Arnold Beckman American industrialist, investor, inventor, chemist and philanthropist Date of Birth: 10.04.1900 Country: USA

Arnold Orville Beckman - American Industrialist, Inventor, Chemist, and Philanthropist

Arnold Orville Beckman was born on April 10, 1900, in Cullom, Illinois, to a family of blacksmiths. From an early age, he was curious about how things worked in the world. At the age of nine, Beckman found an old chemistry textbook and began conducting experiments. His father encouraged his son's passion for science and allowed him to convert the family's shed into a laboratory.

When Beckman turned eighteen, World War I was still ongoing, so in August 1918, he enlisted in the Marine Corps. He underwent basic training and was set to be deployed to Europe from New York City. However, in November, the war ended, and he did not have to fight in France. Instead, he celebrated Thanksgiving at the local YMCA, where he was served by Mabel Meinzer, a seventeen-year-old who would later become his wife.

Beckman studied at the University of Illinois and earned a bachelor's degree in chemical engineering in 1922. In 1923, he obtained a master's degree in physical chemistry. He then pursued his doctoral studies at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and spent a year there. Afterward, Beckman returned to New York to be with his fiancée and found a job in the engineering department of Western Electric. It was during this time that his interest in electronics began to grow. Arnold and Mabel got married on June 10, 1925.

The following year, the couple moved to California, where Beckman resumed his studies at Caltech and received his Ph.D. in 1928. The university offered him a position as a lecturer, which later turned into a professorship. Beckman and his growing family settled in Altadena, near Pasadena, where they lived for over 27 years. His expertise in electronics made him highly regarded in the chemistry department, as he excelled in creating measurement instruments and shared his experience in glassblowing workshops.

With the blessing of Robert Millikan, the president of Caltech, Beckman began providing consulting services outside the university. One of his clients was Sunkist, which was struggling with its lemon production process. Unmarketable lemons needed to be processed into pectin or citric acid, with sulfur dioxide used as a preservative. The company needed a way to determine the acidity of the product at any stage of the process since existing methods like litmus paper were unreliable. Beckman invented his pH meter in the mid-1930s, and the earliest models, known as acidimeters, weighed up to seven kilograms.

In 1942, Beckman created a secret spectrophotometer for the American rubber industry, and its research findings could only be published after the war. In 1955, he founded the Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory to finance the research of William Shockley in the field of semiconductors. Since Shockley's elderly mother lived in Palo Alto, Beckman established the laboratory in nearby Mountain View, which became the birthplace of Silicon Valley.

In his later years, Beckman resided in Corona del Mar. He actively engaged in philanthropy through the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation, which has donated over $400 million to various charitable institutions and organizations. Beckman primarily focused on supporting scientific purposes. For example, he and his family financed the establishment of a school named in his honor in Irvine, California. In 1976, he became a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and in 1987, he was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame. In 1999, he was awarded the Public Welfare Medal by the National Academy of Sciences. A museum dedicated to him can be found at the headquarters of Beckman Coulter in Brea, California.