Arnold Orville Beckman

The couple exchanged nuptial vows on June 10, 1925 and Mabel followed Beckman to California the following year.

At the age of 104, this great scientific mind breathed his last on May 18, 2004 in California. He was interred in Illinois at the ‘West Lawn Cemetery’.

On April 10, 1900, Arnold Orville Beckman was born to parents George Beckman and Elizabeth Ellen Jewkes. George owned a blacksmith shop in the small village of Cullom in the United States.

The village comprised of people mostly from the farming background but the young lad was always interested in understanding the know-how of the world. His father encouraged his inquisitive nature and when Arnold chanced upon a chemistry textbook titled, ‘Fourteen Weeks in Chemistry’; George helped him establish a laboratory of his own in a tool shed.

After Elizabeth’s demise in 1912, closed shop to work as a salesman for blacksmithing tools. His new job required him to travel a lot thus the children were put under the care of a maid. During this time Orville joined a local band as a pianist and even worked as a “official cream tester” in a neighbourhood shop.

In 1914, the family moved to Normal, where the children attended ‘University High School’ affiliated to the ‘Illinois State University’. The following year, the prodigious mind was allowed to attend university level lectures in chemistry by Professor Howard W. Adams.

The youngest child in the family, he was the most industrious and even embarked on a business venture while still attending high school. His research laboratory, ‘Bloomington Research Laboratories’, studied the chemical components of the natural gas and other petroleum products produced by the local gas company.

After completing High School with flying colours in 1918, he decided to join the army and served as a chemist for the defence forces employed in WWI. The same year on his eighteenth birthday, he decided to join the United States Marine Corps.

He attended the three month training in the boot camp in South Carolina and was then posted at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. But ceasefire was enforced before he could be assigned to active service.

After the WWI, he enrolled at the research inclusive ‘University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign’, in 1918. Beckman, who had initially decided to pursue a major in organic chemistry, later opted for physical chemistry after suffering from ill health caused by toxic effects of mercury.

Under the tutelage of fine teachers like Worth Rodebush, T. A. White, and Gerhard Dietrichson, in 1922 he completed his undergraduate studies in chemical engineering. At the university he was a member of frat groups like the ‘Alpha Chi Sigma’ and the ‘Gamma Alpha Graduate Scientific Society’.

Throughout his career, Arnold invented many devices like the pH meter, spectrometer, dosimeter and the helical potentiometer. His company the ‘Beckman Instruments’ became one of the leading American manufactures of biomedical laboratory instruments. Berliner was even involved in the emerging field of computers and contributed to what became the Silicon Valley.