The history of our chemistry department starts in 1868 with the opening of Cornell University. Of the first four faculty hired, two were chemists, G. C. Caldwell (agricultural chemistry) and J. M. Crafts (organic chemistry). Over the intervening years there have been a number of partial department histories ranging in size from the thorough Chamot and Rhodes account (1865-1939) to the more recent, less-encompassing "snippets" by Laubengayer ("Lauby's Recollections").

At this point it would take a dedicated historian to digest the accumulated material, fill in the missing gaps, and produce an integrated story. We have embarked on a less demanding effort of converting the available material to an electronic format and making it freely available on-line and word searchable. Although this approach will not produce a polished history, it makes addition of new material easy and avoids the numbing challenge of starting from scratch each time a body of new material becomes available. Our goal is to make available the existing historical texts and the accumulated collection of department news letters and photographs. These will be supplemented by video recorded conversations with retired faculty.

Anyone interested in contributing to the departmental history is invited to contact the Chair of the Department

Timeline

Tenured Faculty

The Homes of Chemistry

George Fisher Baker Lecture Series

Laubengayer's Recollections

Department Photohedron's (yearbooks)