History of Research at Penn State

1855-1921

In 1857, Evan Pugh proved that plants take nitrogen from the soil, not from the air, as other chemists had asserted. His work led to the modern nitrogen fertilizer industry.

The first master's degree, the Master of Scientific Agriculture, was offered in 1861 for students who conducted a year of "special investigations" after their bachelor's degrees. In 1863, two M.S.A. degrees were awarded, one to C. Alfred Smith, who became a professor of chemistry at Penn State; the other to Augustus King, son of Columbia University's president.

In 1881, Whitman Jordan (who was also responsible for the "Pennsylvania Rotation" of crops: corn, oats, wheat, and hay) laid out 144 1/8-acre plots that over the next 77 years showed the need for a combination of lime with commercial fertilizer (or manure) to grow crops profitably. On Pennsylvania's acid soils, lime could increase fertilizer efficiency 300 percent.

Pennsylvania's model food laws are said to have come "largely from the pen" of chemist William Frear. In 1898, Frear helped organize the first National Pure Food Congress; the federal government's Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 was based on guidelines devised by a committee he headed. The first case brought by the Pure Food Commission was heard in Altoona in 1907. Frear testified that a can of peaches contained sulfurous acid, "a poison injurious to health." Frear, who was also behind the liming studies at the Jordan Fertility Plots, was the chemist that Pennsylvania's Dairy and Food Commissioner turned to when he suspected illegal additives in food.

In the 1890s, Fred Lewis Pattee, for whom the University's central library was named, brought American literature to schools and colleges as more than a "feeble imitation of European writing." "Can we never achieve our literary independence?" he wrote in 1896. "Men like Cooper and Whitman and Mark Twain would have been impossible on any other soil." In 1894, Pattee became first in the nation to hold the title of Professor of American Literature.

In 1904, William Buckhout, a 1868 graduate and a professor of agriculture who taught botany, geology, horticulture, zoology and forestry, was awarded an honorary doctorate, the University's first.

Research into animal nutrition began at Penn State at the turn of the century, when Henry Armsby built the Armsby Calorimeter. An elaborately sealed stall, the calorimeter allowed Armsby to measure exactly how much energy an animal derived from a given ration by measuring all the food, water, and air going into the calorimeter and all wastes leaving it. Built with help from the physics department, the Armsby Calorimeter was the first in the world large enough to accommodate a cow. Armsby and those who continued his work determined the most efficient rations for beef cattle and sheep. In the 1950s, the calorimeter was used to study the role of protein in the human diet.

Coal research began at Penn State with Edward Steidle, a mine safety engineer. He and George Deike, a Penn State alumnus, founded the Mine Safety Appliances company in 1914.

1855-1921 • 1922-1944 • 1945-1959 • 1960-1984 • 1985-1998 • 1999-present