Ira Remsen

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Ira Remsen (1846–1927) was a chemist who, along with Constantin Fahlberg, discovered the artificial sweetener saccharin.

He was the second president of Johns Hopkins University.

Early life

Ira Remsen was born in New York City on February 10, 1846. He is the son of James Vanderbelt Remsen (1818-1922) and Rosanna Secor (1823-1896). Elisabeth Hilleard Mallory was born in New York City, New York, on April 3, 1875. They had two children together. Ira Mallory Remsen (1876–1928), their son, became a playwright in Carmel-by-the-Sea, California.

Remsen earned a M.D. In 1865, the New York Homeopathic Medical College was founded. He studied chemistry in Germany later, under chemist Wilhelm Rudolph Fittig, who earned his PhD from University of Göttingen in 1870.

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Career

Remsen returned to the United States and became a professor at Williams College in 1872, writing the well-known text Theoretic Chemistry. Remsen's book and reputation attracted him to the attention of Daniel Coit Gilman, who invited him to become one of Johns Hopkins University's original faculty. Remsen accepted and established the department of chemistry, while still oversewing his own laboratory. Remsen founded the American Chemical Journal in 1879, which he edited for 35 years.

Fahlberg, a post-doctoral researcher with Remsen, made an accidental discovery that changed Remsen's career. Fahlberg was eating rolls at dinner after a long day in the lab researching coal tar derivatives. Fahlberg tried his fingers and discovered that the bitter taste was probably from one of the chemicals in his lab, while his wife ate nothing unusual about the rolls. He tasted the chemicals the previous day in his lab and discovered that it was the oxidation of o-toluenesulfonamide, which he had enjoyed the previous evening. He named the substance saccharin and reported his findings in 1880 by his research partner Remsen. Remsen became outraged after Fahlberg, a patenting saccharin, said he alone had discovered saccharin. Remsen had no involvement in the commercial success of saccharin, which Fahlberg profited from, but he was furious over the apparent dishonesty of not naming him as the head of the laboratory.

Remsen was known as an excellent tutor, but he was also patient with the novice throughout his academic career. "His lectures to beginners were models of didactic exposition, and many of his graduate students owe a large part of their later success in their own lecture rooms to Remsen's pedagogical education."

In 1879, he was elected as a member of the American Philosophical Society.

Remsen was elected president of Johns Hopkins in 1901, where he went on to found a School of Engineering and helped establish the school as a research university. He used several of the German laboratory techniques he had acquired and authored several influential chemistry textbooks. He resigned as president in 1912 due to poor health and then moved to Carmel, California.

He was awarded the Priestley medal in 1923.

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