Melvyn Charles Usselman (1944–2015) was a professor of

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 ...

at the University of Western Ontario (UWO), with a particular focus on the history of chemistry.

Life and career

He studied for his BSc, MA and PhD at UWO. He married Trixie Sennema. They had four children, Jasper, Charlotte, Richard and David. He spent over 30 years researching eighteenth and nineteenth-century chemistry to write what has been called "his life's work", the first genuinely thorough biography of the English polymath and discoverer of the elements palladium and rhodium, William Hyde Wollaston, entitled ''Pure Intelligence: The Life of William Hyde Wollaston''. In doing this as a professional chemist, he was also unconventional and dedicated enough as a biographer to try and reproduce Wollaston's experiments from the original notes, even going so far as to assay the actual samples that Wollaston had produced which were held by Michael Faraday. In a similar vein, earlier publications and experiments of his concern the work of other chemists in their golden age of discovery, including the Frenchmen

Jacques Étienne Bérard Jacques Etienne Bérard (12 October 1789 – 10 June 1869) was a French naturalist, chemist and physicist. Early life and family He was born in Montpellier to Thérèse Salettes and Étienne Bérard, the latter a scientist and chemical manufact ...

and Claude Louis Berthollet, the Englishmen

John Dalton John Dalton (; 5 or 6 September 1766 – 27 July 1844) was an English chemist, physicist and meteorologist. He is best known for introducing the atomic theory into chemistry, and for his research into colour blindness, which he had. Colour b ...

, Thomas Thomson and Smithson Tennant, and the German

Justus von Liebig Justus Freiherr von Liebig (12 May 1803 – 20 April 1873) was a German scientist who made major contributions to agricultural and biological chemistry, and is considered one of the principal founders of organic chemistry. As a professor at t ...

. In 1994-5 he won the Edward G.Pleva Award for Excellence in Teaching. In 1996 he won an Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Association (OCUFA) Teaching and Academic Librarianship Award. He received the :de:Liebig-Wöhler-Freundschaftspreis in 2003 for his chemical history research. He was awarded a 2004-5 University Students' Council (USC) Teaching Excellence Award and the USC President's Medal for Innovation in Undergraduate Teaching in 2005. He was on the USC Honour Roll five years running from 1997-8. He won a posthumous award in 2016, the

Roy G. Neville Prize The Roy G. Neville Prize in Bibliography or Biography is a biennial award given by the Science History Institute (formerly the Chemical Heritage Foundation) to recognize a biographical work in the field of chemistry or molecular science. The Roy ...

in Bibliography or Biography for his biography of Wollaston. He died at Strathroy, Ontario on 23 March 2015 aged 70.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Usselman, Melvyn Academic staff of the University of Western Ontario University of Western Ontario alumni 1944 births 2015 deaths People from Strathroy-Caradoc Canadian chemists Canadian male biographers 21st-century Canadian biographers 21st-century Canadian male writers