Charles Loring Jackson

Charles Loring Jackson (April 4, 1847 – October 31, 1935) was the first significant organic chemist in the United States. He brought organic chemistry to the United States from Germany and educated a generation of American organic chemists.

Charles Loring Jackson was born in Boston on April 4, 1845. He graduated from Harvard College in 1867 after studying in private schools in Boston. He joined the Harvard chemistry department as an assistant lecturer immediately after graduation and on his twenty-first birthday became an assistant professor. He was the third member of the department which consisted of Josiah Parsons Cooke and Henry Barker Hill.

In 1870 Jackson developed a chemistry course which evolved into Chemistry I, that he taught for more than forty years.

As an adult Jackson enjoyed amateur theatricals and writing poetry and romantic fiction. In retirement he enjoyed gardening at his beautiful estate in Pride's Crossing near Beverly, Massachusetts.

Jackson was frustrated studying chemistry at Harvard because in the early 1870s there were no chemists in Cambridge, Massachusetts to train him. He therefore traveled to Heidelberg, Germany to study at Ruprecht Karl University of Heidelberg. There he trained under Robert Bunsen, a specialist in gas analysis and platinum metals. Although he did not intend to make organic chemistry his specialty, he also worked with the organic chemist August Wilhelm von Hofmann. However, Hofmann inspired Jackson to pursue organic chemistry as a career. Jackson was known to have said that he learned to "use his mind" under Hofmann, "an activity that Bunsen rather discouraged."

During Jackson's time in Heidelberg Hofmann was writing his Faraday Lectures on Justus von Liebig and had Jackson correct his English. This was a great opportunity for Jackson to develop an intimate association with Hofmann. In 1874 Jackson published his first paper which dealt with organic selenium compounds.

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