Henry M. Leicester

Henry Marshall Leicester (December 22, 1906, San Francisco – April 29, 1991, Menlo Park) was an American biochemist and historian of chemistry.

Biography
Henry M. Leicester grew up in San Francisco. His parents were among the earliest members of the Sierra Club and he was the youngest of their three children. At age 16 he graduated from San Francisco's Lowell High School. At Stanford University, he studied chemistry and graduated with a bachelor's degree in 1927, a master's degree in 1928, and a doctorate in biochemistry in 1930. His doctoral dissertation is entitled Aromatic selenonium salts and the relative electronegativities of organic radicals. During Leicester's years of study at Stanford, Robert E. Swain was the head of the chemistry department.

From 1930 to 1938 during the Great Depression, Leicester travelled in Europe (including research in Zurich and London); he spent a year as an instructor at Oberlin College, part of a year at the Carnegie Institution, and one year as a research associate at Stanford. From 1929 to 1936 he co-authored six papers with Francis William Bergstrom on selenium compounds, a paper with Leopold Ružička on betulin derivatives, a paper with Thomas Midgley Jr. on polystyrene, and two papers with Albert Leon Henne on organic fluorine compounds. From 1938 to 1940 Leicester was a research associate at Ohio State University. There he became interested in the history of chemistry in Russia. Leicester corresponded extensively with chemists in the Soviet Union and gathered a large collection of Russian books on the history of science. He eventually donated his collection to Stanford University.

At the College of Physicians and Surgeons, San Francisco (now the University of the Pacific Arthur A. Dugoni School of Dentistry), Leicester was a professor of biochemistry from 1941 to 1977, when he retired as professor emeritus. He chaired the departments of physiology and biology and also headed the college's research program. From 1947 to 1951 he chaired the Division of the History of Chemistry (HIST) of the American Chemical Society (ACS). He was one of the founders of the journal Chymia and served as the journal's editor-in-chief from 1950 to 1967. He was the author, editor, or translator of seven books. With his long-term collaborator Herbert S. Klickstein (1921–1975), he edited the book A Source Book in Chemistry, 1400-1900 (McGraw-Hill, 1952). The book contains selection from 82 authors and ends with a bibliography of biographies from periodicals and books. Leicester and Klickstein published in 1947 a 42-page article Philately: A Chapter In The History Of Chemistry in the Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences. The article deals with the chemical composition of stamps and the role of chemistry in stamp production. For the 6th and 7th editions of the book Discovery of the Elements by Mary Elvira Weeks, Leicester contributed a chapter on the discovery of synthetic elements.

Leicester was a prolific author on the history of chemistry. He contributed one article to Collier's Encyclopedia Americana, 7 articles to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, and 21 biographies to the Dictionary of Scientific Biography (1970–1978). He also was an authority on caries and, during the 1950s and 1960s at California community meetings, strongly advocated water fluoridation.

Leicester gained an international reputation as an expert on the history of chemistry in Russia. In 1962 he received the Dexter Award (now renamed the "HIST Award for Outstanding Achievement in the History of Chemistry"); he entitled his acceptance address Some Aspects of the History of Chemistry in Russia.

In 1941 Henry Leicester married Leonore Azevedo (1914–1974). They had a son and two daughters. Their son, Henry Marshal Leicester Jr. (b. 1942), became a professor of English literature at the University of California, Santa Cruz and wrote The Disenchanted Self: Representing the Subject in the Canterbury Tales (1990, University of California Press).

Articles

 * 1948
 * 1948
 * 1948
 * 1948
 * 1948
 * 1948
 * 1948
 * 1948

Books

 * title page, 1963 edition
 * title page, 1963 edition
 * title page, 1963 edition