Ira Remsen (February 10, 1846 – March 4, 1927) was an American

chemist A chemist (from Greek ''chēm(ía)'' alchemy; replacing ''chymist'' from Medieval Latin ''alchemist'') is a scientist trained in the study of chemistry. Chemists study the composition of matter and its properties. Chemists carefully describe t ...

who discovered the

artificial sweetener A sugar substitute is a food additive that provides a sweetness like that of sugar while containing significantly less food energy than sugar-based sweeteners, making it a zero-calorie () or low-calorie sweetener. Artificial sweeteners may b ...

saccharin Saccharin (''aka'' saccharine, Sodium sacchari) is an artificial sweetener with effectively no nutritional value. It is about 550 times as sweet as sucrose but has a bitter or metallic aftertaste, especially at high concentrations. Saccharin is ...

along with

Constantin Fahlberg Constantin Fahlberg (22 December 1850 in Tambov – 15 August 1910 in Nassau, aged 59) was a Russian chemist who discovered the sweet taste of anhydroorthosulphaminebenzoic acid in 1877–78 when analysing the chemical compounds in coal tar a ...

. He was the second president of

Johns Hopkins University Johns Hopkins University (Johns Hopkins, Hopkins, or JHU) is a private research university in Baltimore, Maryland. Founded in 1876, Johns Hopkins is the oldest research university in the United States and in the western hemisphere. It consi ...

Early life

Ira Remsen was born in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Un ...

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. Rems ...

(1876–1928), became a playwright living in Carmel-by-the-Sea, California. Remsen earned an M.D. from the New York Homeopathic Medical College in 1865. He subsequently studied chemistry in

Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...

, studying under chemist

Wilhelm Rudolph Fittig Wilhelm Rudolph Fittig (6 December 183519 November 1910) was a German chemist. He discovered the pinacol coupling reaction, mesitylene, diacetyl and biphenyl. Fittig studied the action of sodium on ketones and hydrocarbons. He discovered the Fi ...

, receiving a PhD from

University of Göttingen The University of Göttingen, officially the Georg August University of Göttingen, (german: Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, known informally as Georgia Augusta) is a public research university in the city of Göttingen, Germany. Founded ...

in 1870.

Career

In 1872, after researching pure chemistry at

University of Tübingen The University of Tübingen, officially the Eberhard Karl University of Tübingen (german: Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen; la, Universitas Eberhardina Carolina), is a public research university located in the city of Tübingen, Baden-W� ...

, Remsen returned to the United States and became a professor at

Williams College Williams College is a private liberal arts college in Williamstown, Massachusetts. It was established as a men's college in 1793 with funds from the estate of Ephraim Williams, a colonist from the Province of Massachusetts Bay who was kill ...

, where he wrote the popular text ''Theoretical Chemistry''. Remsen's book and reputation brought him to the attention of

Daniel Coit Gilman Daniel Coit Gilman (; July 6, 1831 – October 13, 1908) was an American educator and academic. Gilman was instrumental in founding the Sheffield Scientific School at Yale College, and subsequently served as the second president of the University ...

, who invited him to become one of the original faculty of

. Remsen accepted and founded the department of chemistry there, overseeing his own laboratory. In 1879 Remsen founded the ''

American Chemical Journal The ''Journal of the American Chemical Society'' is a weekly peer-reviewed scientific journal that was established in 1879 by the American Chemical Society. The journal has absorbed two other publications in its history, the ''Journal of Analytical ...

'', 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 Coal tar is a thick dark liquid which is a by-product of the production of coke and coal gas from coal. It is a type of creosote. It has both medical and industrial uses. Medicinally it is a topical medication applied to skin to treat psorias ...

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

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 The American Philosophical Society (APS), founded in 1743 in Philadelphia, is a scholarly organization that promotes knowledge in the sciences and humanities through research, professional meetings, publications, library resources, and communit ...

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 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 ...

. In 1923 he was awarded the Priestley medal.

Death

He died on March 4, 1927 in Carmel-by-the-Sea, California. 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 was added to the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic ...

and declared a

National Historic Landmark A National Historic Landmark (NHL) is a building, district, object, site, or structure that is officially recognized by the United States government for its outstanding historical significance. Only some 2,500 (~3%) of over 90,000 places listed ...

in 1975. Remsen Hall in Queens College is also named for him.

