THE ELECTROCHEMICAL SCHOOL OF EDGAR FAHS SMITH, 1878-1913 (PENNSYLVANIA, PHILADELPHIA, CHEMISTRY)

Edgar Fahs Smith was a chemist, educator, and administrator whose career encompassed a time of great change for the American chemical profession. Smith's efforts in both chemical research and education permit an examination of American academic chemistry on an individual level around the turn of the twentieth century. The most far-reaching effect that Smith had on the American academic community was through his teaching, and his creation of a research school for electrochemistry. Smith sent eighty-five Ph.D. holders out into the world to carry on his program of research and to advocate his vision of professionalism for scientists. An examination of Smith's graduate students helps us to understand the influence of Smith the educator on the chemistry profession.;Smith's research school was active at the University of Pennsylvania from 1881 to 1910. The major scientific contributions of Smith and his students to the field of electrochemistry were the mercury cathode, the rotating anode, galvanic batteries especially suited for laboratory use, and a textbook that codified and simplified electroanalytical practice.;Smith was primarily interested in turning out gentlemanly scientists. He saw laboratory instruction in chemistry as one component of a total moral and ethical education. Smith's educational values were not antithetical to industrial practice, although his rhetoric about science opposed "practical" or "technical" education. Yet, in spite of his anti-industry rhetoric, Smith was greatly influenced by industrial chemists and their practices.;Smith's students became managers of science. Some managed industrial firms or divisions, some ran their own, independent chemical consulting companies, while others managed academic departments of chemistry or chemical engineering. Even those who abandoned chemistry entirely as a career mostly worked managerial positions. The single, most important lesson that almost all of Smith's students learned was how to build and run an institution. Edgar Fahs Smith created and managed a successful research school in electrochemistry at the University of Pennsylvania. Likewise, most of Smith's students shaped their institutional niches to suit their needs and ideals. In the process, they shaped the American chemical profession in their (and Smith's) own image.