Ira Remsen, American Chemist

Ira Remsen (February 10, 1846 - March 4, 1927) was an American chemist. In 1875, after researching pure chemistry at University of T?bingen, Remsen returned to the United States and became a professor at Williams College, where he wrote the popular Theoretical Chemistry'. He was one of the original faculty of Johns Hopkins University and founded the department of chemistry there, where he ran his own laboratory. In 1879 he founded the American Chemical Journal which he edited for 35 years. In 1879 he made the greatest discovery of his career by accident. After working at his lab researching coal tar derivatives, he ate rolls at dinner and noticed they tasted initially sweet but then bitter. He tasted his fingers and figured the bitter taste was probably from one of the chemicals in his lab. The next day he tasted the chemicals he had been working with and discovered that the sweetness came from the oxidation of o-toluenesulfonamide. He named the substance saccharin and he and his research partner Constantin Fahlberg published their finding in 1880. He died in 1927 at the age of 81

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