Carl L. Alsberg (April 2, 1877 – October 31, 1940) was an American chemist who served as Commissioner of Food and Drugs from 1912 to 1921. Carl Lucas Alsberg was born to a secular German-Jewish family, the oldest of four children. His father Meinhard, a chemist who immigrated to the U.S. from Germany in 1865, was a founder of the American Chemical Society. Carl Alsberg attended Columbia University, where he founded a literary magazine, ''The Morningside''. He graduated from

Columbia College Columbia College may refer to one of several institutions of higher education in North America: Canada * Columbia College (Alberta), in Calgary * Columbia College (British Columbia), a two-year liberal arts institution in Vancouver * Columbia In ...

in 1896. After teaching at Harvard University, Alsberg went to work for the U.S. government in 1908, and within a few years was appointed the Chief of the United States Bureau of Chemistry, which would be renamed the Food and Drug Administration. In that role, Alsberg pursued an investigation into

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adulteration at McCormick & Company which resulted in a fine and a court order that the company must label its product as "ground black pepper containing from 10 percent to 28 percent added pepper shells". Alsberg also investigated Monsanto's use of saccharin and the amount of caffeine in Coca-Cola. In 1921, Alsberg resigned from the Bureau of Chemistry and co-founded

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...

's Food Research Institute. In 1937, he took a position at the University of California, Berkeley. In 1940, after visiting family in New York, Alsberg became ill with pneumonia on the train trip back to California and died in the hospital on October 31.

References

1877 births 1940 deaths American food chemists Commissioners of the Food and Drug Administration Taft administration personnel Woodrow Wilson administration personnel Harding administration personnel {{US-chemist-stub Columbia College (New York) alumni