 |
Born in Buffalo NY in 1855, he
studied chemistry at Heidelberg under Robert Bunsen
(1811-1899) and at Berlin under August Wilhelm Hofmann
(1818-1892). He then studied under Adolphe Wurtz (1817-1884)
in Paris and Dimitri Ivanovič Mendeleev (1834-1907) in St
Petersburg, but never bothered to take a degree. He was made
Professor of Chemistry at Tufts College near Boston. In
1889, he married one of his most brilliant students,
Helen Cecilia DeSilver Abbott (1857-1904), one of the
few women organic chemists in this period. After a failed
attempt to run the chemistry department at Clark University
in Worcester, Massachusetts, in 1891, he spent three years
working with his wife in his private laboratory on the Isle
of Wight before returning to Tufts. After he retired from
Tufts in 1907, Michael set up another private laboratory at
Newton Center near Boston. In 1912 he was appointed a
Professor of Chemistry, without lecturing duties, at Harvard
University. Arthur Michael died in 1942. Additional
information can be found in the
Biographical Memoir by Louis F. Fieser |
