Sir Hugh S. Taylor

In 1947 Sir Hugh S. Taylor summarized the state of catalysis in a Science in Progress article as follows ... 

We are saddened to have lost one of the first and foremost pioneers of catalysis, and a member of our Advisory Board, Sir Hugh S. Taylor. The present volume includes an obituary of Sir Hugh written by one who knew him well, John Turkevich. We are further saddened by the untimely passing on July 27, 1973, of a young pioneer, Richard J. Kokes. 

On December 31, 1948, Kellogg and Cities Service stopped pilot plant and engineering activities relating to their joint Synthol development. After about 1950, however, the two companies undertook catalyst development work with the assistance of Sir Hugh S. Taylor, John Turkevich, and Marcel Boudart of Princeton University. 

In this introduction we would like to summarize the life of Hugh Taylor from his birth in 1890 in England until his death in Princeton in 1974. A lot of the later anecdotes and details on his accomplishments are drawn from our own contacts with him in the late 1940 s until his death. The definitive assessment of Hugh Taylor s scientific career can be found in an excellent memoir by Professor C. Kemball, F.R.S., ( ), who also collected biographical information which we have borrowed in this paper. We are also indebted to Miss Lucy D Arcy, Sir Hugh s devoted and efficient secretary of many years ( ). ... 

One of England s greatest gifts to the United States was Sir Hugh Stott Taylor (1890-1974, FRS). He joined Princeton University upon receiving his Ph.D. in 1914 and became Chair of the Chemistry Department from 1926-1951. He had studied with both Bodenstein and Arrhenius. He carried out many investigations of the kinetics of polymerization. 

D. J. Salley, Frank S. Stone, Charles Kemball, Giuseppe Parravano, Sir Hugh Taylor, John Turkevich, Sir Eric Rideal, Michel Boudart, Kiyoshi Morikawa, John E. Benson, (unknown), Kenzi Tamaru. 

There are other salient facts that do not appear in these lists. Thus, we have not included Hugh Taylor s knighthoods by Queen Elizabeth II and Pope Pius XII and his presidency of the Faraday Society. Nor have we mentioned his great contribution to the Manhattan Project. But it is not our intention within the scope of this paper to list every scientific accomplishment or even every facet of Hugh Taylor s complex personality. After a brief review of his early research, we will try to relay to the reader more personal reminiscences of Sir Hugh. 

Selwood s next publication on NMR appears in the proceedings of a Faraday Society Disucssion held in Liverpool in April of 1950 (8 ). Incidentally, this volume contains an extended introduction by Sir Hugh Taylor in which he draws attention to two earlier Faraday Society General Discussions, one in 1922 in which the Lindemann and Langmuir theories were introduced, and one in 1932 in which the distinction between chemical adsorption and physical adsorption was clearly drawn. In his paper, Selwood presented data for the accessibility to water of the paramagnetic materials iron oxide, copper oxide, and chromia, each supported... 

The approach taken in this book is largely a continuation of the Boudart school of kinetics . The academic geneology of this school is quite interesting and worthy of mention. Michel Boudart s advising professor at Princeton University was Sir Hugh Taylor. Taylor, in turn, worked with Basset in Liverpool, Arrhenius in Stockholm, and Bodenstein in Hannover to obtain his Ph.D. Arrhenius worked with Ostwald, Kohlrausch, Boltzmann and van t Hoff after receiving his doctorate, while Bodenstein also conducted postdoctoral research with Ostwald [2]. Clearly, a solid foundation in thermodynamics, kinetics and catalysis was established by this research lineage. 

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