Arnold Beckman
✓ Source-basedrisingAmerican chemist (1900-2004)
Arnold Orville Beckman was an American chemist, inventor, investor, and philanthropist.
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Photos 12
Joel Dorman Steele's 1868 book Fourteen Weeks in Chemistry (p.27 of the 1873 edition shown) inspired Beckman at the age of 9.
Mabel and Arnold Beckman
Arnold Beckman's laboratory at Caltech
Original site of the National Inking Appliance Company, later National Technical Laboratories
Beckman model M pH meter
Beckman portable pH meter in useAwards 13
Connected to Arnold 6
Vladimir K. ZworykinAlso won National Academy of Engineering Founders Award
Paul D. BoyerAlso won Tolman Award
Carl DjerassiAlso won Othmer Gold Medal
George KistiakowskyAlso won Charles Lathrop Parsons Award
George Washington GoethalsAlso won NAS Public Welfare Medal
Claiborne PellAlso won Presidential Citizens MedalAbout this person
Arnold Orville Beckman was an American chemist, inventor, investor, and philanthropist. While a professor at California Institute of Technology, he founded Beckman Instruments based on his 1934 invention of the pH meter, a device for measuring acidity, later considered to have "revolutionized the study of chemistry and biology". He also developed the DU spectrophotometer, "probably the most important instrument ever developed towards the advancement of bioscience". Beckman funded the Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory, the first silicon transistor company in California, thus giving rise to Silicon Valley. In 1965, he retired as president of Beckman Instruments, instead becoming the chairman of its board of directors. On November 23, 1981, he agreed to sell the company, which was then merged with SmithKline to form SmithKline Beckman. After retirement, he and his wife Mabel (1900-1989) were numbered among the top philanthropists in the United States.
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