Oberlin College

The process for obtaining aluminum from bauxite was worked out in 1886 by Charles Hall (1863-1914), just after he graduated from Oberlin College. The problem that Hall faced was to find a way to electrolyze Al203 at a temperature below its melting point of 2000°C. His general approach was to look for ionic compounds in which Al203 would dissolve at a reasonable temperature. After several unsuccessful attempts, Hall found that cryolite was the... 

Charles Hall was inspired by his chemistry professor at Oberlin College, who observed that whoever perfected an inexpensive way of producing aluminum would become rich and famous. After his graduation. Hall set to work in his home laboratory, trying to electrolyze various compounds of aluminum. He was aided by his sister Julia, who had studied chemistry and shared Charles interests. Julia helped to prepare chemicals and witnessed many of the electrolysis experiments. After only eight months of work. Hall had successfully produced globules of the metal. Meanwhile, Heroult was developing the identical process in France. 

Historical Vignette 11.3] W. Wallace Cleland (1930-present) received his A.B. from Oberlin College in 1950 and his M.S. and Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1953 and 1955, respectively. After a postdoctoral fellowship spent at the University of Chicago he returned to Madison to join the faculty where he remains and is still actively involved in research. Cleland has devoted a great deal of time to developing and using isotope effect techniques to study enzyme mechanisms, see for example J. Biol. Chem. 278, 51975 (2003). (Photo credit Biochemistry Department, University of Wisconsin, Madison)... 

Carson remained at her Job with the Bureau of Fisheries (later renamed the Fish and Wildlife Service), where she eventually became chief editor of the agency. Fler experience with Under the Sea Wind, however, had convinced her to try her luck with another book on the topic of marine science. That book. The Sea around Us, was published in 1951 and achieved much greater success. It was chosen as an alternative selection by the Book of the Month Club and remained on the New York Times best-seller list for 86 weeks. The book also won Carson a National Book Award and honorary doctoral degrees from Chatham College and Oberlin College. Perhaps most important, the financial success of The Sea around Us allowed Carson to retire from government service and write full-time. 

Frank Fanning Jewett, 1844-1926. Research assistant at Harvard University under Woleott Gibbs. Professor of chemistry at the Imperial University of Japan Professor of chemistry and mineralogy at Oberlin College. His account of Wohler s researches on aluminum inspired Charles M. Hall to search for a commercial process for preparing the metal. 

The next scene of the aluminum drama is laid in the United States. Henri Sainte-Claire Deville s process had made the metal a commercial product, but it was still expensive. Charles Martin Hall, a student at Oberlin College, inspired by the accounts which Professor F. F. Jewett had given of his studies under Wohler, decided that his supreme aim in life would be to devise a cheap method for making aluminum. In an improvised laboratory in the woodshed, and with homemade batteries, he struggled with this problem. On February 23,1886, this boy of twenty-one years rushed into his professors office and held out to him a handful of aluminum buttons. Since these buttons led to a highly successful electrolytic process for manufacturing aluminum, it is small wonder that the Aluminum Company of America now treasures them and refers to them affectionately as the crown jewels A beautiful statue of the youthful Charles M. Hall, cast in aluminum, may now he seen at Oberlin College (11, 55). 

Charles Francis Hall s research, started when he was a high school student and continued at Oberlin College, results in a cheap process to produce aluminum and the founding of ALCOA. 

Electiolytic production of aluminum by the Hali-Heroulf process consumes -5% of fhe electrical output of the United States Al34 in a molten solution of Al203 and cryolite (Na3AIF6) is reduced to Al at the cathode of a cell that typically draws 250 kA. This process was invented by Charles Hall in 1886 when he was 22 years old, just after graduating form Oberlin College.2... 

Feller, R. L. Curran, M. Bailie, C., "Identification of Traditional Organic Colorants employed in Japanese Prints and Determination of their Rates of Fading", in "Japanese Wood Prints A Catalogue of the Mary Ainsworth Collection". (Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin College, Oberlin, Ohio. Distributed by Indiana University Press, 1984. 

Born in Thompson, Oregon, on December 6, 1863, Charles Martin Hall was interested in minerals since the age of twelve. While enrolled at Oberlin College in Ohio, Hall took a class from distinguished professor Frank Fanning Jewett, who had a sample of the precious metal to show the class. After a stirring lecture on the topic, he finished with, Any person who discovers a process by which aluminum can be made on a commercial scale will bless humanity and make a fortune for himself. Inspired by such a win-win challenge, Hall reportedly said, I m going for that metal. ... 

