National Historic Chemical Landmarks

Plaque noting National Historic Chemical Landmark status at the Joseph Priestley House.

The National Historic Chemical Landmarks Program was launched by the American Chemical Society in 1992 and has recognized more than 60 landmarks to date. The program celebrates the centrality of chemistry. The designation of seminal achievements in the history of chemistry demonstrates how chemists have benefited society by fulfilling the ACS vision: Improving people's lives through the transforming power of chemistry.

List of landmarks

1993

• Bakelite, the world's first completely synthetic plastic, developed by Leo Baekeland around 1907

1994

The Joseph Priestley House in Northumberland, Pennsylvania.

• Chandler Chemistry Laboratory at Lehigh University, constructed in 1884
• Joseph Priestley House, U.S. home of Joseph Priestley, discoverer of oxygen, from 1798 to 1804

1995

• Research on the atomic weight of oxygen conducted by Edward Morley at Case Western Reserve University, published in 1895
• First U.S. facility to produce acetyl chemicals commercially using coal gasification technology, opened by Eastman Chemical Company in 1983
• Production of nylon, the first totally synthetic fiber used in consumer products, commercialized by DuPont in 1939
• Riverside Laboratory for oil refining research, constructed by Universal Oil Products in 1921

1996

• The Sohio process for production of acrylonitrile, developed by Sohio in 1957 and commercialized in 1960
• The Houdry process for catalytic cracking of crude petroleum to gasoline, developed by Eugene Houdry and the Sun Oil Company in the 1930s
• Kem-Tone Wall Finish, the first commercially successful water-based paint, introduced by Sherwin-Williams in 1941
• Williams-Miles History of Chemistry Collection at Harding University, established in 1992

1997

• The Hall-Héroult process for production of aluminum by electrochemistry, discovered by American chemist Charles Martin Hall in 1886 and independently the same year by French chemist Paul Héroult
• Electrolytic production of bromine (also known as the Dow process) by Herbert Henry Dow in 1891 at the Evens Mill in Midland, Michigan
• Gilman Hall at the University of California, Berkeley, built between 1916 and 1917 in Berkeley, California
• First use of radiation chemistry for commercial products by Raychem Corporation in 1957

1998

• Discovery of an electric arc process for the commercial production of calcium carbide and acetylene, discovered by Canadian inventor Thomas Willson in 1892
• First commercial fluid bed reactor for petroleum cracking, which went on stream in 1942 at the Baton Rouge Refinery of the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey
• Havemeyer Hall at Columbia University, built between 1896 and 1898 under the direction of Charles Frederick Chandler in New York City, New York
• The Raman Effect, discovered by Indian physicist Chandrasekhara Venkata Raman in 1928 at the Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science
• Research and production of synthetic rubber, developed by the United States Synthetic Rubber Program between 1939 and 1945
• Discovery of histamine H₂-receptor antagonists and the introduction of Tagamet by scientists at Smith Kline and French in 1976

1999

• The discovery of penicillin
• Physostigmine (used for the treatment of glaucoma) synthesis first accomplished at the Minshall Laboratory, DePauw University by African American chemist Percy L. Julian
• Progesterone synthesis from a Mexican yam developed by Russell Marker in a process known as Marker degradation and Mexican steroid industry
• The foundation of polymer science by Hermann Staudinger
• Polypropylene and high-density polyethylene discovered by J. Paul Hogan and Robert Banks working at Phillips Petroleum Company
• Separation of rare earth elements by Charles James at the University of New Hampshire
• Work of French scientist Antoine Lavoisier, who elucidated the principles of modern chemistry

2000

• Bowood House in Wiltshire, U.K. site of Joseph Priestley's discovery of oxygen in 1774
• Edgar Fahs Smith Memorial Collection at The University of Pennsylvania
• The discovery of helium in natural gas by Hamilton Cady and David Ford McFarland while working in Bailey Hall at The University of Kansas on a sample from a gas well in Dexter, Kansas in 1905
• Isolation of organic free radicals by University of Michigan chemist Moses Gomberg in 1900
• The establishment of modern polymer science by Wallace Carothers
• Protein and nucleic acid chemistry at Rockefeller University
• Discovery of transcurium elements at E. O. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley including berkelium (97), californium (98), einsteinium (99), fermium (100), mendelevium (101), nobelium (102), lawrencium (103), rutherfordium (104), dubnium (105), and seaborgium (106)

