DONOR PROFILE: Milton Orchin

Colors by Charley Harper

Milton Orchin, UC distinguished professor emeritus of chemistry, had a long and successful career, including positions at the United States Food and Drug Administration, the United States Bureau of Mines, and in academia at UC and as a visiting professor at the Israel Institute of Technology; The Ohio State University; the University of California, Berkeley; and at Ben Gurion University of the Negrev. He came to UC in 1953 as an associate professor of applied science. During his tenure, he published numerous articles, books, and reviews, as well as received credit for a number of patents. Among his numerous accolades, in 1975 he received the Rieveschl Award for Distinguished Research in Science. He retired from UC in 1981, but stayed active in the field as a consultant. Before his career began, however, it could have ended very badly as he recalls in the article below.

In His Own Words: “How I Came to Love the Library” by Milton Orchin

It was the summer of 1938 and I was into my second year of doctoral studies in the Department of Chemistry at The Ohio State University. The laboratory where I was working was on the third floor of the Chemistry Building and opposite my lab was the laboratory of Professor Albert Henne. Professor Henne, who had recently been recruited to the faculty, was an authority on the chemistry of small organic molecules containing fluorine atoms, the so-called fluorocarbons. The General Motors Co. at their Dayton, Ohio facility, led by its brilliant research director Charles F. (affectionately known as Boss) Kettering, was searching for new refrigerants to satisfy the growing demand for air conditioning in the automobiles being turned out by the burgeoning automobile industry. To his surprise, Kettering learned that there were few experts in this field in the United States and he convinced (and I suspect financed) the Department of Chemistry to add a faculty member to fill this need. The worldwide search led to Belgium and the young emerging authority in the field of fluorocarbons, Albert Henne. Henne had set up his lab at Ohio State and was in need of an additional assistant. He approached my mentor, Professor Melvin S. Newman, and asked permission to recruit me for the summer. We all agreed that it would be a good experience for me academically and I was eager to add to my very limited income. So I moved across the hall and began working in a new field in a new chemical environment.

The chemistry that I then undertook was very different from what I was used to. The fluorine chemistry was based on working around the properties of hydrofluoric acid, a very dangerous chemical to handle, and in particular required avoiding contact with glass vessels, which it readily attacks and dissolves. So most of my reactions were carried out in sealed copper vessels in a hood in one of the corners of the lab.

The third floor of the Chemistry Building also housed the Chemistry Library at one end of the hall. The library was unique because of its relationship with the Chemical Abstract Service (CAS) of the American Chemical Society, which was housed on the fourth floor of the Chemistry Building just above the library. The staff of the CAS read and abstracted every article in every chemical journal everywhere in the world and made these journals available to users of the library. I got in the habit of using any spare time deliciously browsing in this wonderful library.

On this particular day, I set up my reaction vessel, sealed it, and placed it in a heating bath. After making sure everything was at a stable equilibrium state, I decided I would wait out the reaction by retreating to the library down the hall. I was enjoying my usual browsing when suddenly there was a loud explosion. I rushed to the door in time to see a vast white cloud of smoke moving down the hall and my mouth fell as I realized it was coming from my lab. As I worked my way through the haze and entered my lab, I saw that the hood had disappeared, completely demolished. Had I been in the lab attending the reaction, I would not be now recounting why I have forever after loved the library.

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