Harmon Northrop Morse

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Harmon Northrop Morse
BornOctober 15, 1848
Chebeague, Maine
NationalityAmerican
Alma materUniversity of Göttingen
OccupationChemist
Known forsynthesis of paracetamol
Scientific career
InstitutionsJohns Hopkins University

Harmon Northrop Morse (October 15, 1848 – September 8, 1920) was an American chemist. Today he is known as the first to have synthesized paracetamol,[1] but this substance only became widely used as a drug decades after Morse's death. In the first half of the 20th century he was best known for his study of osmotic pressure, for which he was awarded the Avogadro Medal in 1916.[2][3][4] The Morse equation for estimating osmotic pressure is named after him.[5]

Life and career

The earliest American ancestor of Harmon Northrop Morse was John Morse, who came from England in 1639 and settled in

Puritan farmer and a believer in hard work, few holidays and little schooling.[6] He viewed all forms of recreation as objectionable. Northrop's mother died at a young age, leaving behind Northrop, his brother Anson and his sister Delia.[3]

Thanks to an endowment left by his grandmother, Northrop Morse studied chemistry at

organic chemist, so Morse's initial work was in that area, but later Morse would work in what is now known as physical chemistry.[3]

Morse returned to the United States in 1875, and was given an assistantship at Amherst. There he worked for a year under Harris and Emerson. When Johns Hopkins University opened in 1876, Morse moved there as an associate of Ira Remsen, thanks in part to a letter of recommendation from Emerson. Remsen and Morse started the chemistry laboratory at Johns Hopkins together, and Morse's experience from Germany proved very valuable, as the American chemistry school was less developed at the time. Morse officially became an associate professor in 1883, a full professor of inorganic and analytical chemistry in 1892, and director of the chemical laboratory in 1908. He retired in 1916.[3]

Morse was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1903, the United States National Academy of Sciences in 1907, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1914.[7][8][9]

Morse married twice and had four children—a daughter and three sons. His, second wife, Elizabet Dennis Clark, helped him in preparing articles for publication. After his retirement, Morse became quite reclusive, seldom left his house and his health deteriorated. He died during his annual vacation in

Chebeague Island, Maine—a place he often visited.[6] He was buried at Amherst, where he also had a summer house. In his obituary, Remsen remembers Morse as "quiet and uneffusive".[3]

Scientific legacy

Although Johns Hopkins was a

Carnegie Institution of Washington, he published a report entitled The Osmotic Pressure of Aqueous Solutions,[10] which summarized the work he performed between 1899 and 1913.[3] For this work he was awarded the Avogadro Medal by the Academy of Sciences of Turin (Accademia delle Scienze di Torino)—the Piedmontese academy of which Avogadro was member. The medal was a unique prize awarded on the centennial anniversary of Avogadro's law.[4]

In 1887

electrolytic method of depositing semi-permeable membranes. This technological advancement made possible the verification and correction of van 't Hoff's theory.[4]

In a modern formulation, van 't Hoff's equation states that ΠV = nRT, where Π is the osmotic pressure, V is the volume of the solution, n is the number of moles of the

molarity (mol/m3) of the solution. Morse showed experimentally that Π = bRT, where b is the molality (mol/kg) yields a better approximation of osmotic pressure. This latter equation is named after him. Using these equations one can calculate the molar mass of solutes from the osmotic pressure data.[5]

References

  1. doi:10.1002/cber.18780110151
    .
  2. ^ Johns Hopkins Alumni Magazine (1916). Baltimore. 1916–26. p. 227 and 320.
  3. ^
    JSTOR 20026040
    .
  4. ^
    JSTOR 6174
    .
  5. ^
    ISBN 0-7817-5027-X
    .
  6. ^
    PMID 17759847
    .
  7. ^ "APS Member History". search.amphilsoc.org. Retrieved 2024-02-02.
  8. ^ "Harmon Morse". www.nasonline.org. Retrieved 2024-02-02.
  9. ^ "Harmon Northrop Morse". American Academy of Arts & Sciences. 2023-02-09. Retrieved 2024-02-02.
  10. ^ a b Harmon Northrop Morse (1914). The Osmotic Pressure of Aqueous Solutions: Report on Investigations Made in the Chemical Laboratory of the Johns Hopkins University During the Years 1899-1913. Carnegie institution of Washington. pp. 222.
  11. Zeitschrift für physikalische Chemie
    1, 481-508
  12. ^ Pfeffer, Wilhelm (1921). Osmotische Untersuchen - Studien zur Zellmechanik. Leipzig: Wilhelm Engelmann. pp. 10.
  13. ^ Harmon Northrop Morse (1914). The Osmotic Pressure of Aqueous Solutions: Report on Investigations Made in the Chemical Laboratory of the Johns Hopkins University During the Years 1899-1913. Carnegie institution of Washington. pp. 77–78.

External links

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