Harmon Northrop Morse and Paracetamol

Harmon Northrop Morse (October 15, 1848 – September 8, 1920) was an American chemist. Today he is known as the first to have synthesized paracetamol, but this substance only became widely used as a drug decades after Morse's death. In the first half of the 20th century he was best known for his study of osmotic pressure, for which he was awarded the Avogadro Medal in 1916. The Morse equation for estimating osmotic pressure is named after him.

Harmon Northrop Morse was a son of John Morse, who came from England in 1639 and settled in New Haven. His father, Harmon Morse, was a farmer, who considered all forms of recreation objectionable. Northrop's mother died at a young age, leaving behind Northrop, his brother Anson and his sister Delia.

Scientific legacy

Although Johns Hopkins was a research university from the beginning, the early years of the chemistry department were marked by a lack of students and equipment. Morse was initially discouraged and spent most of his time teaching. Around the turn of the century Morse published a series of papers on the preparation of permanganic acid. This led him to study osmotic pressure. In the first half of the 20th century, the Morse name was mainly associated with his work in this area. With the help of a grant from the Carnegie Institution of Washington, he published a report entitled The Osmotic Pressure of Aqueous Solutions,which summarized the work he performed between 1899 and 1913. For this work he was awarded the Avogadro Medal by the Academy of Sciences of Turin (Academia della Scienze di Turino)—the academy where Avogadro had taught. The medal was a unique prize awarded on the centennial anniversary of Avogadro's law.