A Historical Precedent For Leaving Academia

A chemist moving from the university into industry and government is nothing new. Some very prominent chemists in the early 20th century made the transition.

Irving Langmuir, the first industrial chemist to become a Nobel Laureate, began his career as an instructor of chemistry at Stevens Institute of Technology. In 1909, he joined the research laboratory at General Electric in Schenectady, N.Y. During a long career, at GE, Langmuir invented the gas-filled incandescent lamp, discovered atomic hydrogen, and advanced several basic fields in chemistry and physics.

Wallace Carothers also taught for a few years before moving into industry. Carothers received a Ph.D. at the University of Illinois, staying as an instructor in organic chemistry for two years. In 1926, he moved to Harvard University, again as an instructor in organic chemistry before being lured to DuPont a year later by the company's decision to fund fundamental, pure research regardless of the potential to develop a moneymaking product. In the end, Carothers' work earned DuPont a lot of money—his research in polymers culminated in the invention of nylon.

Arnold O. Beckman, like Langmuir and Carothers, moved from a teaching post into industry, but unlike them, Beckman started his own company. After receiving a doctorate in 1928 from the California Institute of Technology, Beckman stayed on as an instructor and then a professor. In 1935, he invented the pH meter, selling the device through a company he created called National Technical Laboratories. For four years, he ran the business while teaching, but the commercial success of the pH meter forced Beckman to leave academia. Sales of the pH meter, as well as other instruments, led to a rapid growth of what became Beckman Instruments, making him a wealthy man who, instead of keeping his fortune, decided to give it away. As philanthropists, he and his wife created the Arnold & Mabel Beckman Foundation for the support of scientific research.

Frederick G. Cottrell followed a different route out of the university. After teaching high school chemistry for four years, Cottrell earned a doctorate at the University of Leipzig, in Germany, in 1902, and then taught at the University of California, Berkeley, resigning in 1906 to do independent research on industrial pollution. Two years later, he patented the electrostatic precipitator, which uses high-voltage electricity to remove particulate pollution caused by industrial smokestacks.

Cottrell struggled to finance his research, and although profits from the precipitator's manufacture would have made him wealthy, Cottrell decided that some of the money should go to fund scientific research. In 1912, he started Research Corporation, a foundation set up to receive income from his inventions and those of other public-spirited inventors and distribute those funds as research grants. Cottrell also held government posts during his career. In 1911, he joined the Bureau of Mines, and from 1922 to 1930, he served as director of the Department of Agriculture's Fixed Nitrogen Laboratory.

Judah Ginsberg is a freelance writer living in Alexandria, Va.