Ira Remsen (February 10, 1846 – March 4, 1927) was an American chemist who discovered the artificial sweetener saccharin along with Constantin Fahlberg. 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 (1818–1892) and Rosanna Secor (1823–1856). He married Elisabeth Hilleard Mallory on Apr 3, 1875 in New York City, New York. They had two children together. Their son,

Ira Mallory Remsen Ira Mallory Remsen (May 11, 1876 – November 29, 1928), known locally as Rem Remsen, was an American painter, playwright and Bohemian Club member. He was the son of Dr. Ira Remsen chemist and former president of Johns Hopkins University. Remse ...

(1876–1928), became a playwright living in

Carmel-by-the-Sea, California Carmel-by-the-Sea (), often simply called Carmel, is a city in Monterey County, California, United States, founded in 1902 and incorporated on October 31, 1916. Situated on the Monterey Peninsula, Carmel is known for its natural scenery and ric ...

. Remsen earned an M.D. from the

New York Homeopathic Medical College New York Medical College (NYMC or New York Med) is a private medical school in Valhalla, New York. Founded in 1860, it is a member of the Touro College and University System. NYMC offers advanced degrees through its three schools: the School o ...

in 1865. He subsequently studied chemistry in Germany, studying under chemist Wilhelm Rudolph Fittig, receiving a PhD from University of Göttingen in 1870.

Career

In 1872, after researching pure chemistry at University of Tübingen, Remsen returned to the United States and became a professor at Williams College, where he wrote the popular text ''Theoretical Chemistry''. Remsen's book and reputation brought him to the attention of Daniel Coit Gilman, who invited him to become one of the original faculty of Johns Hopkins University. Remsen accepted and founded the department of chemistry there, overseeing his own laboratory. In 1879 Remsen founded the '' American Chemical Journal'', which he edited for 35 years. In 1879 Fahlberg, working with Remsen in a post-doctoral capacity, made an accidental discovery that changed Remsen's career. Eating rolls at dinner after a long day in the lab researching coal tar derivatives, Fahlberg noticed that the rolls tasted initially sweet but then bitter. Since his wife tasted nothing strange about the rolls, Fahlberg tasted his fingers and noticed that the bitter taste was probably from one of the chemicals in his lab. The next day at his lab he tasted the chemicals that he had been working with the previous day and discovered that it was the oxidation of o-toluenesulfonamide he had tasted the previous evening. He named the substance saccharin and he and his research partner Remsen published their finding in 1880. Later Remsen became angry after Fahlberg, in patenting saccharin, claimed that he alone had discovered saccharin. Remsen had no interest in the commercial success of saccharin, from which Fahlberg profited, but he was incensed at the perceived dishonesty of not crediting him as the head of the laboratory. Throughout his academic career, Remsen was known as an excellent teacher, rigorous in his expectations but patient with the beginner. "His lectures to beginners were models of didactic exposition, and many of his graduate students owe much of their later success in their own lecture rooms to the pedagogical training received from attendance upon Remsen's lectures to freshmen." He was elected as a member to the American Philosophical Society in 1879. In 1901 Remsen was appointed the president of Johns Hopkins, where he proceeded to found a School of Engineering and helped establish the school as a research university. He introduced many of the German laboratory techniques he had learned and wrote several important chemistry textbooks. In 1912 he stepped down as president, due to ill health, and retired to Carmel, California. In 1923 he was awarded the

Priestley medal The Priestley Medal is the highest honor conferred by the American Chemical Society (ACS) and is awarded for distinguished service in the field of chemistry. Established in 1922, the award is named after Joseph Priestley, the discoverer of oxygen ...

Death

He died on March 4, 1927 in

. His ashes are interred behind a plaque in the chemistry building on the Homewood campus at Johns Hopkins University.

Legacy

After his death, the new chemistry building, completed in 1924, was named after him at Johns Hopkins. His ashes are located behind a plaque in Remsen Hall; he is the only person buried on campus. His

Baltimore house Baltimore club, also called Bmore club, Bmore house or simply Bmore, is a fusion of breakbeat and house genres. It is often referred to as a blend of hip hop and chopped, staccato house music. It was created in Baltimore, Maryland, United States ...

was added to the National Register of Historic Places and declared a National Historic Landmark in 1975. Remsen Hall in

Queens College Queens College (QC) is a public college in the Queens borough of New York City. It is part of the City University of New York system. Its 80-acre campus is primarily located in Flushing, Queens. It has a student body representing more than 170 ...

is also named for him.

Remsen Award

In 1946, to commemorate the centenary of Remsen, the Maryland chapter of the American Chemical Society, began awarding the Remsen award, in his honor. Awardees are frequently of the highest caliber, and included a sequence of 16

Nobel laureates The Nobel Prizes ( sv, Nobelpriset, no, Nobelprisen) are awarded annually by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, the Swedish Academy, the Karolinska Institutet, and the Norwegian Nobel Committee to individuals and organizations who make ou ...

between 1950 and 1980. ;Recipients: * 1946: Roger Adams * 1947:

Samuel C. Lind Samuel Colville Lind (June 15, 1879 – February 12, 1965) was a radiation chemist, referred to as "the father of modern radiation chemistry". He gained his B.A in 1899 at Washington and Lee University, Lexington, Virginia. After a short spell ...

