Lauby’s Cornell Chemical Recollections

August 1971

“WILDER DWIGHT BANCROFT, ‘BANTY’”

Wilder D. Bancroft was one of the promising young chemists recruited by Professor Caldwell at the turn of the century who were to set the pattern dominating Cornell chemistry for the next 35 years. Referred to as “Banty” by his students, his name was the one most frequently identified with Cornell when the Chemistry Department was mentioned in scientific circles during the era.

Bancroft came from a prominent and wealthy old New England family, as his manner of speaking clearly indicated. He was a direct descent of George Bancroft, historian and founder of the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis. Banty attended Harvard where he played end on the football team and received the A.B. degree in 1888. Following the then customary pathway to an academic career, he went on to study abroad at the Universities of Strasburg, Berlin, Amsterdam and Leipzig, obtaining his PhD from Leipzig in 1892. In his European studies, renowned chemists such as Ostwald inoculated Bancroft with the stimulating ideas on the application of physico-chemical concepts to chemical problems.

An enthusiastic proponent of the budding field of physical chemistry, Banty was called to Cornell in 1895 as assistant professor of physical chemistry, after two years at Harvard as instructor. This was one of the first uses of this title in this country. Professor J.E. Trevor and others had lectured at Cornell on Chemical Philosophy and Chemical Theory but it was not until 1896 that Physical Chemistry was created as a division of our Department.

The new branch of chemistry developed rapidly, catalyzed by the vigorous activity of Bancroft. In 1896, to provide for publication in the new area, Bancroft and Trevor founded the Journal of Physical Chemistry. (Trevor, who was a mathematician interested in chemistry, transferred to the Physics Department in 1906.) Bancroft edited and personally financed the new journal until it was absorbed by the American Chemical Society in 1932.

Banty was an omnivorous reader and was endowed with a “photographic memory”. He could absorb the contents of a printed page at a glace and thereafter remembered it. As an undergraduate doing senior research under his direction, I was constantly astounded when he would refer to some paper he had read years ago, not only remembering author and journal but also the place on a right or left hand page where the pertinent item had appeared.

Banty’s interests in chemistry were remarkably broad and he made important contributions to many areas. Stimulated by Ostwald’s appreciation of the value of the papers by Willard Gibbs on the phase rule, which had been neglected because of the obscure presentation, Bancroft produced a clear and convincing exposition in his book “The Phase Rule” (1897). [This] publicized the fundamental importance of the contribution of Gibbs and led to its wide application. Electrochemistry, photochemistry, and colloid chemistry also received Banty’s attention, and his book “Applied Colloid Chemistry” (1921) established him as a pioneer in that field. His appreciation of the basic nature of absorption phenomena was drawn upon when, as Lt. Colonel in the Chemical Warfare Service during the first world war, he directed research on the development of gas masks.

The success of Bancroft’s pioneer efforts to establish physical chemistry was attested by W.A. Noyes who in the 25^th Anniversary number of the Journal of the American Chemical Society, (1902) 199, said “Until 1901 only two American universities, Cornell and Wisconsin had deemed the subject important enough to establish professorships for the exclusive pursuit of physical chemistry”.

Bancroft’s approach to physical chemistry was, as is commonly true for early work in a new scientific field, qualitative rather than rigorously quantitative. While not avers to resorting to mathematical arguments, he preferred a clear, common sense approach readily grasped by students. He frequently delighted in exposing flaws in involved mathematical treatments. This naturally made him a controversial figure and had the unfortunate effect of de-emphasizing the importance of applying mathematics rigorously to chemical problems. It was not until Kirkwood joined the Cornell faculty in the thirties that rigorous courses in thermodynamics and quantum mechanics were formally added to the Cornell curriculum.

Such a colorful person inevitably generated a store of anecdotes and student lore. Vivid pictures of him come to mind and bring him to life again.

One bright autumn day I came across Banty wandering around the campus with a box of paper clips which he was placing on folded maple leaves still attached to trees. The idea was to have part of the leaf exposed to sunlight, the other half being screened, and then seeing what happened when the autumn foliage normally changed color. A month later I asked him how the experiment had turned out. He ruefully confessed that he had not recorded the locations of his experimental leaves and so had not been able to find them again.

Banty had little use for ostentation and insisted on being called Mister rather than Professor. He likewise addressed his colleagues, especially in faculty meetings, in this fashion greatly irritating the more formal and pompous ones. However, the idea caught on in the Arts College and persists to this day in the college bulletins where the names of professors giving courses are listed as misters. The one exception to his general distaste for display occurred when he marched in the graduation academic parade, resplendent in the brilliant scarlet robe and beef-eaters hat of Cambridge University, from which he held an honorary degree. You could follow his progress by the ripple of excitement traveling through the spectators.