Norton, Lewis Mill

Massachusetts Institute of Technology Presidents Reports, 1888-1908, and Catalogs 1887-1888 et seq. T. M. Drown, Lewis Mills Norton, / Amer. Chem. Soc. 15,241-244 (1893) (an obituary note) Tenney L. Davis, The Department of Chemistry, in A Histoiy of the Departments of Chemistiy and Physics at the M.I.T., Technology Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1933 Warren K. Lewis, Evolution of the Unit Operations, Chem. Eng. Symp. Series 55(26), 1-8 (1959). 

Also in 1888, the first course called chemical engineering in the United States was initiated. Lewis Mills Norton, professor of organic and industrial chemistry in the Chemistry Department at MIT, developed, organised and ran the course until his untimely death at the age of 38 in 1893. The course was the tenth to be offered at MIT and so was labelled Course X. Norton had studied chemistry at MIT and completed a... 

The first course in chemical engineering was offered at M.I.T. when a Professor of Industrial Chemistry, Lewis Mill Norton, founded the now famous Course X—Chemical Engineering. This was in 1888, one year after Davis Manchester lecture. Although it has preeminence, M.I.T. did not claim invention. The President of the Institution in his December, 1888 report revealed that already 11 members of the second-year class have already entered upon the course (6) (M.I.T. had a common first year for engineering students) and then he undertook to explain what it all was about. 

One hundred years ago, in September 1888, Professor Lewis Mills Norton (1855-1893) of the Chemistry Department of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology introduced to the curriculum a course on industrial chemical practice. This was the first structured course in chemical engineering taught in a University. Ten years later, Norton s successor Frank H. Thorpe published the first textbook in chemical engineering, entitled Outlines of Industrial Chemistry. Over the years, chemical engineering developed from a simple industrial chemical analysis of processes into a mature field. 

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