Biography
James Crafts was born in Boston, Massachusetts and graduated from Harvard University in 1858. Although he never received his Ph.D., he studied chemistry in Germany at the Academy of Mines (1859) of Freiberg, and served as an assistant to Robert Bunsen at Heidelberg, and then with Wurtz in Paris (1861).
It was in Paris that Crafts first met Charles Friedel, with whom he later carried out some of his most successful research. Crafts returned to the United States in 1865. In 1868, he was appointed as the first professor of chemistry at the newly founded Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, where he remained until 1870.
During the following four years Crafts served as professor of chemistry at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, but in 1874 took a leave of absence, joined Friedel in Paris, and devoted himself exclusively to scientific research. Upon his second return to the United States, in 1891, Crafts became professor of organic chemistry at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1892–97), where he also served as president from 1898 to 1900. In 1900, Crafts resigned the presidency, and again turned to the investigation of problems in organic and physical chemistry.
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