Robert Empie Rogers

Robert Empie Rogers

Robert Empie Rogers (29 March 1813 – 6 September 1884) was a United States chemist.

Rogers was born in Baltimore, Maryland. The youngest of four brothers, he was educated first under the care of his father, and then by his elder brothers. It was intended that he should be a civil engineer, and for a time he acted as assistant in the survey of the Boston and Providence Railroad, but he abandoned this in 1833.

He graduated at the medical department of the University of Pennsylvania in 1836, where he followed a full course of chemistry under Robert Hare. The active practice of medicine not being congenial to him, in 1836 he was appointed chemist to the geological survey of Pennsylvania being administered by his brother Henry. He continued in this position for six years. In 1841-42 he was temporary instructor in chemistry at the University of Virginia and was elected, in March 1842, to the professorship of general and applied chemistry and materia medica there. There he remained until 1852, when he was called to succeed his brother James as professor of chemistry at the University of Pennsylvania, where he became dean of the medical faculty in 1856. In 1877 he resigned these appointments to accept the professorship of chemistry and toxicology in Jefferson Medical College, which he then retained till 1884, when he was made professor emeritus.

During the American Civil War, he served as acting assistant surgeon at the West Philadelphia military hospital 1862-63. There he suffered a serious accident which necessitated the amputation of his right hand. In 1864, caught up by the “oil fever” sweeping the United States, he made a significant investment in the Humboldt Oil Company, of which he was one of the founders. By 1873, the investment turned out to be a total loss, his more than anyone's since he was the largest shareholder.

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