A pioneer spirit from a pioneer family

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GILBERT NEWTON LEWIS

A Pioneer Spirit from a Pioneer Family Richard N. Lewis P.V.Box 233, lnverness, CA 94937

Anvone who knew Gilhert Newton Lewis is aware of his abiliG to strike out into a new field of chomistry, hut few are aware of the breadth of his pioneering activities. We will hear of several areas of his chemical interests in this symposium. But his interests also included such areas as relativity. .. the reversibility of time, origins of the elements, economic theory, glaciology, and anthropology. My purpose is to investigate the antecedents and hackground of Gilbert Newton Lewis in the hope of shedding some light on how such a remarkable man could arise. He himself did not talk much about his ancestors, t h o u ~ hhe did make an effort to track them down. He was stymied,however, when he got as far back as Barnstable, Massachusetts in the 1700's, where he found all previous records had been destroyed by fire. I have been only slightly more successful. The first ancestral Lewis of record was George Lewis, who came from East Greenwich in Kent to the Plymouth Colony in 1632. with his wife. the former Sarah Jenkins. H e became a farm& in Scituate, took the freeman's oath in 1635, and in 1639 was one of the founders of the town of Barnstahle, the first English settlement on Cape Cod. He was a constable there. and a member of the militia. A Conaeeational Church was ekahlished in 1639;the Church huild&,now the Sturgis Librarv. . . was comdeted in 1646. We do not know George's rrligim, although'his (pnhablel brolher. John, who i~rri'\',ed in Scituate in 1635. is dricrihed as a man of wme orooerty and a devout ~ n ~ l i c a nJohn's .. son, Joseph, lived in New ~ o i d o n and Windsor, Connecticut. George had five sons, of whom three, Ephraim, George, and Thomas, were horn in England. His son, John, was among six men from Barnstahle killed in the bloody "King Philip's War" with the Indians in 1676. Marriage records indicate a Sarah Lewis, probably a daughter, was married to James Cohh in Barnstahle in 1663; John Lewis, probable grandson, was married to Alice Bishop, a widow, in 1695. The census of 1790 listed no fewer than 34 Lewises as heads of households in Barnstahle, prohahly all descendants of George through five or six generations, including a Jabez Lewis, our ancestor. Jabez was an Anglican (Episcopalian) and, therefore, most likely suspected of being a Tory (whether he was or not). Perhaps life became uncomfortable for him, or the town was now overpopulated. In any case he pulled up stakes with his wife. Marv. son. Wilca. teen-age daughter. .. . dau~hter-in-law (former Hetsev Stu;~rl), and one grandchild. (Dad used to sav. "There's ruvitl t h o d in mv ins." I suoouse he was thinkingof the ~ t u h t s . They ) joined a party of pioneers under the leadershio of John Leet and traveled to the wilds of western New amp shire, settling in what is now West Claremont. Wilca had eight children between 1796 and 1804,but times were hard and several died in an epidemic of scarlet fever. along with his first wife and his you& sister, whose portrait hung in my Aunt Polly's house for many years. George Gilhert Lewis, born in 1800, survived. He grew up in West Claremont and married Adeline Laharee, a descendant of the early French trapper, Pierre Labaree. He fathered five strong boys and promptly died, leaving Adeline to manage alone. She was made of stern stuff, however, and raised them all successfully, single-handed. Not only that, hut she put them all through Dartmouth College.

