ABSTRACT

In 1906, a young assistant professor in physical chemistry at the University of California at Berkeley invented an electrostatic precipitator for the control of the industrial air pollution that was poisoning the skies over San Francisco with, among other toxins, sulfuric acid mists emanating from the chemical plant of E.I.Du Pont de Nemours on San Francisco Bay (1987 Annual Report, Research Corporation, pp. 4-5). Frederick Gardner Cottrell (1877-1948) hoped to assign the profits that eventually would accrue from patents on his invention to an academic institution for support of further scientific research. But first the University of California and then the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., rejected his offer, both finding the notion of profits to be not in keeping with their missions. Cottrell’s idealism and generosity eventually found an outlet with his creation of the Research Corporation in the year 1912, a foundation incorporated in the state of New York and which to this day funds scientific research in the United States.