Гарвард университетінің профессоры Эбен Нортон Хорсфордтың өмірі мен еңбектері

Harvard chemistry professor

Eben Norton Horsford (July 27, 1818 – January 1, 1893) was an American scientist who taught agricultural chemistry in the Lawrence Scientific School at Harvard from 1847 to 1863. Later he was known for his reformulation of baking powder, his interest in Viking settlements in North America, and the monuments he built to Leif Erikson.

Horsford was born in Moscow, New York, located in the Genesee River valley, to Jerediah Horsford and Maria Charity Norton. "At home he showed a certain inventive or mechanical skill, great ability in sketching, and unbounded interest in collecting specimens from the rich fossil deposits on the family farm." Seeking advancement, Horsford twice, for six weeks, taught chemistry at Newark College (Newark, Delaware). In 1842 he attended an event of the American Association of Geologists and Naturalists, and thereafter took up a study of Justus von Liebig's Organic Chemistry. Soon he was advocating Liebig's views on agricultural chemistry. He decided to study with Liebig at the University of Giessen in Germany, and departed October 10, 1844. After he qualified to work in Liebig's lab in October 1845, he took up the analysis of nitrogen content of grains, an index of their nutritive value as fodder. In February of the following year he began quantitative elemental analysis of "sugar of gelatin", then called glycocoll. Previous attempts at this analysis by Mulder and Bossingault had yielded unwieldy giants; Horsford's result was C4H5NO3 , not exactly right. Henry Darwin Rogers had been the leading candidate for the Rumford Chair of Physics until John White Webster got involved. Rogers had been tarnished by association with Vestiges of Creation, and as recommended by Webster, Horsford in Germany visited laboratories and industrial plants before returning from Liebig's lab. Since Rogers and George B. Emerson had charged Webster with incompetence, and challenged his Harvard position, Webster was keen that Horsford take the Rumford Chair rather than Rogers. On January 30, 1847, Horsford was elected unanimously by Harvard Corporation. With his new position, Horsford obtained permission from Mary's father and they were wed on August 4, 1847. Two years after Mary's death in 1855, Horsford married Phoebe Dayton Gardiner (August 15, 1826 – October 8, 1900), Mary's sister. Horsford had four daughters by Mary and one daughter, Cornelia Horsford, by Phoebe. The new university president was Edward Everett, and Abbott Lawrence had come forward to finance a new scientific school at Harvard. But the funds for Horsford’s lab were consumed by heating costs and salaries for a janitor and assistants. In April 1854 Horsford realized that the demands put upon him were unreasonably onerous and he wrote the Corporation: "The necessity of the elementary instruction made it my fortune to be oppressed pecuniarily and professionally. In attempting to do what seemed to be required, I was compelled almost to lose sight of the objects which as a scientific man I had placed before myself." and Remigius Fresenius's Instruction in Chemical Analysis (quantitative) (1846). His publication included such topics as phosphates, condensed milk, fermentation, and emergency rations. In 1849, he was elected as a member to the American Philosophical Society. A generous supporter of higher education for women, Horsford became president of the board of visitors of Wellesley College, and donated money for books, scientific apparatus, and a pension fund to the college. He enjoyed remarkable success through his development of processes for manufacturing baking powder and condensed milk. In seeking patents for his inventions, Horsford was assisted by Charles Grafton Page, a patent solicitor who had previously worked at the US Patent Office. Professor Eben Norton Horsford created the Shelter Island Public Library in Shelter Island, New York in 1885. He donated 280 volumes for the first library, which was initially housed in a closet in the Old Store, a building that functioned as a post office, telegraph station, and local meeting place. After the store burned down in 1891, a new library for more books donated by Professor Horsford was built on a nearby lot donated by his daughter Lilian, and his daughter Cornelia became the library's first president.

Baking powder had contained baking soda and cream of tartar. Horsford replaced the cream of tartar with the more reliable calcium biphosphate (also known as calcium acid phosphate and many other names). He did this a little earlier than August Oetker. In 1854, Horsford, with partner George Wilson, formed the Rumford Chemical Works. They named it after the title of Horsford's position at Harvard.

Horsford became interested in the theory that the Vikings, specifically Leif Ericson, had visited North America, and set out to prove it. He connected the Charles River Basin to places described in the Norse sagas, invented Old Norse etymologies for Algonquian place names like Naumkeag, Namskaket, and Amoskeag, and 'discovered' Viking archaeological remains. Horsford had a plaque documenting all this placed on Memorial Drive near Mount Auburn Street in Cambridge, Massachusetts. A few miles upstream, at the mouth of Stony Brook, he had Norumbega Tower built marking the supposed location of Norumbega, a Viking fort and city, complete with its Althing and America's first Christian bishop. In honor of Horsford's generous donations to Wellesley College, a building named Norumbega Hall was dedicated in 1886 and celebrated by a poem by John Greenleaf Whittier.