Scientist Beckman Joins Roster of Great Inventors
What began as a favor to a college chum 52 years ago led a young chemistry professor named Arnold O. Beckman into a lifetime of developing and marketing scientific instruments.
And today, the Orange County industrialist and philanthropist will officially be recognized as one of the country’s most important inventors--joining a select company of scientists including Thomas Edison, Samuel Morse, Alexander Graham Bell and Guglielmo Marconi in the National Inventors Hall of Fame.
The 86-year-old founder and chairman of Beckman Instruments Inc. in Fullerton is one of four inductees joining the hall of fame this year, swelling the Arlington, Va., institution’s membership to 67.
Other inductees this year are Andrew J. Moyer, developer of the method of mass producing penicillin; aircraft and helicopter pioneer Igor Sikorsky, and adding machine inventor William S. Burroughs.
“Of course I don’t know what lies ahead of me at the induction, but it is an honor to be included on the roster” of scientists in the hall, Beckman said in a rare interview last week.
During the session, in the office Beckman maintains in Fullerton, the scientist, inventor, businessman and conservative political thinker covered a wide range of topics, including the beginnings of his business career, the ethics of science and his concerns about America.
The invention that earned Beckman the award, a pH meter that measures acid and alkaline levels, became the base product of Beckman Instruments Inc. and is credited with revolutionizing the process of chemical analysis.
The pH meter was something Beckman said he developed in 1933 as “a favor to a friend” whose employer, Sunkist, needed to measure the acidity of citrus juices for food products made from lemons.
Beckman, son of an Illinois blacksmith, was an assistant chemistry professor at Pasadena’s Caltech at the time. His studies concentrated on photochemical reactions, he said, and “had nothing at all to do with pH or acidity measures.” The device his friend wanted “was entirely remote, separate from my research, actually.”
But Beckman’s pH meter proved more accurate and sturdy than the hitherto best known method of measuring acidity, and when the friend asked for a second meter, the 28-year-old chemist made what he refers to as his first business decision: In 1935, Beckman patented the product and started a company to make and market the “Beckman acidimeter.”
That company, originally a three-man operation headquartered in a 180-square-foot section at the rear of a Pasadena garage, grew into Beckman Instruments, an international operation that now employs more than 7,200 people. Beckman moved the company from Pasadena to Fullerton in 1954. In 1982, he merged the company, which manufactures a number of diagnostic and bioanalytical instruments, with Philadelphia-based SmithKline Corp., a major pharmaceuticals firm, for an undisclosed sum. Estimates at the time placed the worth of Beckman’s personal stock in the new SmithKline Beckman at $500 million.
National Attention
In addition to the pH meter, Beckman gained national attention for the 1940 development of a quartz photoelectric spectrophotometer, which allowed scientists to more quickly and accurately identify chemicals within mixed solutions. That same year, Beckman introduced an electrical component, originally developed as part of the acidimeter, that permitted precise control of electrical current. The device, a helical potentiometer, was registered by Beckman as a Helipot. In World War II, it became a critical component of the radar systems that were developed to track shipping and aircraft. The worlds of medicine and science also know Beckman as one of their greatest patrons. Through personal gifts and the Arnold O. and Mabel Beckman Foundation, the Illinois native and his wife have contributed more than $100 million to various research facilities throughout the nation.
In 1985 alone, the foundation made $75 million in contributions, including $20 million to build the western headquarters--next to the UC Irvine campus--of the National Academy of Sciences, in part a think tank for scientists concerned with the ethical questions of their profession.
Although now involved in his philanthropies and no longer active on a daily basis as a businessman or scientist, Beckman--a rock-ribbed Republican and co-founder of Orange County’s Lincoln Club, a conservative GOP organization--remains deeply concerned with business and political issues--the “practical issues,” as he called them.
“I am concerned with our national debt and our balance of payments . . . with our balance of trade,” Beckman said.
As an example, he said, America has “have given improved strains of rice to India and China. They used to be big customers, now they’re internally self-sufficient. . . . We train their scientists over here. We give them the best training and all the technical know-how we have, then they go back home and pretty soon we have a major competitor” for the crops grown by American farmers. “What is the right course of action?”
Raising Questions
Beckman said he doesn’t have the answer but is “just raising some questions to problems that are out there. . . . Decisions will be made and I would like to see decisions made on as sound and objective basis as possible.”
He said he believes that one way to reduce the foreign trade deficit would be for Americans to “voluntarily restrain from the purchase of foreign items,” an action he believes would be less likely than a formal government trade embargo to invite reciprocal actions by foreign governments.
Besides, Beckman said, Americans “have become pretty soft . . . we’ve forgotten what it is to get down to the real nitty-gritty and really have to work for an existence. . . . We look to Congress to solve all of our ills, (but) their solution is to throw money at a problem.”
Beckman also remains concerned about the ethics of science-related issues. That concern is one reason he financed the National Academy of Sciences’ western headquarters.
“There are people out there who think monkeying with genetics is interfering with the acts of God. Are we going to be able to move ahead? . . . (And) abortion is still a sticky issue” with a new twist, he said, because doctors can now determine whether a fetus will be born normal or with several handicaps. Another major issue, he said, is whether government--using tax revenue--should continue providing virtually unlimited medical care to the indigent.
“These issues have got to be faced,” Beckman said, and must be considered “objectively and seriously” without emotional involvement.
“Emotions,” Beckman said, sounding the theme that drew him to science more than 60 years ago, “are not the way to come up with sound answers.”
