Bancroft, Wilder

Bancroft, Wilder D. "History of the Chemical Warfare Service in the United States", Historical Report No. H-ll, Chemical Warfare Service, Edgewood Arsenal Technical Library, p. 58. 

Bancroft, Wilder Dwight. Diet. Am. Biog., Supplement 5, 1977, pp. 35-37. 

Nine years later, the Zeitschrift fur physikalische Chemie was followed by the Journal of Physical Chemistry, founded in the USA by Wilder Bancroft (1867-1953), one of Ostwald s American students. The chequered career of this journal is instructively analysed by both Laidler (1993) and Servos (1990). Bancroft (who spent more than half a century at Cornell University) seems to have been a difficult man, with an eccentric sense of humour thus at a Ph.D. oral examination he asked the candidate What in water puts out fires , and after rejecting some of the answers the student gave with increasing desperation, Bancroft revealed that the right answer was a fireboat . Any scientific author will recognize that this is not the ideal way for a journal editor to behave, let alone an examiner. There is no space here to go into the vagaries of Bancroft s personality (Laidler can be consulted about this), but... 

Letter to Wilder D. Bancroft, Jan. 19, 1923. Lead-lined lungs. Kettering... 

By Wilder D. Bancroft and Herbert L. Davis Baker Laboratory of Chemistry, Cornell University Communicated February 27, 1930... 

Henry Barton, who had worked in Kemble s molecular spectroscopy research group at Harvard, was an influential scientific administrator in the early 1930s. In 1931, he became director of the American Institute of Physics (AIP), the recently founded consortium of five American physics societies. William Buffum, an officer in the Chemical Foundation, was influential in providing considerable financial support for the chemical community and for the Journal of Physical Chemistry, edited by the maverick Cornell University chemist Wilder Bancroft. 103... 

By Wilder D. Bancroft and John W. Ackerman Baker Chemical Laboratory, Cornell University Conmmnicated July 9, 1931... 

J. W. Servos, A disciplinary program that failed Wilder D. Bancroft and the Journal of Physical Chemistry, 1896-1933 , Isis, 1982, 73, 207-232. 

REVERSIBLE COAGULATION IN LIVING TISSUE. IIP By Wilder D. Bancroft and G. H. Richter ... 

Wilder Dwight Bancroft (Middletown, Rhode Island, U.S.A., i October 1867-New York, 7 February 1953) was professor of physical chemistry in Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, and editor of the Journal of Physical Chemistry, He also published on the phase rule (see p. 638), colloid chemistry (see p. 739), and structure colours. He showed that two immiscible liquids become miscible if a third substance, soluble in each, is added investigated ternary mixtures, equilibrium in 2-component systems, analysis of solid phases, suggested that all miscible liquids whose vapour pressure curves cut one another form mixtures of maximum or minimum boiling-point, and stated the equations for electromotive forces in terms of chemical potentials. ... 

The growing importance of catalysis was reflected in the formation of the Committee on Contact Catalysis in the Division of Chemistry and Chemical Technology of the National Research Council in 1922 (21). The committee, chaired by Cornell physical chemist Wilder Bancroft, published periodic review articles although some of the early ones mainly summarized the theories of the author. In the Fifth Report (1927), Emmett Reid of Johns Hopkins criticized the previous reviewer, Taylor, for giving his own theories instead of surveying the literature (22). The author of the Eighth Report (1930), J. C. W. Frazer, pointed out that Taylor s theory had been anticipated by Fusineri in 1825 (23). 

In surveying Miller s career certain things stand out as highlights, and warrant mention as we summarize his achievements. He was in his time undoubtedly the Canadian chemist best known in the United States. He had encountered and acquired some mastery of the new sub-discipline of physical chemistry at a time when this was not yet well understood or developed in North America. He was fortunate in having found a close friend and personal ally in his fellow student at Leipzig, Wilder Bancroft, who provided Miller with scope for selfdevelopment as a key editor of the former s new Journal of Physical Chemistry. He was endowed with a brilliant mind and boundless energy and enthusiasm, and these qualities earned for him a high level of respect and many honors. 

Begun by Wilder D. Bancroft (Cornell) transferred to American Chemical Society control in 1933 published under the title Journal of Physical and Colloid Chemistry from 1947-50. 

Marston Taylor Bogert Willis Rodney Whitney Wilder Dwight Bancroft Alexander Smith Arthur Dehon Little... 

Table 14.5 lists some common colloids, and as so aptly put by Wilder Bancroft, an American pioneer in the field of colloid chemistry, "... colloid chemistry is essential to anyone who really wishes to understand. . . oils, greases, soaps,.. . glue, starch, adhesives,.. . paints, varnishes, lacquers,.. . cream, butter, cheese,.. . cooking, washing, dyeing,.. . colloid chemistry is the chemistry of life."... 

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