2001

• Savannah Pulp and Paper Laboratory founded by Georgia chemist Charles H. Herty, Sr. who discovered a method to make quality paper from southern pine trees in 1932
• National Institute of Standards and Technology, (NIST)
• The commercialization of aluminum by the Pittsburgh Reduction Company (Aluminum Company of America) in 1888 that used the elctrochemical process discovered by Charles Martin Hall
• The founding of the American Chemical Society in 1876 and its first president John William Draper

2002

• African-American engineer Norbert Rillieux, inventor of the multiple-effect evaporator (1934) and a revolution in sugar processing giving better quality with less manpower and at reduced cost
• Hungarian chemist Albert Szent-Györgyi and the discovery of Vitamin C which he proved was identical to the hexuronic acid that could be extracted in kilogram quantities from paprika
• Noyes Laboratory: One Hundred Years of Chemistry
• Alice Hamilton and the development of occupational medicine that helped make the American workplace less dangerous
• Quality and stability of frozen foods made possible by the research of the Western Regional Research Center after World War II that investigated how time and temperature affected their stability and quality

2003

• The discovery of the life-saving anticancer agents Camptothecin (1966) and Taxol (1971) obtained from the Chinese Camptotheca acuminata and the Pacific yew tree respectively at the Research Triangle Institute (RTI) by the research team of Monroe Wall, Mansukh C. Wani, and colleagues
• The Polymer Research Institute at the Polytechnic University of New York, established in 1946 by Herman Mark, the first academic facility in the United States devoted to the study and teaching of polymer science
• The development of high-performance Carbon fibers by scientists at the Parma Technical Center of Union Carbide Corporation (now GrafTech International)

2004

• The Beckman pH meter, developed by Arnold Orville Beckman while a member of the faculty of the California Institute of Technology, the first commercially successful electronic pH meter
• The evolution of durable press and flame retardant cotton by the Southern Regional Research Center that made cotton more competitive with synthetic fabrics
• Carl Ferdinand Cori and Gerty Cori and their research that led to our current understanding of the metabolism of sugars or the "Cori cycle" by which the body reversibly converts glucose and glycogen

2005

• George Washington Carver who, despite being born into slavery, went on to join the faculty of Tuskegee Institute in 1896 where he developed new products including peanuts and sweet potatoes and researched crop rotation and the restoration of soil fertility
• Selman Waksman, who isolated antibiotics produced by actinomycetes, including streptomycin which was the first effective pharmaceutical treatment for tuberculosis, cholera and typhoid fever, and neomycin used as a topical antibacterial agent
• The development of the Columbia dry cell battery, the first sealed dry cell battery successfully manufactured for the mass market by the National Carbon Company (predecessor of Energizer) in 1896

2006

• Neil Bartlett's demonstration of the first reaction of a noble gas by combining xenon with platinum fluoride
• Rumford baking powder, developed in the mid-19th century by the Harvard University Rumford Professor Eben Horsford by adding calcium acid phosphate, to make baking easier, quicker, and more reliable
• The development of Tide, the first heavy-duty synthetic laundry detergent, by Procter & Gamble chemists working at the Ivorydale Technical Center in 1946 by adding the "builder" sodium tripolyphosphate

2007

• Food dehydration technology developed at the USDA-Agricultural Research Service-Eastern Regional Research Center.
• Chemical Abstracts Service.
• Scotch Tape
• Jamestown, Virginia for the birth of the American Chemical Enterprise

2008

• The production and distribution of radioisotopes by the Oak Ridge National Laboratory
• The development of deep-tank fermentation by Pfizer, the technology that permitted the mass production of penicillin during World War II.
• Aqueous Emulsion Technology by Rohm and Haas. This technology helped enable the Do-It-Yourself paint movement.

2009

• Development of the Pennsylvania oil industry by Edwin Drake and Samuel Kier
• Deciphering the genetic code by Marshall Warren Nirenberg and J. Heinrich Matthaei at the National Institutes of Health

2010

• Development of diagnostic test strips by Helen Murray Free and Alfred Free at Miles Laboratories (now Bayer AG)
• Discovery of fullerenes by Richard Smalley, Robert Curl, James Heath, Sean O'Brien, and Harold Kroto at Rice University

2011

• NMR and MRI applications in chemistry and medicine by Varian Associates (now Agilent Technologies) and Paul Lauterbur at Stony Brook University

External links

• Directory of National Historic Chemical Landmarks (American Chemical Society)