Frank Clifford Whitmore (October 1, 1887 – June 24, 1947), nicknamed "Rocky", was a prominent chemist who submitted significant evidence for the existence of
carbocation
A carbocation is an ion with a positively charged carbon atom. Among the simplest examples are the methenium , methanium and vinyl cations. Occasionally, carbocations that bear more than one positively charged carbon atom are also encountere ...
mechanisms in organic chemistry.
He was born in 1887 in the town of
North Attleborough
North Attleborough, alternatively spelled North Attleboro, is a town in Bristol County, Massachusetts, United States. The population was 30,834 at the 2020 United States Census.
The villages of Attleboro Falls and North Attleborough Center are ...
,
.
Academic career
Whitmore earned both his bachelor's degree (1911) and Ph.D. (1914) from
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...
, where his Ph.D. advisor was
Charles Loring Jackson
Charles Loring Jackson (April 4, 1847 – October 31, 1935) was the first significant organic chemist in the United States. He brought organic chemistry to the United States from Germany and educated a generation of American organic chemists.
Per ...
. Several prominent contemporaries of Whitmore at Harvard were
E.K. Bolton,
Farrington Daniels
Farrington Daniels (March 8, 1889 – June 23, 1972) was an American physical chemist who is considered one of the pioneers of the modern direct use of solar energy.
Biography
Daniels was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota on March 8, 1889. Dani ...
,
Roger Adams
Roger Adams (January 2, 1889 – July 6, 1971) was an American organic chemist who developed the eponymous Adams' catalyst, and helped determine the composition of natural substances such as complex vegetable oils and plant alkaloids. He isolat ...
,
James B. Sumner and
James Bryant Conant
James Bryant Conant (March 26, 1893 – February 11, 1978) was an American chemist, a transformative President of Harvard University, and the first U.S. Ambassador to West Germany. Conant obtained a Ph.D. in Chemistry from Harvard in 1916 ...
. After graduating from Harvard he became a professor and taught at the
University of Minnesota
The University of Minnesota, formally the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, (UMN Twin Cities, the U of M, or Minnesota) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul, Tw ...
,
Northwestern University
Northwestern University is a private research university in Evanston, Illinois. Founded in 1851, Northwestern is the oldest chartered university in Illinois and is ranked among the most prestigious academic institutions in the world.
Charte ...
, and
The Pennsylvania State University
The Pennsylvania State University (Penn State or PSU) is a Public university, public Commonwealth System of Higher Education, state-related Land-grant university, land-grant research university with campuses and facilities throughout Pennsylvan ...
.
At Penn State, Whitmore served as the Dean of the School of Chemistry and Physics from 1929–1947, succeeding his former Harvard colleague Gerald Wendt in the position. He hired several prominent scientists as faculty members, including
Russell Marker
Russell Earl Marker (March 12, 1902 – March 3, 1995) was an American chemist who invented the octane rating system when he was working at the Ethyl Corporation. Later in his career, he went on to found a steroid industry in Mexico when he su ...
and Merrell Fenske.
Research and publications
While at the Pennsylvania State University Whitmore did his research on
carbocation
A carbocation is an ion with a positively charged carbon atom. Among the simplest examples are the methenium , methanium and vinyl cations. Occasionally, carbocations that bear more than one positively charged carbon atom are also encountere ...
s. The field of organic chemistry was struggling to explain how a compound with a double bonded carbon, an
alkene
In organic chemistry, an alkene is a hydrocarbon containing a carbon–carbon double bond.
Alkene is often used as synonym of olefin, that is, any hydrocarbon containing one or more double bonds.H. Stephen Stoker (2015): General, Organic, an ...
, reacts with a
halide
In chemistry, a halide (rarely halogenide) is a binary chemical compound, of which one part is a halogen atom and the other part is an element or radical that is less electronegative (or more electropositive) than the halogen, to make a fluor ...
compound. Whitmore worked on the findings of others and generalized the concept of molecules with a positively charged carbon atom, a
carbocation
A carbocation is an ion with a positively charged carbon atom. Among the simplest examples are the methenium , methanium and vinyl cations. Occasionally, carbocations that bear more than one positively charged carbon atom are also encountere ...
, as an intermediate step in the addition of a
halogen
The halogens () are a group in the periodic table consisting of five or six chemically related elements: fluorine (F), chlorine (Cl), bromine (Br), iodine (I), astatine (At), and tennessine (Ts). In the modern IUPAC nomenclature, this group is ...
element.
Whitmore would go on to publish his findings in a paper titled "The Common Basis of Intramolecular Rearrangements." They were controversial at the time because many chemists, notably well known chemist
Roger Adams
Roger Adams (January 2, 1889 – July 6, 1971) was an American organic chemist who developed the eponymous Adams' catalyst, and helped determine the composition of natural substances such as complex vegetable oils and plant alkaloids. He isolat ...
, a critic of Whitmore's, believed that a molecule like a carbocation would never be stable enough to exist. Nevertheless, Whitmore published these findings which today are accepted as the most logical explanation for the reactions in question.
In 1937, Whitmore published ''Organic Chemistry'',
[''Organic Chemistry''. New York, D. Van Nostrand Co., Inc. (1937) 1090 p.] the first advanced organic chemistry textbook to be written in English. Whitmore worked on a revision of the book for several years, though the work was interrupted by
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
. The second edition of ''Organic Chemistry'' was published posthumously in 1951.
American Chemical Society
Whitmore was very active in 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 d ...
(ACS), holding several different offices in the organization throughout his life. In 1938, he served as president of ACS. During his presidency, he visited 72 of 104 local ACS sections. In 1937, Whitmore won the prized
William H. Nichols Medal Award
The William H. Nichols Medal is awarded annually for original research in chemistry. Nominees must have made a "significant and original contribution in any field of chemistry" during the five years preceding the presentation date. The medallist ...
, given by the New York section of ACS. In 1945, Whitmore was awarded the
Willard Gibbs
Josiah Willard Gibbs (; February 11, 1839 – April 28, 1903) was an American scientist who made significant theoretical contributions to physics, chemistry, and mathematics. His work on the applications of thermodynamics was instrumental in t ...
Medal (considered to be the highest chemical honor in America) by the Chicago section of ACS.
Whitmore rarely slept. It was not rare for him work twenty hours a day, and take one-hour naps when he was tired.
Personal life
Whitmore married Marion Gertrude Mason (who graduated from Radcliffe College with a degree in chemistry in 1912) in 1914. The Whitmores had four children: Frank Jr., Mason, Harry, and Marion, Jr ("Marionette").
Whitmore died in 1947 at the age of 59 as the result of a heart ailment.
Penn State's
Whitmore Laboratory is named after Whitmore.
Notes
References
* Yarmey, Kristen. ''Labors and Legacies: The Chemists of Penn State, 1855-1947''. University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Department of Chemistry, 2005.
* C. S. Marvel. ''Biographical memoir: Frank Clifford Whitmore.''
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 ...
, Washington, D.C., 1954.
ull text, including a photograph* M. R. Fenske. "Obituary notice: Frank Clifford Whitmore. ''Studies in the Detoxication of Catalyst Poisom. Part VI.'' p. 1090-1
Full text
{{DEFAULTSORT:Whitmore, Frank C.
1887 births
1947 deaths
Organic chemists
20th-century American chemists
Pennsylvania State University faculty
Harvard University alumni