From: lessgovt@gmail.com   
      
   Arnold Orville Beckman (1900–2004) was an American chemist, inventor,   
   investor, and philanthropist. While a professor at California Institute of   
   Technology, he founded Beckman Instruments based on his 1934 invention of the   
   pH meter, a device for    
   measuring acidity (and alkalinity), later considered to have "revolutionized   
   the study of chemistry and biology". He also developed the DU sp   
   ctrophotometer, "probably the most important instrument ever developed towards   
   the advancement of bioscience".[2]   
    Beckman funded the Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory, the first silicon   
   transistor company in California, thus giving rise to Silicon Valley. After   
   retirement, he and his wife Mabel (1900–1989) were numbered among the top   
   philanthropists in the United    
   States.   
      
   Early life   
   Beckman was born in Cullom IL, a village of about 500 people in a farming   
   community. He was the youngest son of George Beckman, a blacksmith, and his   
   second wife Elizabeth Ellen Jewkes.  He was curious about the world from an   
   early age. When he was 9,    
   Beckman found an old chemistry textbook, Joel Dorman Steele's Fourteen Weeks   
   in Chemistry, and began trying out the experiments.  His father encouraged   
   his scientific interests by letting him convert a toolshed into a laboratory.   
      
   Beckman's mother, Elizabeth, died of diabetes in 1912. Beckman's father sold   
   his blacksmith shop, and became a travelling salesman for blacksmithing tools   
   and materials. A housekeeper, Hattie Lange, was engaged to look after the   
   Beckman children. Arnold    
   Beckman earned money as a "practice pianist" with a local band, and as an   
   "official cream tester" running a centrifuge for a local store.   
      
   In 1914, the Beckman family moved to Normal, located just north of Bloomington   
   IL, so that the young Beckmans could attend University High School in Normal,   
   a "laboratory school" associated with Illinois State Univ.  In 1915 they   
   moved to Bloomington    
   itself,  but continued to attend University High, where Arnold Beckman   
   obtained permission to take university level classes from professor of   
   chemistry Howard W. Adams.  While still in high school, Arnold started his   
   own business, "Bloomington    
   Research Laboratories", doing analytic chemistry for the local gas company.    
   He also performed at night as a movie-house pianist, and played with local   
   dance bands.  He graduated valedictorian of his class, with an average of   
   89.41 over four years,    
   the highest attained.    
      
   Beckman was allowed to leave school a few months early to contribute to the   
   First World War effort in early 1918 by working as a chemist. At Keystone   
   Steel and Iron he took samples of molten iron and tested them to see if the   
   chemical composition of    
   carbon, sulfur, manganese and phosphorus was suitable for pouring steel.   
      
   When Beckman turned 18 in Aug 1918, he enlisted in the U.S. Marines. After 3   
   months at marine boot camp on Parris Island SC,  he was sent to the Brooklyn   
   Navy Yard, for transit to the war in Europe. Because of a train delay, another   
   unit embarked in    
   place of Beckman's unit. Then, counted into groups in the barracks, Beckman   
   missed being sent to Russia by one space in line.  Instead, Arnold spent   
   Thanksgiving at the local YMCA, where he met 17-year-old Mabel Stone Meinzer,   
   who was helping to serve    
   the meal. Mabel would become his wife.  A few days later, the armistice was   
   signed, ending the war.   
      
   University education   
   Beckman attended the UI Urbana–Champaign beginning in the fall of 1918.   
   During his freshman year, he worked with Carl Shipp Marvel on the synthesis of   
   organic mercury compounds, but both men became ill from exposure to toxic   
   mercury.  As a result,    
   Beckman changed his major from organic chemistry to physical chemistry, where   
   he worked with Worth Rodebush, T. A. White, and Gerhard Dietrichson.  He   
   earned his bachelor's degree in chemical engineering in 1922 and his master's   
   degree in physical    
   chemistry in 1923.  For his master's degree he studied the thermodynamics of   
   aqueous ammonia solutions, a subject introduced to him by T. A. White.    
      
   Soon after arriving at the Univ. of Illinois, Beckman joined the Delta Upsilon   
   fraternity.  He was initiated into Zeta chapter of Alpha Chi Sigma, the   
   chemistry fraternity, in 1921 and the Gamma Alpha Graduate Scientific   
   Fraternity in Dec 1922.   
      
   Beckman decided to go to Caltech for his doctorate. He stayed there for a   
   year, before returning to New York to be near his fiancée, Mabel, who was   
   working as a secretary for the Equitable Life Assurance Society. He found a   
   job with Western Electric's    
   engineering department, the precursor to the Bell Telephone Lab. Working with   
   Walter A. Shewhart,  Beckman developed quality control programs for the   
   manufacture of vacuum tubes and learned about circuit design. It was here that   
   Beckman discovered his    
   interest in electronics.   
      
   Beckman married Mabel on June 10, 1925.  In 1926 the couple moved back to   
   California and Beckman resumed his studies at Caltech. He became interested in   
   ultraviolet photolysis and worked with his doctoral advisor, Roscoe G.   
   Dickinson, on an instrument    
   to find the energy of ultraviolet light. It worked by shining the ultraviolet   
   light onto a thermocouple, converting the incident heat into electricity,   
   which drove a galvanometer. After receiving a Ph.D. in photochemistry in 1928   
   for this application of    
   quantum theory to chemical reactions, Beckman was asked to stay on at Caltech   
   as an instructor and then as a professor. Linus Pauling, another of Roscoe G.   
   Dickinson's grad students, was also asked to stay on at Caltech.    
      
   In 1933, Beckman and his family built a home in Altadena CA, in the foothills   
   and adjacent to Pasadena. They lived in Altadena for over 27 years, raising   
   their family.   
      
   Teaching and consultancy at Caltech   
   During his time at Caltech, Beckman was active in teaching at both the   
   introductory and advanced graduate levels. Beckman shared his expertise in   
   glass-blowing by teaching classes in the machine shop. He also taught classes   
   in the design and use of    
   research instruments. Beckman dealt first-hand with the chemists' need for   
   good instrumentation as manager of the chemistry dept's instrument shop.    
   Beckman's interest in electronics made him very popular within the chemistry   
   department at Caltech, as    
   he was very skilled in building measuring instruments.   
      
      
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