Craig, Norman C. Charles Martin Hall and the Electrolytic Process for Refining Aluminum. Oberlin College Chemistry Department. Available from Chttp // www.oberlin. edu/ chem/history/cmh>. 

Who made up the Temperance Movement It was run by Jane Addams, who studied the Fabian Society s London settlement house Toynbee Hall experiment and came to the United States to launch a parallel project which later produced the University of Chicago. (4) The "cadre" were drawn almost exclusively from three pools 1) the settlement house and suffragette networks run by Addams and the Russell Sage Foundation 2) the proterrorist synthetic religious cults operated out of Oberlin College in Ohio and 3) the Ku Klux Klan in the South. 

Oberlin College was founded by British "Christian missionaries" in the decades leading up to the Civil War. Like the ancient anti-Christian Manichean cult, Oberlin was organized around the principle that the material world was wholly evil all students (i.e. initiates) were required to become vegetarians. From Oberlin s student body some of the most violent radical abolitionist terrorists were recruited, trained and deployed and safehoused during the Civil War. (5)... 

Dec. 6, 1863, Thompson, Ohio, USA - Dec. 27, 1914, Daytona Beach, Florida, USA) Hall constructed his own chemistry laboratory in his parents home after he graduated from Oberlin College, Ohio in 1885. In 1886, Hall -and independently Heroult in France - discovered an effective method for the production of aluminum based on the -> electrolysis of dissolved aluminum in molten cryolite. This method is called Hall-Heroult process (see also -> aluminum production). 

The electrolysis process for producing aluminum was developed by Charles Martin Hall while he was a student at Oberlin College. His work in aluminum chemistry eventually led to the formation of the Aluminum Company of America (ALCOA). The reduction process for aluminum can be represented as... 

In 1881, Charles Martin Hall was a 22-year-old student at Oberlin College, in Ohio. 

Ellen B. Stechel is on temporary assignment from her position as manager of the Chemistry and Environmental Sciences Department of the Ford Motor Company She received her A.B. in mathematics and chemistry from Oberlin College (1974) and her M.S. in physical chemistry (1976) and Ph.D. in chemical physics (1978) from the University of Chicago. She joined Sandia National Laboratories in 1991, where she became manager of the Advanced Materials and Device Sciences Department in 1994. Her scientific interests are in computational, surface, and materials sciences. Dr. Stechel serves as a senior editor for the Journal of Physical... 

Born in Morrison, Illinois, Robert Andrew Millikan was the second son of the Reverend Silas Franklin Millikan and Mary Jane Andrews. When Millikan was seven, his family moved to Maquoketa, Iowa, where he attended high school. In 1886 he entered Oberlin College in Ohio. In 1887 he enrolled in several classics classes there, and because he did quite well in Greek, at the end of his sophomore year, he was asked to teach an introductory-level physics class. Fie enjoyed teaching physics and accepted a two-year teaching post at Oberlin upon graduation in 1891. It was during this period that he developed an even keener interest in physics. 

Hall was a student at Oberlin College in Ohio when he first became... 

Department of Chemistry, North Dakota State University, Fargo, ND 58105. t Department of Chemistry, Oberlin College, Oberlin, OH 44074. 

Richard D. Morgenstern is a Senior Fellow at Resources for the Future. Before joining RFF he was Senior Economic Counselor to the Under Secretary for Global Affairs at the U. S. Department of State. Previously, he served at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency where he acted as Deputy Administrator and as Assistant Administrator of Policy, Planning and Evaluation. He earned his Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Michigan and his B.A. from Oberlin College. 

Charles Martin Hall (1863-1914) was a student at Oberlin College In Ohio when he first became Interested In aluminum. One of his professors commented that anyone who could manufacture aluminum cheaply would make a fortune, so Hall decided to give It a try. The 21-year-old Hall worked In a wooden shed near his house with an Iron frying pan as a container, a blacksmith s forge as a heat source, and galvanic cells constructed from fruit jars. Using these crude galvanic cells. 

During the years of 1936 to 1945, Furman University, Oberlin College, Reed College, and Miami University together graduated more students who later completed doctoral work in physics than did Ohio State University,... 

Over the same period, Hope College, Juniata College, Monmouth College, St. Olaf College, and Oberlin College combined produced more candidates for doctor s degree in chemistry than did Johns Hopkins University, Fordham University, Columbia University, Tulane University, and Syracuse University, all together. ... 

---