Charles Holmes Herty  

Charles Holmes Herty was a celebrated, patriotic chemist whose motto was "For Science and Country". He was born in Milledgeville, Georgia on December 4, 1867. Although orphaned at the age of eleven, Herty went to college at the University of Georgia, where he earned a B.A. degree and was the "First Honor Man" of the class of 1886. Herty attended Johns Hopkins University and received his Ph.D. in 1890. 

Herty returned to the University of Georgia in 1891 as an instructor in chemistry and as the South's first football coach. He married Sophie Schaller in 1895, and they had three children. In 1899  Herty left Georgia to study in Europe; he worked under Witt and Kerner in Berlin, and under Werner in Zurich. Upon returning to the United States, Herty joined the U.S. Forestry Service. His work was directed toward saving the pine forests in the Southeast. The naval stores industry had been systematically killing the forests in their efforts to collect tree resin using a trough, which was hacked into the tree wood. Herty developed a method to collect the resin in a metal cup, sparing the tree's life; the method was used by the Forestry Service for seventy-five years. Herty's patent of the method enabled him to he financially secure for the rest of his life. 

In 1905, Herty joined the faculty of the University of North carolina at Chapel Hill as Chairman of the Chemistry Department and Smith Professor. His research interests centered on natural products, which had commercial promise, such as turpentine, soaps, leathers, and cottonseed oil. In 1915-1916, Herty became the first President of the American Chemical Society. In 1917, he resigned from the University of North Carolina to become the first full-time editor for the Journal of Industrial and Engineering Chemistry. Herty used his position as editor to write political editorials furthering the advancement of chemistry in the United States. From 1921 to 1927, Herty served as President of the Synthetic Chemical Manufacturers Association, an organization that he helped to establish. He also collaborated with Francis P. Garvan on the alignment of chemistry and medicine, which resulted in the start of the National Institutes of Health. 

Herty became a private consultant to the chemical industry in 1928. His research focused on the conversion of pine pulp to newsprint. He formed the Savannah Paper and Pulp Laboratory in Savannah, Georgia. By 1933, the plant had developed a feasible process for pulp conversion. On March 31, 1933, the first newspaper was printed using paper created with the Herty process. 

Charles Holmes Herty made numerous contributions to chemistry in the development of new  products and the advancement of new ideas. The Georgia Section of the American Chemical Society pays tribute to this ingenious man each year by awarding a chemist from the Southeastern United States with the prestigious Herty Medal. 

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Last Updated December 19, 1998.