Call Number:

034.002

Repository:

Science History Institute Archives

Extent:

33 photographic prints (1 box )

Language:

English

Preferred Citation:

Photographs from the Papers of Eugene G. Rochow, Science History Institute Archives, Philadelphia, PA.

Date:

1913-1990s (inclusive)

Creator:

Rochow, Eugene G. (Eugene George), 1909-2002

Form:

Photograph collections and Photographs

Abstract:

Black and white and color photographs of chemist Eugene G. Rochow and assorted colleagues spanning 1913 to the 1990s.

Eugene G. Rochow was born in Newark, New Jersey, on October 4, 1909. He received his Ph.D. in chemistry from Cornell University in 1935 and began working as a research chemist for General Electric. While at GE, Rochow discovered methyl silicone and developed a process now bearing his name to directly synthesize silicones for large-scale commercial and industrial use. In 1948, Rochow left GE for an associate professorship at Harvard University, achieving emeritus status in 1970. Rochow won numerous awards, including the Perkin Medal (1962) and the Alfred Stock Medal (1983), and holds honorary doctorates from the Carolo-Wilhelmina Universitat Braunschweig (1966) and the Technische Universitat Dresden (1992). He died on March 21, 2002 in Fort Myers, Florida.

This collection contains black and white and color print photographs and some negatives of chemist Eugene Rochow, his wife Helen, and assorted colleagues spanning 1913 to the 1990s. The earliest photographs depict Rochow at age 4 in 1913 and with his kindergarten class in 1915. Other photographs include formal portraits of Rochow, including two from when he was a Perkin Medalist in 1962, as well as snapshots of Rochow, his wife, and other family members. The collection also includes several portraits of Rochow's peers in the field of silicone chemistry, including British chemist Sir Frederic Stanley Kipping, German chemist Alfred Stock, and American chemist and inventor James Franklin Hyde, known as the "Father of Silicones." Several photographs of Rochow and colleagues at various ISOC Symposium, as well as photographs used as illustrations in Rochow's Silicon and silicones: About stone-age tools, antique pottery, modern ceramics, computers, space materials, and how they all got that way (1987) round out the collection.