Remsen Award

In 1946, to commemorate the centenary of Remsen, the Maryland chapter of 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 ...

, began awarding the Remsen award, in his honor. Awardees are frequently of the highest caliber, and included a sequence of 16 Nobel laureates between 1950 and 1980. ;Recipients: * 1946:

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 ...

* 1947: Samuel C. Lind * 1948: Elmer V. McCollum * 1949: Joel H. Hildebrand * 1950:

Edward C. Kendall Edward Calvin Kendall (March 8, 1886 – May 4, 1972) was an American chemist. In 1950, Kendall was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine along with Swiss chemist Tadeusz Reichstein and Mayo Clinic physician Philip S. Hench, for t ...

* 1951:

Hugh Stott Taylor Sir Hugh Stott Taylor (6 February 1890 – 17 April 1974) was an English chemist primarily interested in catalysis.Who Was Who, Published by A&C Black Limited In 1925, in a landmark contribution to catalytic theory, Taylor suggested that a cat ...

* 1952: W. Mansfield Clark * 1953: Edward L. Tatum Nobel prize medal

* 1954:

Vincent du Vigneaud Vincent du Vigneaud (May 18, 1901 – December 11, 1978) was an American biochemist. He was recipient of the 1955 Nobel Prize in Chemistry "for his work on biochemically important sulphur compounds, especially for the first synthesis of a polypep ...

* 1955: Willard F. Libby Nobel prize medal

* 1956:

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 ...

* 1957:

Melvin Calvin Melvin Ellis Calvin (April 8, 1912 – January 8, 1997) was an American biochemist known for discovering the Calvin cycle along with Andrew Benson and James Bassham, for which he was awarded the 1961 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. He spent most of h ...

* 1958: Robert B. Woodward Nobel prize medal

* 1959:

Edward Teller Edward Teller ( hu, Teller Ede; January 15, 1908 – September 9, 2003) was a Hungarian-American theoretical physicist who is known colloquially as "the father of the hydrogen bomb" (see the Teller–Ulam design), although he did not care for ...

* 1960:

Henry Eyring (chemist) Henry Eyring (February 20, 1901 – December 26, 1981) was a Mexico-born United States theoretical chemist whose primary contribution was in the study of chemical reaction rates and intermediates. History Eyring, a third-generation member of th ...

* 1961: Herbert C. Brown Nobel prize medal

* 1962: George Porter Nobel prize medal

* 1963: Harold C. Urey Nobel prize medal

* 1964: Paul Doughty Bartlett * 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 * 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 Lipscomb, William N. Lipscomb, Jr. Nobel prize medal

* 1977: Ronald Breslow * 1978: John Charles Polanyi Nobel prize medal

* 1979: Harry B. Gray Wolf prize icon

* 1980: Roald Hoffman Nobel prize medal

* 1981: Koji Nakanishi * 1982: Harden McConnell Wolf prize icon

* 1983: George M. Whitesides * 1984: Earl L. Muetterties * 1985: Richard N. Zare * 1986: Gilbert Stork Wolf prize icon

* 1987: Stephen J. Lippard * 1988: Mildred Cohn * 1989: K. Barry Sharpless Nobel prize medal

* 1990: Robert G. Bergman Wolf prize icon

* 1991: Rudolph A. Marcus Nobel prize medal

* 1992: William Klemperer * 1993: Christopher T. Walsh * 1994: Edward I. Solomon * 1995: * 1996: David A. Evans * 1997: William Hughes Miller * 1998: Peter Dervan * 1999: * 2000: Alexander Pines Wolf prize icon

* 2001: Ad Bax * 2002: * 2003: Henry F. Schaefer III * 2004: Samuel Danishefsky * 2005: Judith P. Klinman * 2006: Gabor A. Somorjai Wolf prize icon

* 2007: * 2008: John C. Tully * 2009: Jean Frechet * 2010: John T. Groves * 2011: Graham R. Fleming * 2012: Daniel G. Nocera * 2013: Eric Jacobsen (chemist), Eric Jacobsen * 2014: Emily A. Carter * 2015: JoAnne Stubbe * 2016: Charles M. Lieber Wolf prize icon

* 2017: Robert H. Grubbs Nobel prize medal

* 2018: Chad Mirkin * 2019: Catherine J. Murphy * 2020: Tom W. Muir

References

External links

Ira Remsen: The Chemistry was Right

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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