* 1948:

Elmer V. McCollum Elmer Verner McCollum (March 3, 1879 – November 15, 1967) was an American biochemist known for his work on the influence of diet on health.Kruse, 1961. McCollum is also remembered for starting the first rat colony in the United States to be u ...

* 1949:

Joel H. Hildebrand Joel Henry Hildebrand (November 16, 1881 – April 30, 1983) was an American educator and a pioneer chemist. He was a major figure in physical chemistry research specializing in liquids and nonelectrolyte solutions. Education and professors ...

* 1950: Edward C. Kendall Nobel prize medal

* 1951: Hugh Stott Taylor * 1952:

W. Mansfield Clark William Mansfield Clark (17 August 1884 – 19 January 1964) was an American chemist and professor at the Johns Hopkins University. He studied oxidation-reduction reactions and was a pioneer of medical biochemistry. Clark was born in Tivoli, Ne ...

* 1953:

Edward L. Tatum Edward Lawrie Tatum (December 14, 1909 – November 5, 1975) was an American geneticist. He shared half of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1958 with George Beadle for showing that genes control individual steps in metabolism. The o ...

* 1954: Vincent du Vigneaud Nobel prize medal

* 1955:

Willard F. Libby Willard Frank Libby (December 17, 1908 – September 8, 1980) was an American physical chemist noted for his role in the 1949 development of radiocarbon dating, a process which revolutionized archaeology and palaeontology. For his contributions ...

* 1956: Farrington Daniels * 1957: Melvin Calvin Nobel prize medal

* 1958:

Robert B. Woodward Robert Burns Woodward (April 10, 1917 – July 8, 1979) was an American organic chemist. He is considered by many to be the most preeminent synthetic organic chemist of the twentieth century, having made many key contributions to the subject, e ...

* 1959: Edward Teller * 1960: Henry Eyring (chemist) Wolf prize icon

* 1961: Herbert C. Brown Nobel prize medal

* 1962: George Porter Nobel prize medal

* 1963:

Harold C. Urey Harold Clayton Urey ( ; April 29, 1893 – January 5, 1981) was an American physical chemist whose pioneering work on isotopes earned him the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1934 for the discovery of deuterium. He played a significant role in the d ...

* 1964:

Paul Doughty Bartlett Paul Doughty Bartlett (August 14, 1907 – October 11, 1997) was an American chemist. Bartlett was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan and grew up in Indianapolis. He received his B.A. from Amherst College in 1928. After his graduation from Harvard with ...

* 1965: James R. Arnold * 1966: Paul H. Emmett * 1967: Marshall W. Nirenberg Nobel prize medal

* 1968: Har Gobind Khorana * 1969: Albert L. Lehninger * 1970:

George S. Hammond George Simms Hammond (May 22, 1921 – October 5, 2005) was an American scientist and theoretical chemist who developed "Hammond's postulate", and fathered organic photochemistry,–the general theory of the geometric structure of the transition ...

* 1971: George C. Pimentel Wolf prize icon

* 1972: Charles H. Townes Nobel prize medal

* 1973: Frank H. Westheimer * 1974: Elias J. Corey Nobel prize medal

* 1975: Henry Taube Nobel prize medal

* 1976: William N. Lipscomb, Jr. Nobel prize medal

* 1977:

Ronald Breslow Ronald Charles David Breslow (March 14, 1931 – October 25, 2017) was an American chemist from Rahway, New Jersey. He was University Professor at Columbia University, where he was based in the Department of Chemistry and affiliated with the Dep ...

* 1978: John Charles Polanyi Nobel prize medal

* 1979:

Harry B. Gray Harry Barkus Gray (born November 14, 1935) is the Arnold O. Beckman Professor of Chemistry at California Institute of Technology. Career Gray received his B.S. in chemistry from Western Kentucky University in 1957. He began his work in inorgan ...

* 1980: Roald Hoffman Nobel prize medal

* 1981:

Koji Nakanishi was a Japanese chemist who studied bioorganic chemistry and natural products. He served as Centennial Professor of Chemistry and chair of the Chemistry Department at Columbia University. Early life Nakanishi was born in Hong Kong on May 11, 192 ...

* 1982:

Harden McConnell Harden M. McConnell (July 18, 1927 – October 8, 2014) was an American physical chemist. His many awards included the National Medal of Science and the Wolf Prize, and he was elected to the National Academy of Science." Education and career Hard ...

* 1983: George M. Whitesides * 1984:

Earl L. Muetterties Earl Muetterties (June 23, 1927 – January 12, 1984), was an American inorganic chemist born in Illinois, who is known for his experimental work with boranes, homogeneous catalysis, heterogeneous catalysis, fluxional processes in organometallic ...

