Withers, Founder of Chemistry, North Carolina College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts
In 1889, 135 years ago, Professor William Alphonso Withers, Professor of Pure and Agricultural Chemistry, founded the Department of Chemistry at NC State University, formerly the North Carolina College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts.
William Alphonso Withers was born in Riverview, near Davidson, and raised on a farm there. He was the son of William Banks and Sarah L. Rutledge Withers. He graduated from Davidson College with a B.A. degree in 1883 and an M.A. in 1885. From 1884 through 1888, he served as Assistant Chemist at the North Carolina Agricultural Experiment Station in Raleigh. From 1888 to 1890, he was a Sage Fellow at Cornell University.
From 1889 until 1923, he was a Pure and Agricultural Chemistry Professor at the North Carolina State College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts (currently NC State University). He also served as the North Carolina State Chemist from 1897 to 1898 and the Acting Director of the North Carolina Agricultural Experiment Station from 1897 to 1899. From 1916 through 1923, he served as Vice President of North Carolina State College, and from 1917 through 1923, he was the Summer School Director.
Withers is best remembered as the author of the North Carolina Pure Food Law (1899) and the co-discoverer, with C. F. E. Carruth, of gossypol, the toxic principle of cottonseed (1915). He was president of the American Association of Official Analytical Chemists (1909–10) and the North Carolina Academy of Science (1917–18).
Davidson College awarded Withers a Sc.D. degree in 1917, and in 1938, in recognition of his immense contribution to the college, agriculture and health in the state, North Carolina State College named its new chemistry building in his memory. In 1940, The Department of Chemistry, formerly called the Department of Agricultural and Biological Chemistry, was relocated from Winston Hall to Withers Hall.
Not merely an academic researcher, Withers had intense civic interests. During World War I, he was a member of the North Carolina Council of Defense and the Wake County Food Administrative Board and served on the executive committee of the Raleigh Red Cross. He was an elder of the First Presbyterian Church and president of the Young Women’s Christian Association; from 1919 to 1924, he sat on the executive committee of the Wake County Board of Education. At his death, he was president of the Raleigh Chamber of Commerce.
William Withers died in Raleigh, Wake County, North Carolina, on June 20, 1924.
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