Milton Harris (March 21, 1906 – September 12, 1991) was an American chemist. Harris founded the Harris Research Laboratories, which later merged with

Gillette Gillette is an American brand of safety razors and other personal care products including shaving supplies, owned by the multi-national corporation Procter & Gamble (P&G). Based in Boston, Massachusetts, United States, it was owned by The Gil ...

, and was Chairman of the Board of Directors for the American Chemical Society from 1966 to 1972.

Career

Early life and education

Born in Los Angeles, Harris was raised in Portland, Oregon. At the age of twelve or thirteen, his first independent business enterprise was building

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sets, and in high school,

chemistry Chemistry is the science, scientific study of the properties and behavior of matter. It is a natural science that covers the Chemical element, elements that make up matter to the chemical compound, compounds made of atoms, molecules and ions ...

became of interest. He entered college at Oregon State University, where he became a member of Phi Sigma Kappa. Harris graduated in 1926. Despite the fact that a formal chemistry department did not exist at Oregon, he earned a degree in chemical engineering. In 1929, Harris received a Doctor of Philosophy in Chemistry from Yale University.

Early career

Upon his graduation from Yale, Harris took his first job as a chemist at the Cheney Brothers Mill. Two years later, he joined a new textile chemistry research group at the National Bureau of Standards. Harris was later appointed director of the group, which would ultimately produce roughly two-hundred scientific papers. Along with Vincent du Vigneaud, Harris made important discoveries in regards to similarities between the molecular geometry of human

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, and wool. With the beginning of

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involvement in World War II, Harris’ group began advising the United States Army Quartermaster Corps about textiles such as using

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. They aided the research and redesign of sandbags, tent cloths, and chemical additives in military underwear used to protect soldiers from the effects of gas attacks.

Later stages

After the end of the war, Harris founded the Harris Research Laboratories, which operated as a consulting laboratory for several companies such as the American Enka Company and

. His association with the latter grew over time. In 1955, Gillette bought the Harris Research Laboratories and appointed Harris as Vice President of Research. Just before retirement, in 1966, he was approached by the American Chemical Society to serve on its Board of Directors. Harris accepted and served as Chairman for six years. In 1975, he headed a panel that produced a study, which was instrumental to the recommendation by the

National Academy of Sciences The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the Nati ...

for widespread cultivation of jojoba shrubs. A year later, Harris also joined the National Academy of Engineering. He died of

stomach cancer Stomach cancer, also known as gastric cancer, is a cancer that develops from the lining of the stomach. Most cases of stomach cancers are gastric carcinomas, which can be divided into a number of subtypes, including gastric adenocarcinomas. Lymph ...

in Chevy Chase in 1991.

Legacy

Papers dating from between 1925 to 1991 from the career of Harris are currently held at The Valley Library at his alma mater, Oregon State University. The school has an endowed professorship in his honor called the Milton Harris Chair Professor of Materials Science, which since 2006, has been held by Mas Subramanian. Oregon State also gives the Milton Harris Award for Excellence in Basic Research to science scholars, which was won by Dawn Wright in 2005. Harris' other alma mater, Yale, also has a Milton Harris ’29 Ph.D. Professor of Chemistry, once held by Alanna Schepartz in the early 2000s.

References

External links

Harris Papers at Oregon State UniversityWashington Post obituary
{{DEFAULTSORT:Harris, Milton 1906 births 1991 deaths Scientists from Los Angeles 20th-century American chemists Oregon State University alumni Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences alumni Members of the American Chemical Society Members of the United States National Academy of Engineering Deaths from cancer in Maryland Presidents of the American Institute of Chemists