chemistry

Roger Adams

Roger Adams is a chemistry topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Roger Adams rather than just read about it. In short: Roger Adams (January 2, 1889 – July 6, 1971) was an American organic chemist who developed the eponymous Adams' catalyst, and helped determine the composition of natural substances such as complex vegetable oils and plant alkaloids. He isolated and identified CBD and Δ8-Tetrahydrocannabinol in 1940.

Key takeaways

Roger Adams belongs to chemistry; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Roger Adams to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Roger Adams from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Roger Adams (January 2, 1889 – July 6, 1971) was an American organic chemist who developed the eponymous Adams' catalyst, and helped determine the composition of natural substances such as complex vegetable oils and plant alkaloids. He isolated and identified CBD and Δ8-Tetrahydrocannabinol in 1940. As head of the Chemistry department at the University of Illinois from 1926 to 1954, he influenced graduate education in America, taught over 250 Ph.D. students and postgraduate students, and served in military science during World War I and World War II.

Early life Adams was born in Boston, Massachusetts to railroad official Austin W. Adams and Lydia Curtis, and grew up in a prosperous neighborhood in South Boston, the last child in a gifted family that included Adams's three older sisters (two went to Radcliffe College and one to Smith College). Adams was part of the prominent Adams family, and was descended from John Adams's grandfather. Adams attending Boston Latin School and Cambridge Latin High School (now called Cambridge Rindge and Latin). In 1900, the family moved to Cambridge, which was closer to the two colleges. Adams entered Harvard University in 1905 and completed the requirements for a bachelor's degree in three years. In his first year, he earned a John Harvard Honorary Scholarship by getting four As, and in his last year, he took advanced courses and began research in organic chemistry under H.A. Torrey. His years at Harvard were undistinguished, earning high grades in chemistry (his major) and mining (his minor). After graduation from Harvard in 1909, he worked towards his Ph.D. at Radcliffe College supported by a teaching assistantship. Torrey died unexpectedly in 1910, so Adams finished his Ph.D. under Charles Loring Jackson, George Shannon Forbes, and Latham Clarke. In 1912 he was initiated as a brother of Alpha Chi Sigma at Omicron chapter at Harvard. As an outstanding Ph.D. of 1912, Adams received a Parker Traveling Scholarship for 1912 and 1913, which he used to work at the laboratory of Emil Fischer and Otto Diels in Berlin, Germany and that of Richard Willstätter in Dahlem outside of Berlin. After returning from Europe in 1913, Adams returned to Harvard and worked as a research assistant for Charles L. Jackson for $800 a year. During the next three years, he taught organic chemistry at Harvard and Radcliffe, initiated the first elementary organic chemistry laboratory at Harvard and began his own research program. Several other prominent contemporaries of Adams at Harvard Graduate School were Elmer Keiser Bolton, Farrington Daniels, Frank C. Whitmore, James B. Sumner and James Bryant Conant.

Academic career In 1916, Adams accepted an offer of an assistant professorship from William A. Noyes, head of the chemistry department at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He began a career at UIUC that would span 56 years. Adams succeeded Noyes as department head in 1926, and remained in that position until 1954. During this time, Adams made several well-known discoveries. Roger Adams and his students developed the so-called Adams' catalyst, which is one of the most readily-prepared and active catalysts for hydrogenation reactions. The catalyst can be prepared by fusing sodium nitrate with chloroplatinic acid or ammonium chloroplatinate. Adams's group also developed a low-pressure apparatus for using the catalyst, which had a profound effect in the synthesis and structural elucidation of organic compounds as well as biochemical compounds. Working at the Noyes Laboratory, Adams and his more than 250 graduate students made many significant discoveries:

… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Roger Adams

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Roger Adams claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In chemistry, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Roger Adams before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Roger Adams ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Roger Adams

In research: Roger Adams appears in chemistry research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Roger Adams in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Roger Adams is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1889 births, 1971 deaths, 20th-century American chemists, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Roger Adams outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Roger Adams in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Roger Adams means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Roger Adams out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Roger Adams in simple terms?

Why does Roger Adams matter?

Because it connects several chemistry ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Roger Adams?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Roger Adams.