Herbert C. Brown

Herbert C. Brown begins this interview by describing his high school education and the death of his father, which forced him to follow a practical path in seeking work and eventually a college education. Brown discusses his coursework and studies at Crane Junior College, where he became fascinated by chemistry and its history. When Crane closed down, Brown was among the students invited to work in Nicholas D. Cheronis' Synthetical Laboratories, where he earned enough money to enroll in a University of Chicago correspondence course on qualitative analysis. He supplemented his education by working with Fales's Quantitative Analysis. Brown continues the interview by recalling the details of his studies and lab work at Wright Junior College and the University of Chicago. He also describes his relationships with his wife, Sarah Baylen, his mentors, Juliuis Stieglitz and Morris Kharasch, who influenced the direction of his inorganic research and the path of this career, and Neil Gordon, who offered Brown a position at Wayne State University and supported his research efforts there. Brown recalls the course of his career decisions and research at Chicago, Wayne State, and later Purdue University. He includes details of studies on steric effects, boranes, and borohydride synthesis. In the second part of the interview, Brown discusses his WWII work for the National Defense Research Committee, which included research on the volatile compounds of uranium, uranium borohydride production and testing, sodium trimethoxyborohydride production, and sodium borohydride development. He concludes the interview with an overview of his post-war research at Purdue, which focused on reduction studies comparing sodium borohydride and lithium aluminum hydride, hydroboration discovery, explorations into organoborane chemistry, and the development of a general asymmetric synthesis program.

University of Chicago

1938 - 1939 Eli Lilly Postdoctoral Fellow

University of Chicago

1939 - 1943 Instructor of Chemistry

University of Chicago

1941 - 1943 Instructor and Research Investigator

Wayne State University

1943 - 1946 Assistant Professor

Wayne State University

1946 - 1947 Associate Professor

Purdue University

1947 - 1959 Professor of Chemistry

Purdue University

1959 - 1960 Wetherill Professor of Chemistry

Purdue University

1960 - 1978 Wetherill Research Professor of Chemistry

Purdue University

1978 - present Emeritus Wetherill Research Professor of Chemistry

James J. Bohning

James J. Bohning is professor emeritus of chemistry at Wilkes University, where he was a faculty member from 1959 to 1990. He served there as chemistry department chair from 1970 to 1986 and environmental science department chair from 1987 to 1990. Bohning was chair of the American Chemical Society’s Division of the History of Chemistry in 1986; he received the division’s Outstanding Paper Award in 1989 and has presented more than forty papers at national meetings of the society. Bohning was on the advisory committee of the society’s National Historic Chemical Landmarks Program from its inception in 1992 through 2001 and is currently a consultant to the committee. He developed the oral history program of the Chemical Heritage Foundation, and he was the foundation’s director of oral history from 1990 to 1995. From 1995 to 1998, Bohning was a science writer for the News Service group of the American Chemical Society. He is currently a visiting research scientist and CESAR Fellow at Lehigh University. In May 2005, he received the Joseph Priestley Service Award from the Susquehanna Valley Section of the American Chemical Society.