Adolf Lehmann or Adolph Ludwig Ferdinand Lehmann [1] (22 December 1863 - 27 September 1937) was a Canadian chemist and agricultural scientist of German ancestry. He served as the first agricultural chemist of Mysore state in India. He established a laboratory for chemical analysis and began field experiments to study plant nutrition and also worked on chemical problems involved in the processing of sugar from sugarcane.
Lehmann was born in Morris Township, Canada West, the first son of Adalbert Ludwig Lehmann and Kathinka Helene Friedereike (born Bruch), German settlers who farmed around Sparrow Lake. [2] [3] Kathinka came from Oldenburg and had lived in Belgium with an uncle who was physician to King Leopold, and studied French and English. [4] Adolph studied at the Sparrow Lake Public School before going to the Oldenburg Gymnasium. [5] He graduated with a BSA in 1889 from the Ontario Agricultural College (then called the Guelph Agricultural College) and then went to the University of Leipzig where he studied under Johannes Wislicenus and received a doctorate for studies on the reduction of dibenzene diphenylbutadiene to tetraphenylbenzene. He subsequently worked at the Dominion Experimental Farm, Ottawa (1890) as an assistant chemist to Frank Thomas Shutt [6] and as a chemist at the Louisiana Experimental Station established by William Carter Stubbs in New Orleans (1893). He also served as a bacteriologist in the department of inland revenue, Ottawa (1897) and worked briefly as a lecturer in chemistry at Queen's University Kingston (1897). He also gave lectures on fungi and other aspects of microscopic life for members of the Ottawa Field Naturalists' Club. [7] He was admitted Fellow of the Chemical Society (London) in 1901. [8]
In 1898 he moved to India to set up the department of agriculture in Mysore State. Lehmann's appointment, initially for five years, [9] was based on the recommendations of the Voelcker commission to the government of India. [10] Among his achievements were the establishment of rigorous experimental techniques based on pot cultures, field plots, and developing chemical assays for phosphorus in plant and animal matter (including studies on the nutritive value of "famine foods"). He studied soil fertility, and conducted research on improving the process of converting sugarcane juice to sugar (reducing losses by neutralizing with lime before boiling [11] ), [12] treating water for drinking, and in paper making. [13] In 1908, as his appointment term ended, [14] shortly after the death of his wife, [15] the Government of Mysore decided not to renew the position of Agricultural Chemist. He also worked with coffee planters in attempts to improve the quality and yield of coffee. [16] The Planters' Association resolved in a meeting "That this Association deplores the retrograde policy of the Mysore Government with regard to agriculture by which the services of Dr Lehmann are lost to the Province. It desires to place on record its high appreciation of the valuable services rendered to the planting industry by Dr. Lehmann." [17] Lehmann was quoted by the planters as saying - "what you need is experiment, and experiment, and experiment." [18] The position of agricultural chemist was filled later by Dr. B. Narasimha Iyengar who was also trained in the University of Göttingen. [19]
Lehmann had worked for nine years before he returned to Canada, to work initially at Queen's University, and then at the University of Alberta as a professor of chemistry. He was succeeded in 1908 in the state of Mysore by Leslie Coleman who had been recruited as a mycologist and entomologist. In Canada he studied bitumen deposits in the Athabasca river, studied soil chemistry and influenced numerous students. He was invalid for the last eight years of his life and died at Kingston, Ontario. [20] [21]
Lehmann married Agnes Mary Georgina (born Lovick) (May 11, 1870, Kingston - March 15, 1908, [22] Bangalore) on October 12, 1898 and they had three sons (Karl Frederick born 18 Jun 1906, Adolf John Victor 3 Sep 1902, and Julius Ferdinand 10 December 1900) and a daughter in Bangalore. Georgina died of (enteric fever) typhoid six weeks after the birth of their only daughter Mary Georgina in Bangalore. Georgina's sister Caroline Melissa Lovick (1867-1967) took care of the children and Lehmann married her in 1911 at Edmonton. The family lived at Gowsworth on Fittons Road in Orillia. [5]
Justus Freiherr von Liebig was a German scientist who made major contributions to agricultural and biological chemistry, and is considered one of the principal founders of organic chemistry. As a professor at the University of Giessen, he devised the modern laboratory-oriented teaching method, and for such innovations, he is regarded as one of the greatest chemistry teachers of all time. He has been described as the "father of the fertilizer industry" for his emphasis on nitrogen and trace minerals as essential plant nutrients, and his formulation of the law of the minimum, which described how plant growth relied on the scarcest nutrient resource, rather than the total amount of resources available. He also developed a manufacturing process for beef extracts, and with his consent a company, called Liebig Extract of Meat Company, was founded to exploit the concept; it later introduced the Oxo brand beef bouillon cube. He popularized an earlier invention for condensing vapors, which came to be known as the Liebig condenser.
University of Agricultural Sciences, Bangalore is located in Bengaluru, India. It was established in 1964 as UAS Bangalore by a legislative act.
