Chandler: The teacher and the chemist

The history of Charles Frederick Chandler´s life is an essential part of the history of chemistry and chemical engineering in the United States during the last sixty years. In the early fifties, when young Chandler entered the Lawrence Scientific School at Harvard, chemical science in England and in this country was practically a monopoly of the druggists. Those were the days when the druggists in England were called chemists, and the name has persisted down to the present day. Young Chandler had to leave the Lawrence Scientific School and go to Professor Woehler of Göttingen, in order to study the science of chemistry. Neither Harvard nor any other college in the United States was equipped in those days for training students in chemistry. When Chandler returned in 1857, decorated with a Göttingen Ph. D. degree, nobody seemed anxious to engage his services. He finally found some odd jobs with the oil men of New Bedford, analyzing their whale oil. His old friend, Professor Joy of Union College, needed his assistance in the College laboratory, but the trustees were unwilling to appropriate a salary for an assistant in chemistry after they had appropriated five hundred dollars for a janitor of the chemical laboratory. The young doctor of philosophy took the vacant position of janitor. The privilege of giving scientific assistance to the professor of chemistry attracted him to the position of janitor. Nothing can describe better the state of the Chemical science in this country in those days than this beginning of Chandler´s scientific career. Nothing can describe better the latent energy of the young doctor of chemistry than his willingness to start his career as a janitor.