Lore Alford Rogers (7 February 1875 – 21 March 1975) was an American bacteriologist and dairy scientist. He is credited with discovering that butter made from pasteurized sweet cream remained fresher than that made from sour ripened cream, while suggesting that surplus milk could still be sold as concentrated sour milk products. He refined the steps for manufacture of high quality Swiss cheese and, new to the United States, production of Roquefort cheese. He was instrumental in finding ways to discourage fungal growth in sweetened condensed milk and preventing losses in evaporated milk from heat coagulation. Rogers' pioneering work on freeze drying bacterial cultures had immediate applications in World War I. As Chief of the Research Laboratories of the Bureau of Dairy Industry, USDA for nearly four decades, Rogers was praised for a leadership style that allowed the "creativity of others" to be "developed and expressed." In retirement he gave back to his own community by co-founding the Patten Lumbermen's Museum.
Early years
Lore [pronounced "Lo'-re," rhymes with "story"] Rogers was born in the town of Patten, Maine. His father, Col. Luther B. Rogers, was a veteran of the Civil War, and became a partner in a prominent lumbering operation called Ayer and Rogers. Lore's mother, Mary Elizabeth Barker Rogers, bore seven children, and it is said she might have become a "remarkable journalist" had she been given the chance. In an unpublished autobiography, she described the children
[as having] in common one predominating trait and that was a love of the woods and all wild things. Lore, though he loved to fish, called for a camera rather than a gun, and I believe a camera and a fishhook have always remained his only weapons. He early developed a liking for research which finally became his speciality. Lore, like his other siblings including Lou Rogers, attended the Patten Academy, which graduated a number of highly successful individuals. He entered the University of Maine, joined its first football team, and pledged Kappa Sigma. He earned a B. S. in agriculture in 1896, especially appreciating the one course that was offered in the new science of bacteriology. Years later the campus dairy industry building would be named in his honor. Rogers returned home to spend a season as clerk and assistant in his father's lumbering operations. He also used his photography skills to capture the experience and perils of woodsmen's lives. He was then inspired to pursue bacteriology, selecting the University of Wisconsin, which had opened the first American school of dairy science seven years earlier. He was privileged to study under Harry Luman Russell, a noted bacteriologist who earned an early PhD in that field at Johns Hopkins University. Lore Rogers remained at Wisconsin for the year 1897-1898, during which time, in addition to his studies, he helped found the Beta-Epsilon chapter of Kappa Sigma.
New York Agricultural Experiment Station, 1899-1902
In 1899 Lore Rogers was offered a position as assistant bacteriologist at the New York State Agricultural Experiment Station, Geneva. The New York State Legislature had established the State Agricultural Experiment Station, which opened in 1882. It was no coincidence that two bacteriologists overlapped at Wisconsin and arrived at the experiment station in 1899. Harry Alexis Harding had been an undergraduate and graduate student at Wisconsin under H. L. Russell (and would later earn a PhD at Cornell University). Harding, with his Wisconsin M.S. degree followed by study in Europe, was appointed chief dairy bacteriologist, and Lore would serve as assistant. The experiment station staff around 1900 included a superintendent, an animal industry specialist, two botanists, eight chemists, two bacteriologists, a dairy expert, three entomologists, three horticulturalists, an editor-librarian, and two clerk-stenographers. The two bacteriologists, Harry Harding, and Lore Rogers, collaborated on several reports on milk and cheese, with Harding listed as senior author. George A. Smith,"dairy expert" was another collaborator. Some station bulletins co-authored by Lore Rogers included "The Efficiency of a Continuous Pasteurizer at Different Temperatures" (1899), "Inspection of Babcock Milk Test Bottles" (1900), "Dairy Disagreeables Busy the Bacteriologists" (1900), and "Notes on Some Dairy Troubles" (1900).
USDA 1902-1922 Lore Rogers's research experience under Russell at Wisconsin and at the New York State Agricultural Experiment Station provided the background he needed to land a government position in 1902 with the USDA. The office was then designated as the Dairy Division of the Bureau of Animal Industry.
The Dairy Division had been established in the Bureau of Animal Industry on July 1, 1895, and authorized by the Congress 'to collect and disseminate information relating to the dairy industry of the United States.' That was precisely and exclusively what it did until 1902, when L. A. Rogers became an employee of the Division. Rogers arrived in Washington followed by a flurry of activity. He attended his first meeting of the Society of American Bacteriologists, and with C. E. Gray was assigned an applied research project on butter, at Ames, Iowa, as animal industry staff were expected to make use of state experiment stations. When no adequate supply of milk for the research was available at Ames, the men "begged the use" of university facilities at Madison, Wisconsin. Following work in Wisconsin and Minnesota, Rogers and Gray
… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.