Eduard Buchner was a German chemist and zymologist, awarded the 1907 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work on fermentation.
Furfural is an organic compound with the formula C4H3OCHO. It is a colorless liquid, although commercial samples are often brown. It has an aldehyde group attached to the 2-position of furan. It is a product of the dehydration of sugars, as occurs in a variety of agricultural byproducts, including corncobs, oat, wheat bran, and sawdust. The name furfural comes from the Latin word furfur, meaning bran, referring to its usual source. Furfural is only derived from dryed biomass, In addition to ethanol, acetic acid, and sugar, furfural is one of the oldest organic chemicals available readily purified from natural precursors.
Lars Fredrik Nilson was a Swedish chemist, professor at Uppsala University, and later Director of the Agricultural Chemical Experiment Station at the Royal Swedish Academy of Agriculture and Forestry in Stockholm.
Andreas Sigismund Marggraf was a German chemist from Berlin, then capital of the Margraviate of Brandenburg, and a pioneer of analytical chemistry. He isolated zinc in 1746 by heating calamine and carbon. Though he was not the first to do so, Marggraf is credited with carefully describing the process and establishing its basic theory. In 1747, Marggraf announced his discovery of sugar in beets and devised a method using alcohol to extract it. His student Franz Achard later devised an economical industrial method to extract the sugar in its pure form.
An agricultural experiment station (AES) or agricultural research station (ARS) is a scientific research center that investigates difficulties and potential improvements to food production and agribusiness. Experiment station scientists work with farmers, ranchers, suppliers, processors, and others involved in food production and agriculture.
Sir Martin Onslow Forster, FRS was a chemist and a director of the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore, India.
Hebbal Lake is located in the north of Bangalore at the mouth of National Highway 7, along the junction of Bellary Road and the Outer Ring Road (ORR). It was one of the three lakes created in 1537 by Kempe Gowda. Like most lakes or "tanks" in the Bangalore region it was formed by the damming natural valley systems by the construction of bunds. The spread of the lake in a study in 2000 was found to be 75 ha with plans for extending it to make up 143 ha.
William Francis Hillebrand was an American chemist.
Julius Adolph Stöckhardt was a German agricultural chemist. He is mostly recognized for his work on fertilizers, fume damage of plants and his book Die Schule der Chemie, which was translated into 14 languages. His 500 lectures and over 500 publications helped to establish agricultural chemistry in Germany.
Charles Anthony Goessmann, known in his native German as Karl Anton Gößmann, was a Massachusetts agricultural and food chemist.
Samuel William Johnson was an American agricultural chemist. He promoted the movement to bring the sciences to the aid of American farmers through agricultural experiment stations and education in agricultural science.
George Chapman Caldwell was an American chemist, horticulturalist, and instructor.
Leslie Charles Coleman was a Canadian entomologist, plant pathologist and virologist who worked as the first director of agriculture in Mysore State in southern India. He conducted pioneering research on the pests and diseases affecting agriculture in the region and was instrumental in establishing several agricultural research and educational institutions including the Hebbal Agricultural School which later became a part of the University of Agricultural Sciences, Bangalore and the Coffee Research Station at Balehonnur which became the Central Coffee Research Institute. He introduced improved tillage implements, sprayers, tractors, and played a key role in the establishment of the Mysore Sugar Company in Mandya. His major contributions to plant protection included measures to control a rot disease of coffee caused by Pellicularia koleroga known in southern India as koleroga. Coleman established measures for koleroga, a generic name for rot-causing diseases in Kannada, that caused complete destruction in areca plantations. Sprays of inexpensive Bordeaux mixture on the growing crowns helped control infection caused by what he described as Phytophthora arecae.
Sigismund Friedrich Hermbstädt was a German pharmacist and chemist who wielded great influence on the improvement of science education for pharmacists. He also made numerous contributions in the fields of industrial and agricultural chemistry.
John Augustus Voelcker CIE was an English agricultural chemist and the second son of the German-born English chemist Augustus Voelcker (1822–1884). John Augustus (Jr.) succeeded his father as consulting chemist to the Royal Agricultural Society of England and continued research on soil fertility. He headed a committee that examined issues in Indian agriculture in 1891.
K. Kunhikannan was a pioneer agricultural entomologist and the first Indian to serve as an entomologist in the state of Mysore. Aside from entomology related publications, he wrote two books The West (1927) and A Civilisation at Bay. He was a friend and admirer of the humanist Brajendra Nath Seal and the British writer Lionel Curtis who sought a single united world government. As an agricultural entomologist, he identified several low-cost techniques to pest management and was a pioneer of classical biological control approaches in India.
Venkatrao K. Badami was an Indian agronomist and a pioneer of plant breeding. Working in the Mysore Department of Agriculture, he was among the first to make use of X-ray induced mutations in the search for useful variations for breeding sugarcane varieties in 1933.
William Carter Stubbs was an American chemist and sugar industry researcher who worked in Alabama and Louisiana.
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