Crusading for chemistry

Charles Holmes Herty (1867-1938) was born in Milledgeville, Georgia. After receiving his Ph.D. in chemistry from the Johns Hopkins University, Herty taught at the University of Georgia and at the University of North Carolina. He also spent two years in the United States Department of Agriculture's Bureau of Forestry, developing an improved system of turpentining that revolutionized the American naval stores industry and won him an international reputation. As president of the American Chemical Society, editor of its industrial journal, adviser to the Chemical Foundation, and as a private consultant, Herty continued to promote southern industrial development through chemistry. On a national level, he urged military preparedness on the Wilson administration, lobbied Congress for protection of war-born chemical industries, and promoted continued cooperation and research by business, government, and universities. Finally, in 1932, he established a pulp and paper laboratory at Savannah, Georgia, to prove that cheap, fast-growing southern pine could replace Canadian spruce in the manufacture of newsprint and white paper. As a direct result of Herty's research and his missionary-like zeal, construction of South's first newsprint plant was begun near Lufkin, Texas, in 1938. . This exhaustively researched biography enhances our understanding of how American science-based industries developed in the early twentieth century.