Susquehanna Valley Section

September 2002 Meeting

The three hundred and thirty seventh meeting of the Section will be held on Wednesday, September 18, 2002, at Bucknell University, Lewisburg, PA. The speaker will be Professor James J. Bohning. Part of the meeting will include the presentation of the first Susquehanna Valley Section Joseph Priestley Service Award to Dr. Lester Kieft, Professor of Chemistry Emeritus at Bucknell University and the first Chair of the Susquehanna Valley Section.

Social: 5-6 pm, Langone Center room 240.
Dinner: 6-7 pm, Langone Center room 252. Dinner will be a buffet at $9.
Please RSVP by Friday, September 13, to Janet Zimmerman at (570) 577-3258 or jzimmrmn@bucknell.edu.

Directions:
Bucknell University lies adjacent to U.S. Route 15 and the south side of the borough of Lewisburg, about 7 miles south of old exit 30 on Interstate 80. A campus map is available on the Bucknell home page or call the Chemistry Department at the above number for directions.

"Science in America: John W. Draper and the Founding of the American Chemical Society"
The American Chemical Society (ACS) began modestly on April 6, 1876, with thirty-five chemists present at an organizational meeting in New York City. It was not the first chemical society in the United States, nor was it the last, but it became the largest scientific society in the world, with a current membership of over 160,000. The reasons for formally organizing chemists, the problems of attracting members in the face of opposition from rivals, and the selection of officers created a complex mosaic of 19th-century politics within the chemical community. That the ACS eventually, but not without difficulty, succeeded was in part due to the fact that “hitherto America [had] done but little for the science, each chemist being but an isolated molecule giving but little show of affinity for others.

James J. Bohning, Ph.D., is professor of Chemistry Emeritus 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. He was chair of the American Chemical Society’s Division of the History of Chemistry in 1986, received the Division’s Outstanding Paper Award in 1989, and has presented more than 40 papers before the Division at national meetings of the Society. He 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 was on the editorial advisory board of the centennial history of the Dow Chemical Company, published in 1997. Beginning in 1985 he developed the oral history program of the Chemical Heritage Foundation in Philadelphia, and was the Foundation’s Director of Oral History from 1990 to 1995. From 1995 to 1998 he was a science writer for the News Service group of the American Chemical Society in Washington, D.C. He is currently a Visiting Research Scientist and CESAR Fellow at Lehigh University.