Chemical Heritage Foundation names Robert G. W. Anderson as president and CEO

Robert G. W. Anderson is the new president and CEO of the Chemical Heritage Foundation (CHF), the Philadelphia-based nonprofit organization devoted to research and preservation of chemical history.

Anderson, 72, is a former director of the British Museum and a historian of science who has studied the work of chemists Joseph Priestley and Joseph Black, in addition to the history of scientific instrumentation.

A longtime board member of the CHF, Anderson stepped in as interim president of the foundation in July 2016, when the previous president Carsten Reinhardt left after a three-year tenure.

“The process of searching for a new president and CEO took us far afield, but in the end we found the perfect person close to home,” said Laurie Landeau, chair of CHF’s board of directors, in a Jan. 11 statement. “We are truly fortunate to have someone with peerless credentials and a deep love of the organization at the helm,” Landeau added in an e-mail to those on a CHF mailing list.