Farrington Daniels

Farrington Daniels was an American chemist, born March 8, 1889 in Minneapolis, Minnesota and died June 23, 1972, who helped establish practical solar energy research as a serious scientific field. After earning a chemistry degree from the University of Minnesota and a doctorate from Harvard in 1914 under Theodore William Richards, he taught at Worcester Polytechnic Institute before joining the University of Wisconsin in 1920, where he rose to chair the chemistry department and remained until 1959; he also directed the Manhattan Project's Metallurgical Laboratory from 1944 to 1946 and chaired the first Board of Governors of Argonne National Laboratory from 1946 to 1948. As director of the University of Wisconsin's Solar Energy Laboratory, he researched practical uses for solar power including cooking, space heating, drying, distillation, refrigeration and thermoelectric conversion, believing the technology held particular promise for the developing world, and in 1964 published Direct Use of the Sun's Energy, an influential survey that helped popularize solar technology. He received the Willard Gibbs Award in 1955 and the Priestley Medal in 1957, and was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1947.