POWER, FREDERICK BELDING

(b.. Hudson, New York, 4 March 1853; d. Washington, D.C, 26 March 1927)

chemistry, pharmacy.

The son of Thomas Power and the former Caroline Belding, Power received his early education al a private school and at the Hudson Academy. He worked for several years in a local drugstore and briefly in a Chicago pharmacy before obtaining a position in the establishment of the noted Philadelphia pharmacist Edward Parrish. He also attended the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy, from which he graduated in 1874, in the same class as his lifelong friend Henry Wellcome. After spending two more years with the Parrish firm, Power studied chemistry and the pharmaceutical sciences at the University of Strasbourg. Upon receiving his doctorate in 1880, he returned to America to teach analytical chemistry at the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy.

In 1883 Power went to the University of Wisconsin to serve as the first director of the newly created department of pharmacy. After guiding the Wisconsin pharmacy program through its infant years and placing it on a scientific footing that was to make it a leader in American pharmaceutical education, he left in 1892 to become scientific director of the chemical laboratories of Fritzsche Brothers in New Jersey. In 1896 Henry Wellcome established the Wellcome Chemical Research Laboratories in London and appointed Power to be director, a position he held until 1914. From 1916 until his death. Power was head of the phytochemical laboratory of the Bureau of Chemistry, U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Power married Mary Van Loan Meigs in 1883; they had two children. Among his honors were the Hanbury gold medal (1913), the Flückiger gold medal (1922), and election to the National Academy of Sciences.

Power’s research was concentrated entirely in phytochemistry. He added significantly to the knowledge of plant chemistry by isolating and purifying numerous constituents from a host of different plant substances, and by determining the chemical structures of many of these constituents. Probably his best-known work involved the investigation of chaulmoogra oil, a traditional remedy for leprosy in the Orient, which entered Western medicine in the nineteenth century. Sulfones have since largely replaced chaulmoogra oil in the treatment of leprosy, and some investigators have questioned whether the oil is really of any therapeutic value. Power and his co-workers at the Wellcome Laboratories isolated from the oil two new fatty acids, chaulmoogric and hydnocarpic acids, which were considered to be the active ingredients. They also determined the structures of these two acids, although the formulas assigned have been modified. Other important studies include his researches on the constituents of the essential oils of nutmeg, of the cotton plant, and of certain fruits.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

I. Original Works. For a bibliography containing most of Power’s works, see Ivor Griffith, “A Half Century of Research in Plant Chemistry: A Chronological Record of the Scientific Contributions of Frederick Belding Power,“in American Journal of Pharmacy,96 (1924), 605-613. Many of his publications are listed in Poggendorff, V, 1001, and VI, 2067–2068.

The work on the isolation and determination of the structure of chaulmoogric and hydnocarpic acids was reported in F. B. Power and F. H. Gornall, “The Constituents of Chaulmoogra Seeds,“in Journal of the Chemical Society, 85 (1904), 838–851; F. B. Power and F. H. Gornall, “The Constitution of Chaulmoogric Acid. Part I,” ibid., 851-861; F. B. Power and M BarrowcWr, “The Constituents of the Seeds of Hydnocarpus Wightiana and of Hydnocarpus anthelmintica. Isolation of a Homologue of Chaulmoogric Acid,” ibid., 87 (1905), 884-896; and F. B. Power and M. Barrowcliff, “The Constitution of Chaulmoogric and Hydnocarpic Acids” ibid., 91 (1907), 557-578.

The Kremers Reference Files of the University of Wisconsin School of Pharmacy contain a significant amount of MS materials related to Power: correspondence, drafts of papers, and an unpublished biographical memoir by his daughter.

II. Secondary Literature. The most detailed discussion of Power’s scientific work appears in Max Phillips,“Frederick Belding Power, Most Distinguished American Phytochemist,” in Journal of Chemical Education, 31 (1954), 258-261. Other biographical sketches include C. A. Browne, “Frederick Belding Power in Journal of the Association of Official Agricultural Chemists, 11 (1928), iii-vi; E. G. Eberle, “Frederick Belding Power, Ph.D., LL.D., F.C.S./’ in Journal of the American Pharmaceutical Association, 11 (1922), 403 405; and Lyman Newell, “Frederick Belding Power,”in Dictionary of American Biography, XV (1935), 154-155. His early years at Wisconsin are described in Edward Kremers, “Dr. Power at Wisconsin,“in Badger Pharmacist (published by the Wisconsin chapter of Rho Chi), no. 13 (Dec. 1936), 1–13.

John Parascandola