Pharmaceutical history - October 15th

Harmon Northrop Morse(October 15, 1848 – September 8, 1920) was an American chemist. Today he is known as the first to have synthesized paracetamol, but this substance only became widely used as a drug decades after Morse's death. In the first half of the 20th century he was best known for his study of osmotic pressure, for which he was awarded the Avogadro Medal in 1916. The Morse equation for estimating osmotic pressure is named after him.

Thanks to an endowment left by his grandmother, Northrop Morse studied chemistry at Amherst College, which he entered in 1869 and graduated in 1873. He continued his studies in Germany, and obtained a PhD in chemistry with a minor in mineralogy from the University of Göttingen in 1875.

Morse returned to the United States in 1875, and was given an assistantship at Amherst. There he worked for a year under Harris and Emerson. When Johns Hopkins University opened in 1876, Morse moved there as an associate of Ira Remsen, thanks in part to a letter of recommendation from Emerson. Remsen and Morse started the chemistry laboratory at Johns Hopkins together, and Morse's experience from Germany proved very valuable, as the American chemistry school was less developed at the time. Morse officially became an associate professor in 1883, a full professor of inorganic and analytical chemistry in 1892, and director of the chemical laboratory in 1908. He retired in 1916.

Morse married twice and had four children—a daughter and three sons. His, second wife, Elizabet Dennis Clark, helped him in preparing articles for publication. After his retirement, Morse became quite reclusive, seldom left his house and his health deteriorated. He died during his annual vacation in Chebeague Island, Maine—a place he often visited. He was buried at Amherst, where he also had a summer house. In his obituary, Remsen remembers Morse as "quiet and uneffusive”.


Source https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harmon_Northrop_Morse

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