Frederick Gardner Cottrell

• Born: January 10, 1877
• Birthplace: Oakland, California
• Died: November 16, 1948
• Place of death: Berkeley, California

American chemist

Although electrochemists remember Cottrell best for the Cottrell equation, which is important in chronoamperometry (a measuring technique for electrochemical analysis), he is most famous for inventing the electrostatic precipitator for removing suspended particles from gases, thus abating smoke pollution from power plants and dust from cement kilns.

Primary field: Chemistry

Primary invention: Electrostatic precipitator

Early Life

Frederick Gardner Cottrell was the son of Henry and Cynthia L. Durfee Cottrell, a Mayflower descendant. As a young boy, he was fascinated with photography, as was his father. With money earned from chores, he bought a small printing press and printed business cards for various services, including installing electric doorbells. He started a magazine about scientific progress, Boy’s Workshop; one article on the deposition of dust by electrical aid was written when he was thirteen. He received his early education at the Horton School in Oakland, California, and after two years at Oakland High School, he passed the entrance examination into the University of California, Berkeley, from which he graduated in three years.

Before becoming a teacher at Oakland High School, Cottrell was an assistant to the professor of chemistry at the university. Living frugally and saving money from his teaching job and a weekend job as laboratory assistant at the university provided him the means to do postgraduate work in Germany at the University of Berlin and the University of Leipzig, where he earned his Ph.D. (summa cum laude). Upon his return to California, he joined the faculty at the University of California, Berkeley. In 1904, he married Jessie M. Fulton, whom he had met in a botany class in high school. During this time, Cottrell’s father died, and his two children died in infancy.

Life’s Work

After Cottrell’s father died, he was left with several relatives to support, so without a definite plan, he turned to research in the hope of inventing something quickly in order to make money. One idea came to him on recalling problems reported by former classmates who had become miners. Miners, as well as manufacturers of cement, explosives, and chemicals, realized that dust, smoke, and vapor from kilns, furnaces, and smelting were damaging the environment up and down the West Coast. The filters available were ineffective, so Cottrell determined to find some new method to solve the problem. He remembered reading about an experiment by the English physicist Sir Oliver Lodge in which electrical precipitation had been used, although unsuccessfully. Nevertheless, applying the principle, Cottrell spent $20,000 and five years developing a precipitator that would remove more than 98 percent of the dust.

A large lead-smelting company whose existence was threatened with an injunction consulted Cottrell; within a few months, electrostatic precipitators were installed, and the company’s problem was solved. The word spread, and other smelting plants consulted him, as did the Southern Pacific Railroad, which sought a way to remove emulsifying water from petroleum in the pipelines it operated. Cottrell was able to reclaim potash from cement particles in a cement plant. In 1907, he applied for a patent for his electrostatic precipitator, which came to be known simply as a “cottrell.” Over time, the devices made it possible to burn coal without creating illegal levels of smoke emission, to reclaim large amounts of gold and silver for government mints, to apply sand to an adhesive surface to make sandpaper, to attract flock to a rubber base to make carpet, and to remove arsenic from sulfuric acid for a DuPont installation in California.

In 1911, Cottrell became chief physical chemist for the U.S. Bureau of Mines, and he advanced to the position of director in 1919. During his brief time in that position, he worked in World War I programs to develop processes by which nitrogen could be fixed for explosives and to distill helium from air for use in lighter-than-air craft. The following year, however, he became chairman of the Division of Chemistry and Chemical Technology of the National Research Council, while continuing as a consultant for the Bureau of Mines. Between 1922 and 1930, Cottrell served as director of the Fixed Nitrogen Research Laboratory of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Although financing the experiments that would result in the electrostatic precipitator had been a challenge, the profits from its manufacture could have made Cottrell a wealthy man. However, he felt that he should use some of the profit to support scientific research, so in 1912 he founded the Research Corporation with the help of Charles Walcott, then secretary of the Smithsonian Institution. The foundation was set up to receive income from his patents and those of other inventors; the funds were then distributed to university researchers in the physical sciences as seed money. Some successful recipients who were funded include Ernest Orlando Lawrence, who developed the cyclotron and was later awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics; Robert H. Goddard, a pioneer rocket scientist whose work laid the experimental foundation for rockets used in World War II and for modern spacecraft; Robert R. Williams, who, after turning his patents for the volume production of vitamin B₁ over to the foundation, saw the price of the vitamin reduced from ten dollars per gram to a few cents; and James Van Allen, who used a small grant to study radiation surrounding the earth, with the result that the Van Allen radiation belt he discovered became known worldwide.