* 1985:

Richard N. Zare Richard Neil Zare (born November 19, 1939, in Cleveland, Ohio) is the Marguerite Blake Wilbur Professor in Natural Science and a Professor of Chemistry at Stanford University. Throughout his career, Zare has made a considerable impact in physic ...

* 1986: Gilbert Stork Wolf prize icon

* 1987: Stephen J. Lippard * 1988: Mildred Cohn * 1989:

K. Barry Sharpless Karl Barry Sharpless (born April 28, 1941) is an American chemist and a two-time Nobel laureate in Chemistry known for his work on stereoselective reactions and click chemistry. Sharpless was awarded half of the 2001 Nobel Prize in Chemistry " ...

* 1990: Robert G. Bergman Wolf prize icon

* 1991:

Rudolph A. Marcus Rudolph Arthur Marcus (born July 21, 1923) is a Canadian-born chemist who received the 1992 Nobel Prize in Chemistry "for his contributions to the theory of electron transfer reactions in chemical systems". Marcus theory, named after him, provide ...

* 1992: William Klemperer * 1993: Christopher T. Walsh * 1994:

Edward I. Solomon Edward I. Solomon (born 1946) is the Monroe E. Spaght Professor of Chemistry at Stanford University. He is an elected member of the United States National Academy of Sciences, a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Scienc ...

* 1995: * 1996: David A. Evans * 1997:

William Hughes Miller William Hughes Miller (born March 16, 1941, Kosciusko, Mississippi) is a professor at the University of California, Berkeley and a leading researcher in the field of theoretical chemistry. Research and career Miller is known for his development ...

* 1998: Peter Dervan * 1999: * 2000: Alexander Pines Wolf prize icon

* 2001: Ad Bax * 2002: * 2003: Henry F. Schaefer III * 2004:

Samuel Danishefsky Samuel J. Danishefsky (born March 10, 1936) is an American chemist working as a professor at both Columbia University and the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City. Birth and education Samuel J. Danishefsky was born in 1936 in ...

* 2005:

Judith P. Klinman Judith P. Klinman (born April 17, 1941 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) is an American chemist, biochemist, and molecular biologist known for her work on enzyme catalysis. She became the first female professor in the physical sciences at the Unive ...

* 2006: Gabor A. Somorjai Wolf prize icon

* 2007: * 2008: John C. Tully * 2009:

Jean Frechet Jean may refer to: People * Jean (female given name) * Jean (male given name) * Jean (surname) Fictional characters * Jean Grey, a Marvel Comics character * Jean Valjean, fictional character in novel ''Les Misérables'' and its adaptations * Jean ...

* 2010:

John T. Groves John T. Groves is an American chemist, and Hugh Stott Taylor Chair of Chemistry, at Princeton University. Biography Groves received an undergraduate degree in chemistry at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he worked with Frederick ...

* 2011: Graham R. Fleming * 2012:

Daniel G. Nocera Daniel George Nocera (born July 3, 1957) is an American chemist, currently the Patterson Rockwood Professor of Energy in the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Harvard University. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences a ...

* 2013: Eric Jacobsen * 2014:

Emily A. Carter Emily Ann Carter (born November 28, 1960, in Los Gatos, California) is the Gerhard R. Andlinger Professor in Energy and the Environment and a professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering, the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment, ...

* 2015:

JoAnne Stubbe JoAnne Stubbe is an American chemist best known for her work on ribonucleotide reductases, for which she was awarded the National Medal of Science in 2009. In 2017, she retired as a Professor of Chemistry and Biology at the Massachusetts Institut ...

* 2016:

Charles M. Lieber Charles M. Lieber (born 1959) is an American chemist, a pioneer in nanoscience and nanotechnology. In 2011, Lieber was named the leading chemist in the world for the decade 2000–2010 by Thomson Reuters, based on the impact of his scientific ...

* 2017:

Robert H. Grubbs Robert Howard Grubbs ForMemRS (February 27, 1942 – December 19, 2021) was an American chemist and the Victor and Elizabeth Atkins Professor of Chemistry at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California. He was a co-recipient ...

* 2018: Chad Mirkin * 2019: Catherine J. Murphy * 2020:

Tom W. Muir Tom or TOM may refer to: * Tom (given name), a diminutive of Thomas or Tomás or an independent Aramaic given name (and a list of people with the name) Characters * Tom Anderson, a character in ''Beavis and Butt-Head'' * Tom Beck, a character ...

References

External links

Ira Remsen: The Chemistry was Right

*
Papers of Ira Remsen
{{DEFAULTSORT:Remsen, Ira 1846 births 1927 deaths American chemists Johns Hopkins University faculty Presidents of Johns Hopkins University People from Carmel-by-the-Sea, California Presidents of the United States National Academy of Sciences Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons alumni