A National Historic Chemical Landmark: Gilman Hall

Gilman Hall

The Early Years
The extensive research program in chemical thermodynamics envisioned by Lewis required research with materials at very low temperatures. To support this work, Wendell M. Latimer set up a liquid hydrogen facility in the Gilman Hall basement. Completed in 1921, it was the first in the United States. Latimer had received his Ph.D. at Berkeley in 1917, working with George Ernest Gibson, one of Lewis's first Berkeley hires and the research director for many doctoral students. Latimer is best known for organizing thermodynamic data for inorganic chemistry in his 1938 book, The Oxidation States of the Elements and Their Potentials in Aqueous Solution, and for his later leadership in the College of Chemistry.

In the early 1930s, Giauque's student J. W. Kemp made heat capacity measurements on frozen and liquid ethane, but the data were not interpreted until Kenneth S. Pitzer came to Berkeley from the California Institute of Technology (Cal Tech) in 1935 to work on thermodynamics with Latimer. When Pitzer learned of the ethane data, he and Kemp set about using these data to determine the barrier to the internal rotation of adjacent methyl groups. This work was the start of numerous papers by Pitzer on internal rotation and the thermodynamic properties of hydrocarbons.

Electrochemical measurements were another way to establish thermodynamic properties. Merle Randall, who came with Lewis from MIT, and E. D. Eastman, an early Lewis student, worked with Latimer in a Gilman Hall laboratory specifically designed for such measurements.

While the faculty who did organic or analytical research worked in the old chemistry building, a small group of inorganic or general physical chemists were working in Gilman Hall. The best known was Joel H. Hildebrand, who researched the theory of solutions. Hired by Lewis in 1913 to revamp first-year chemistry classes, he directed freshman chemistry instruction for nearly 40 years. His views on chemical education were widely respected.

Another respected Lewis hire, William C. Bray, also came to Berkeley from MIT. He pursued research in chemical kinetics and directed many students, including Henry Taube, who received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1983. Axel R. Olson, also a faculty member working in Gilman Hall, was an early Lewis student who worked primarily in chemical kinetics. He also studied X-ray-induced plant mutations.

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