One of the five, my grandfather, Frank Wesley Lewis, was horn in 1840. He became a lawyer and specialized in insurance. He died in 1910 and I know very little ahout him, except that he wrote a hook, "State Insurance" (Houghton Mifflin, 1909), that was a forerunner of our present Social Security system. He was a t least 25 years ahead of his time, undoubtedly a radical, certainly a pioneer. I wish I knew whether this hook had any direct influence on President Franklin D. Roosevelt. I have a photograph (1890) of him and three of his brothers, all very distinguished-looking men, hut I have no information on them or their children. Frank married Mary Burr White, the daughter of Newton White of Holhrook, Massachusetts-a "great and good man"-according to Aunt Polly. The name Burr possibly indicates some relation to Aaron Burr, hut then we probably all have some black sheeo in our families. Marv had been educated in a ladies' seminary near Boston; both she and Frank had definite ideas on education and were sure that the available schools were not for their children. She taught Gilhert to read a t the age of three; he read Robinson Crusoe a t age five and, thereafter, every hook he could get his hands on. Frank taught him his mathematics, a good teacher with an apt pupil. Somewhere, Gilhert received a thorough knowledge of Latin, Greek, German, and French. AU& Polly was born in 1871, Gilbert in 1875, and Roger in 1884, the year the family moved to Lincoln, Nebraska, where Frank was a lawyer and broker. They lived on the outskirts of town on a small farm. I believe this is where Gilhert acquired a love of nature. He noted that birds would gather there as it was one of the few places in the area that had trees. (His favorite was the catbird; a bird of unassuming appearance but great virtuosity of voice.) I believe Polly had a strong influence on Gilhert. She apparently acquired some of her parents' ideas on education and set up a private school in Buffalo where she could teach the way she thought children should he taught. My parents carried on in the same vein. Their three children were taught a t home until their late high school years. I have looked with little success for any scientific hackground in the family. I once received from Gilbert's cousin, Dr. Marian Bughee of White River Junction, a battered chemistry text from about 1840 that seemed incapable of inspiring anyone, hut someone in the family must have got some use out of it. Undoubtedly the most powerful influence in Gilbert's chemical career was that of T. W. Richards. who ioined the transferred staff at Harvilrd in 1891, the year after (;ill~cr~ from thr ilnivcr;i~vof Uehraskn. It seems that liichards WIS involved both in ~ i l h e r t ' sundergraduate and graduate education. His thesis, published with Richards was, "Some Electrochemical and Thermochemical Relations of Zmc and Cadmium Amalgams." Other men who influenced his career were the physical chemists Walter Nernst in Leipzig and Wilhelm Ostwald in Goettingen, under whom he studied in 1900-1901. He was certainly influenced by A. A. Noyes, with whom he worked for seven years a t M.I.T. Although he had little, if any, direct contact with Albert Einstein, he was excited by Einstein's ideas of relativity and published four articles on it, including one with R. C. Tolman and another with E. B. Wilson, Sr. In one respect he differed totally with Einstein; that was in his Volume 61

Number 1 January 1984

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insistence on the role of chance in the natural world, especially in reeard to ouantum mechanics and entrow. .. Einstein had greatdifficulty accepting this. While a t M.I.T. he had room and hoard with Edward S. Sheldon, Professor of Romance Languages a t Haward, whom he greatly admired. Later he married Sheldon's daughter, Mary Hinckley Sheldon-another remarkable woman in Gilbert's life. She still survives a t age 91. Both she and her daughter, Margery Selhy, are very sorry not to be ahle to he here today. So is his grandson, also Gilbert Newton Lewis, Professor of Mathematics at Michigan Technological University. Ever the student, even while teaching, he learned from everyone around him, especially his associates and his students, among whom may he mentioned especially Joel Hildehrand, Gerald Branch, Ernest Gibson, Harold Urey, Glenn Seaborg, Melvin Calvin, and Jacob Bigeleisen.

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Journal of Chemical Education

Through his own pursuit of learning, I believe that he infected all who came near him with the spirit of inquiry. His associates and his students have gone on to spread the Lewis attitudes toward research and education. His influence continues and will continue. I am glad all of you have been ahle to honor him by your presence today. Sources (1) Personal rrminiamnses of Gilbert Newton Lewis and Mary Hammond Lewis (Aunt Poiiyl. (2) "The Lewis Family: The American Geneslogid Research Institute, 1501 Wilson Boulevard. Adingtan, VA 22209. (3) Records and gravestams of the West Claremont (N.H.1 Union Church (Epi~mpall. ( 4 ) Arthur Laehrnsn, "Bordedand of tho Unknawn-The Life Story of Gilbert Newton Lewis-One of the World's Great Scientists." Pageant Press. New York, 1955. ( 5 ) "In Hnnoraf Gilbert Newon Lewison hisSevenfieth Binhday~UnivemitvofCalifomis Press, Berkdoy, 1945. (6) Giaugue, W. F.. "Gilhert Newton Lewis." Year Book of The American Philosophical Society. Biographical Memoirs, pp. 317-322. 1946.