While Cottrell downplayed the praise given him for choosing to help other scientists over gaining a personal fortune, numerous awards were conferred on him in recognition of his achievements. In 1919, he was awarded the Perkin Medal by the Society of Chemical Industry. The next year, the Chicago section of the American Chemical Society selected him to receive the Willard Gibbs Medal, given to eminent chemists whose work has enabled everyone to live more comfortably and to understand the world better. In 1927, the University of California conferred upon him an honorary LL.D. Two honors came his way in 1937: He was given the Gold Medal of the Mining and Metallurgical Society of America and the Washington Award, given by the Western Society of Engineers. The following year, he was the recipient of the Melville Prize Medal. In 1943, the American Society of Mechanical Engineers honored him with the Holly Medal. He also garnered the Medal of the American Institute of Chemists.

Cottrell was a member of numerous professional organizations and honor societies, including the National Academy of Sciences, the American Institute of Mining Engineers, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the American Electrochemical Society. He was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa, Sigma Xi, and Alpha Xi Sigma.

Impact

Cottrell was driven throughout his distinguished career by an energetic pioneering drive in physical chemistry and industrial engineering as well as by a strong and persistent sense of the social significance of scientific and engineering advances. He had a strong belief in the social responsibility of a scientist or engineer, and he held a strong and steadfast conviction about the intrinsic value and the human utility of research.

When Cottrell undertook to find a way to remove suspended particles from gases and thereby perform pollution abatement, a project at which an earlier scientist had been unsuccessful, he came up with a device that would later be found in industrial plants throughout the world. Considered to be an indispensable item because it can cleanse a factory’s exhaust of dust and chemicals that otherwise would poison streams and crops and pollute the air, the electrostatic precipitator came to be known simply as a cottrell. If his electrostatic precipitator were his only major contribution to science and engineering, that would still have made him worthy of recognition, but many remember him best for his creation of the Research Corporation in 1912. He set up this foundation to receive his own patents as well as those of other public-spirited inventors. With the funds generated, he distributed seed money to university researchers in the physical sciences. The organization prefers to help young scientists who need funding for their first major projects. Cottrell himself said, “Bet on the youngsters. They are long shots, but many will pay off.”

Bibliography

Cameron, Frank T. Cottrell: Samaritan of Science. 1952. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1993. Reprinted biography highlights Cottrell’s life and his philosophy about the social responsibility of the scientist as manifested in dedicating one’s career to the enlistment of science in the service of society.

Cornell, Thomas D. Establishing Research Foundation: A Case Study of Patents, Philanthropy, and Organized Research in Early Twentieth-Century America. Tucson, Ariz.: Research Corporation, 2004. Outlines the background and development of Cottrell’s Research Corporation; notes its distinctive historical role in addressing the new social problem brought on by the rapid industrial growth in the United States—pollution. Emphasizes Cottrell’s main objective of rendering public service, not making a profit.

Dodgson, Mark, David M. Gann, and Ammon Salter. The Management of Technological Innovation: Strategy and Practice. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008. Explains why technological innovation is important, provides a business context for the management of technological innovation, identifies types of technological innovation and discusses its changing nature, and treats innovation strategy. Acknowledges Cottrell and his work with his Research Corporation.

Manchester, Harold. New Trail Blazers of Technology. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1976. The author, who had known Cottrell personally, devotes chapter 1 to a readable account of Cottrell’s life in addition to commentary on the importance of his work and his development of the electrostatic precipitator, which came to be known by the developer’s name. Describes how Cottrell’s Research Corporation came into being and explains its unique importance in terms of helping young scientists who might not have received adequate notice from other foundations and organizations.