Bertram Borden Boltwood papers

Bertram Borden Boltwood (1870-1927), born in Amherst, Massachusetts, was the son of Thomas Kast Boltwood (1844-1872) and Margaret Mathilda Van Hoesen (1842-1909), and the grandson of Lucius Boltwood (1792-1872) and Fanny Haskins Shepard (d. 1888).

Boltwood attended Albany Academy, Albany, New York, before entering Sheffield Scientific School of Yale University in 1889. He graduated from Sheffield in 1892 with the highest rank in chemistry. From 1892 to 1894 Boltwood studied rare earths and analytical methods in Germany. Boltwood returned to Yale as an assistant in chemistry in 1894 and was made an instructor of chemistry in 1896. He received his Ph.D. degree in chemistry from Yale in 1897. In 1900 Boltwood left Yale to open a private laboratory in New Haven which he operated with mining engineer Joseph Hyde Pratt until 1906. It was during this latter period that Boltwood began his career as a consulting chemist to manufacturers, miners, and prospectors.

Boltwood became interested in the field of radioactivity around the time Rutherford and Soddy announced their theory of disintegration of radioactive elements in 1900. Stimulated by the prospect of a visit by Rutherford to New Haven in 1904, Boltwood began experiments to prove that uranium and radium exist in a constant ratio in unaltered minerals. The results of the experiments gave strong support to the disintegration theory. Impressed with Boltwood's work, Rutherford urged him to continue working in the field. Rutherford's visit to Boltwood's laboratory in New Haven marked the beginning of a productive, friendly association between the two men. Boltwood's successive experiments in radioactivity led to the important discoveries and proofs referred to in the preceding pages.

Boltwood returned to Yale in 1906 as assistant professor of physics. During the academic year 1909-1910 Boltwood worked in Rutherford's laboratory at the University of Manchester. Upon his return from abroad, Boltwood was made professor of radiochemistry of Yale College, a position he held until his death in 1927. By this time, however, Boltwood's years of productivity in the field of radioactivity were largely over.

In the years following his return from England, Boltwood assisted Professor H. A. Bumstead in the building of the Sloane Physics Laboratory (1912) and became its acting director during Bumstead's absence in 1913-1914. Boltwood later devoted much of his time to planning the construction and equipment of the Sterling Chemical Laboratory (1921). This work seems to have put a tremendous strain on Boltwood's health and he suffered several nervous breakdowns before his eventual suicide in Maine on August 15, 1927.

Additional biographical material may be found in the Dictionary of American Biography, in A. S. Eve's biography, Rutherford, and in Rutherford and Boltwood, Letters on Radioactivity, edited by Lawrence Badash.