LINDA R. RABER, C&EN WASHINGTON

When Georgia chemist Charles Holmes Herty found a way to make high-quality white paper from pine trees in 1932, he launched an industry that brought much-needed jobs to the Depression-crippled South. This is perhaps the best known contribution of Herty, who was one of chemistry's most ardent believers that chemistry is the key to the prosperity and security of the U.S.

On Sept. 26, American Chemical Society members gathered at the society's 53rd Southeast Regional Meeting in Savannah, Ga., to pay tribute to Herty and to recognize his accomplishments and the Herty Foundation as a National Historic Chemical Landmark. Society President Attila E. Pavlath presented a commemorative plaque to mark the event during ceremonies at the Herty Foundation in Garden City, Ga.

ACS established the landmarks program in 1992 to commemorate and preserve important sites in the history of chemistry and to heighten public awareness of the key role chemistry has played in the history of the U.S. and other nations around the world. More than 30 places, discoveries, and devices have achieved landmark status since the program's inception. The Herty Landmark was nominated by the ACS Georgia and Coastal Empire Sections.

Born in Milledgeville, Ga., in 1867, Herty was the son of a Confederate Army captain turned pharmacist. Herty was orphaned at 11, and he and his younger sister were raised by an aunt who was a schoolteacher. He graduated from the University of Georgia in 1886 with first honors in chemistry and went on to receive his doctorate in chemistry from Johns Hopkins University in 1890. Returning to his alma mater in 1891, Herty had two jobs--teaching chemistry and coaching the football team.

Indeed, Herty was the father of football at Georgia. He arranged for the first game ever played in the Deep South: Georgia versus Mercer, Jan. 30, 1892. He and his old Johns Hopkins classmate, George Petrie of the Auburn University history department, arranged for a game between Georgia and Auburn, Feb. 20, 1892, which the Auburn Tigers won, 10 to 0. That historic game inaugurated the South's oldest football rivalry.

	PLAQUE COMMEMORATING CHARLES HERTY'S ACCOMPLISHMENTS READS: Charles Holmes Herty (1867–1938)--Georgia chemist, educator, and advocate for the development of U.S. industries--founded and directed this laboratory, originally housed in a warehouse at 512 West River Street provided by the Savannah Electric & Power Co. Herty's research proved that valuable products such as newsprint, white paper, and rayon fibers could be made from young, fast-growing southern pine trees. The resulting technology catalyzed the pulp and paper industry in the South and helped revive the region's economy during the Great Depression. Cultivation of southern pine also conserved the slow-growing northern hardwood forests. In 1938, the laboratory became the Herty Foundation now located on Brampton Road.
	MARKING HISTORY Karl M. Counts (right), director of the Herty Foundation, accepts landmark plaque from ACS President Attila E. Pavlath. PHOTO BY MICHAEL SHORTT

OFF THE GRIDIRON, Herty was intent on studying in Germany--then, the world's center for chemical research. So, in 1899, he took a year's sabbatical in Germany and Switzerland. After spending some time in Berlin, he worked under Alfred Werner (Chemistry Nobel Prize winner, 1913) in Zurich. Upon returning to the U.S., Herty joined the Forestry Service. He directed his efforts toward saving the pine forests in the Southeast.

The naval stores industry had been systematically killing the forests in its efforts to collect tree resin using a box cut--which literally hacked a big chunk of a living tree--to collect resin for turpentine and other products. In 1906, Herty developed a method to collect the resin by use of a small cut in the tree and a metal cup to collect resin, sparing the tree's life; it seems simple, but that's hindsight. The method was used by the Forestry Service for 75 years, and Herty's patent of the method enabled him to be financially secure for the rest of his life.

According to James L. Ferris, president of the Institute for Paper Science & Technology, Herty was passionate in his crusade to find a profitable commercial product that was based on southern pine forests. "If you think about the times in which he was active--the '20s and '30s," he said, "the South was an extremely poor region of the country. Herty knew that the route to economic fullness was through manufacturing and the employment of large numbers of people through good jobs. His scientific understanding enabled him to envision the production of paper--specifically newsprint--from southern pine."

For decades, southern pines were thought to be too gummy to be used for anything but cardboard and other brown paper. The forest and white paper industries had been built around the less sappy and less quickly growing pines of the northern U.S. states and Canada. Recalling a lecture he had heard in Germany, Herty reasoned that younger pines would be less gummy than mature ones. Moreover, the pines' fast growth rate would make it possible to cultivate the trees, creating a renewable resource.

To test this theory, Herty built a research facility and pilot plant in 1932 with funds provided by a Savannah businessman, the State of Georgia, and the Chemical Foundation (a nonprofit organization established after World War I). He directed his new lab to make pine into the pulp that would become paper, using acidic sulfite solutions to digest the wood, remove impurities, and increase the effectiveness of bleaching agents.

IT WORKED. Less than a year after Herty opened his research lab, a Georgia weekly called the Soperton News printed its March 31, 1933, edition on experimental paper made from southern pine trees. Seven months later, nine other newspapers followed suit. Fifteen pulp and paper mills were built in the southern U.S. between 1935 and 1940, simultaneously breathing life into the region's devastated economy and slowing the destruction of the northern forests.

Herty's work also led to the use of pulp by-products, including rayon. He also promoted the synthetic camphor industry and promoted industrial research in cottonseed oils, kaolin clays, and agricultural by-products.

Active in his profession, Herty was president of ACS in 1915 and 1916 and became editor of the predecessor publication to Chemical & Engineering News. Herty used his bully pulpit as editor to write political editorials furthering the advancement of chemistry in the U.S. He was also on the board of governors and chairman of the Cellulose Committee of the National Farm Chemurgic Council and was a member of the American Forestry Association and the Technical Association of the Pulp & Paper Industry.

While serving as president of the Synthetic Organic Chemical Manufacturers Association, an organization that he helped to establish, he collaborated with Francis P. Garvan on the alignment of chemistry and medicine, which resulted, during the Hoover Administration, in the start of the National Institutes of Health.

Herty's legacy lives on, Ferris said. "Today, one in nine manufacturing jobs in the southern states is in planting, caring for, harvesting, or producing products made from southern pine forests. The economic impact of the forest-based industries through six southern states ranges from 3 to 6% of the state gross domestic product."

According to Donald G. Hicks of the ACS Georgia Section, who prepared the nomination documents for the Herty landmark: "Herty was a chemist with unique skills. His persevering efforts to form an applied chemistry lab and eventually get the southern U.S. out of the economic doldrums clearly show that he was the quintessential practitioner of the modern winning sports team motto 'Refuse To Lose.'"

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