George Scatchard

George Scatchard was a prominent American physical chemist who worked on the Manhattan Project and was nominated for a Nobel Prize in Chemistry. An equation used in molecular biology was named after him. Scatchard was a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for over 30 years. 

George Scatchard was born on March 19, 1892, in Oneonta, New York. He was one of five children born to Elmer Ellsworth Scatchard, Sr., and Fanny Lavinia Harmer. George was a student at the Oneonta Normal School from 1898 to 1909. While at the normal school, Scatchard became a member of the Delphic Fraternity and served as the chapter's vice president in 1909. 

After his education at Oneonta, Scatchard entered Amherst College, graduating in 1913 with a degree in chemistry. He received his Ph.D. in organic chemistry from Columbia University in 1917. 

Scatchard was a World War I veteran who spent a year in France helping in the development of a rapid and sensitive method for detecting small airborne quantities of mustard gas. 

Dr. Scatchard taught chemistry at Amherst College before becoming a professor at M.I.T., where he remained for the rest of his professional career. Scatchard married Willian Watson Beaumont in Powell, Montana in 1928. The couple met while they were graduate students at Columbia University. 

During World War II, Scatchard worked on the Manhattan Project which led to the creation of the atomic bomb. He was honored with several awards for his lifelong work, including the Theodore Richards Medal of the American Chemical Society, which he received in 1954.

In 1970, Dr. George Scatchard was nominated for a Nobel Prize in Chemistry. His name appeared as an author in 134 academic publications and his work was cited over 37,000 times. 

George Scatchard died on December 10, 1973, in Cambridge, Massachusetts at the age of 81.