Harry N. Holmes Papers

Harry Nicholls Holmes was born July 10, 1879 in Lawrence County, Pennsylvania. He obtained his Bachelor of Science degree from Westminster College, New Wilmington, Pennsylvania in 1899. After several years teaching in secondary schools, he received his master’s degree from Westminster in 1907. His doctorate from Johns Hopkins University was obtained that same year. Dr. Holmes taught seven years at Earlham College in Richmond, Indiana (1907-14), where he met his wife, Mary Shiveley. The couple married in 1909.

Harry Holmes joined the faculty of Oberlin College in 1914 as Professor of Chemistry and Head of the Department of Chemistry. At this time, few Oberlin chemistry students were going on to complete graduate work. Holmes encouraged undergraduate participation in research. Undergraduate and graduate students participated in his research and were co-authors on many of his more than 100 scientific publications. Harry Holmes authored the textbook General Chemistry and used this book for his classroom instruction. Holmes retired in 1945, by which time the department had expanded from three to five full-time faculty, and a high number of interested chemistry students were pursuing graduate studies.

Holmes research interests included colloids and vitamins, on which he published more than seventy technical papers. After eight years of research, he, assisted by graduate student Ruth Corbett, was credited as the first to isolate crystalline vitamin A. He found that vitamin B1 could be used to treat sea and air sickness. In a paper, “Annals of Allergy,” he demonstrated through experiments that vitamin C is valuable in the treatment of allergies, including hay fever. During World War II, Harry Holmes served as a consultant to the National Defense Research Committee, where he found that vitamin C, if used in sufficient quantities, could lessen the shock caused by wounds and surgery. Holmes and his students were among the first to apply column liquid chromatography to separate complex organic molecules.

Harry Holmes was a member of the American Chemical Society, serving as president in 1942. He was a member of the National Research Council from 1923-29 and chairman of the sub-committee on the chemistry of colloids from 1919-25. Holmes was a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He was an honorary member of Sigma Xi (a national science honor society), Alpha Chi Sigma and Phi Lambda Upsilon (chemical societies).

His publications, many of which have gone through numerous editions, include: General Chemistry, Out of the Test Tube, Have You Had Your Vitamins?, Strategic Materials and National Strength, Fifty Years of Industrial Aluminum,  and Introductory Colloid Chemistry. He has also written more than sixty articles concerning the results of his original chemistry research, and more than seventy treatises on chemistry and methods of teaching it.

Honors awarded to Dr. Holmes include an honorary doctor of laws degree from Westminster College (1941), the Alumni Medal for Distinguished Service from Oberlin College (1945), the Gold Medal of the American Institute of Chemistry (1951), the Kendall Award in colloid chemistry (1954), and the James Flack Norris Award of the American Chemical Society (1955). Upon his retirement, the Holmes Prize Fund was established in his honor to provide a yearly award of $100 to an outstanding chemistry student.

Harry Holmes was an avid golfer. He helped establish the Oberlin Golf Club and participated in its redesign in the 1930s. Upon retirement, he took up oil painting and was an active promoter of the yearly art show put together by members of the American Chemical Society. His other interests included gardening and the College’s Dramatics Club.

Harry Holmes had two sons, Charles (Claremont, California) and Richard (Minneapolis, Minnesota) Holmes.

Holmes died in Oberlin on July 1, 1958 after suffering from lung cancer.

Sources Consulted

Oberlin Alumni Magazine, February 1959, p. 15; Oberlin News Tribune, July 2, 1958; Who’s Who in America, 1944; Brochure: 50th Anniversary of the Harry N. Holmes Prize, Winter and Spring 1977.