Eugene Cook Bingham (8 December 1878 – 6 November 1945) was a professor and head of the department of chemistry at

Lafayette College Lafayette College is a private liberal arts college in Easton, Pennsylvania. Founded in 1826 by James Madison Porter and other citizens in Easton, the college first held classes in 1832. The founders voted to name the college after General La ...

. Bingham made many contributions to

rheology Rheology (; ) is the study of the flow of matter, primarily in a fluid (liquid or gas) state, but also as "soft solids" or solids under conditions in which they respond with plastic flow rather than deforming elastically in response to an appli ...

, a term he is credited (along with

Markus Reiner Markus Reiner ( he, מרכוס ריינר, born 5 January 1886, died 25 April 1976) was an Israeli scientist and a major figure in rheology. Biography Reiner was born in 1886 in Czernowitz, Bukovina, then part of Austria-Hungary, and obtaine ...

) with introducing. He was a pioneer in both its theory and practice. The type of fluid known as a

Bingham plastic A Bingham plastic is a viscoplastic material that behaves as a rigid body at low stresses but flows as a viscous fluid at high stress. It is named after Eugene C. Bingham who proposed its mathematical form. It is used as a common mathematical mo ...

or Bingham Fluid is named after him, as is Bingham Stress. He was also one of the people responsible for the construction of the

Appalachian Trail The Appalachian Trail (also called the A.T.), is a hiking trail in the Eastern United States, extending almost between Springer Mountain in Georgia and Mount Katahdin in Maine, and passing through 14 states.Gailey, Chris (2006)"Appalachian ...

Biography

Bingham was born on 8 December 1878 in

Cornwall, Vermont Cornwall is a town in Addison County, Vermont, United States. It was founded November 3, 1761. The population was 1,207 at the 2020 census. Geography Cornwall is located in south-central Addison County, in the Champlain Valley. It is bordered b ...

. He was awarded the

Franklin Institute The Franklin Institute is a science museum and the center of science education and research in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It is named after the American scientist and statesman Benjamin Franklin. It houses the Benjamin Franklin National Memor ...

Certificate of Merit The Certificate of Merit Medal was a military decoration of the United States Army that was issued between the years of 1905 and 1918. The Certificate of Merit Medal replaced the much older Certificate of Merit which was authorized by the United ...

in 1921 for his variable pressure

viscometer A viscometer (also called viscosimeter) is an instrument used to measure the viscosity of a fluid. For liquids with viscosities which vary with flow conditions, an instrument called a rheometer is used. Thus, a rheometer can be considered as a sp ...

. In 1922, as chairman of the Metric Committee of the

American Chemical Society The American Chemical Society (ACS) is a scientific society based in the United States that supports scientific inquiry in the field of chemistry. Founded in 1876 at New York University, the ACS currently has more than 155,000 members at all ...

, he campaigned for the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., federal district, five ma ...

to adopt the

metric system The metric system is a system of measurement that succeeded the decimalised system based on the metre that had been introduced in France in the 1790s. The historical development of these systems culminated in the definition of the Intern ...

. Bingham died on 6 November 1945 in

Easton, Pennsylvania Easton is a city in, and the county seat of, Northampton County, Pennsylvania, United States. The city's population was 28,127 as of the 2020 census. Easton is located at the confluence of the Lehigh River, a river that joins the Delaware Ri ...

Legacy

The

Society of Rheology The Society of Rheology is an American professional society formed in December, 1929 to represent scientists and technologists working in the field of rheology, the science of the deformation and flow of matter. Current membership is of the order ...

has awarded the

Bingham Medal The Bingham Medal is an annual award for outstanding contributions to the field of rheology awarded at the Annual Meeting of The Society of Rheology. It was instituted in 1948 by the society to commemorate Eugene C. Bingham (1878–1945). List ...

annually since 1948.

Selected publications

*''Journal of Industrial and Engineering Chemistry'' (1914) vol. 6(3) pp. 233–237: ''A new viscometer for general scientific and technical purposes'' *''Journal of Physical Chemistry'' (1914) vol. 18(2) pp. 157–165: ''The Viscosity of Binary Mixtures'' *
Fluidity and Plasticity
' (1922) McGraw-Hill (Internet Digital Archive) *''Journal of Physical Chemistry'' (1925) vol. 29(10) pp. 1201–1204: ''Plasticity'' *''Review of Scientific Instruments'' (1933) vol. 4 p. 473: ''The New Science of Rheology'' *''Journal of General Physiology'' (1944) vol. 28 pp. 79–94, pp. 131–149 ingham and Roepke (1945) vol. 28 pp. 605–626: ''The Rheology of Blood''

References

External links

Photograph of E. C. Bingham
– Lafayette University Historical Photograph Collection {{DEFAULTSORT:Bingham, Eugene 1878 births 1945 deaths People from Cornwall, Vermont American chemists Rheologists Fluid mechanics Fluid dynamicists Lafayette College faculty