists had not previously imagined. The work of this research team led to the eventual development and marketing of drugs that have been approved for treatment of ovarian, breast, lung, and colon cancer and Kaposi’s sarcoma.

The introduction of penicillin in the 1940s, which began the era of antibiotics, has been recognized as one of the greatest advances in therapeutic medicine. The discovery of penicillin and the initial recognition of its therapeutic potential occurred in the United Kingdom, but, due to World War II, the United States played the major role in developing large-scale production of the drug, thus making a life-saving substance in limited supply into a widely available medicine.

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It is difficult to recall a time when doctors and patients had trouble tracking the presence of glucose and other substances in urine and blood. Lack of sufficient measurement tools made it difficult to manage a host of diseases, including diabetes as well as other metabolic diseases and kidney and liver conditions. Today, self-management of these diseases is an easier process because of the development of diagnostic test strips by Alfred and Helen Free and their research team at Miles Laboratories.

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In brilliant collaboration, Carl and Gerty Cori studied how the body metabolizes glucose and advanced the understanding of how the body produces and stores energy. Their findings were particularly useful in the development of treatments for diabetes. In 1947 the Coris shared a Nobel Prize for their discoveries.

The plaque commemorating the event reads:

Steroid chemists often refer to the 1930s as the Decade of the Sex Hormones, when the molecular structures of certain sex hormones were determined and first introduced to medical practice as drugs. Russell Marker achieved the first practical synthesis of the pregnancy hormone, progesterone, by what now is known as the "Marker Degradation." Produced from starting material in a species of Mexican yam, Marker’s progesterone eventually became the preferred precursor in the industrial preparation of the anti-inflammatory drug cortisone.