Charles F. Chandler - Academic Career

Academic Career

After completing his degree, Chandler returned to the United States to pursue his own scientific career. Upon his return, in 1857, Chandler became the chemical assistant at Professor Charles Joy's laboratory at Union College in Schenectady, New York and shortly thereafter began to lecture on Mineralogy and Geology at the College as well as manage the laboratory. He became an associate professor at the College in 1857 at the age of 21. Shortly after, he and his younger brother William became members of The Kappa Alpha Society, of which Joy was also a member. He remained at Union College for the next 7 years during which time he ran the chemistry lab and married his first wife, Anna Craig Chandler.

His tenure at Union College ended in 1864 when Chandler was asked by his former colleague, Professor Joy, to consider taking on the Chair of Chemistry at the newly formed Columbia University School of Mines that Professor Thomas Egleston and General Vinton were attempting to start under Columbia President Barnard. Chandler gladly took the opportunity to move to New York, and begin his long relationship with Columbia University.

The School of Mines, later to develop into the School of Engineering and Applied Science, consisted at this time of one room in the basement of a Madison Avenue academic building. Within the first year of the School's existence, Chandler took on the position of Dean, and under his leadership in that first year the school moved to a larger four floor building and doubled the number of students enrolled in its program of study. Chandler was to remain dean of the School of Mines for the next 33 years, through its move to its new home on Columbia's Morningside Campus and into Havemeyer Hall, the state-of-the-art Chemistry building that he helped to design and raise funds.

During the period he was the organizer of the American Chemical Society and its president from 1881 to 1889.

Though he stepped down as the Dean of the School of Mines in 1897, he continued to teach chemistry at Columbia University until 1910, and proved to be an extremely popular and engaging instructor. One of his former pupils provided the testimony that "He was the most popular professor at Columbia for the forty-seven years he was active. This was due to his ability to place himself on a level and equality with his hearers, or indeed anyone he met… He was a child among children, a man of science among scientific men, but more particularly, he was a real man among his fellow men." This sentiment is echoed in the Columbia College Jester piece that commemorates him upon his retirement, "Year after year he has taken the entering classes by the hand and led them through a course of Chemistry, Ethics, and Humor so cleverly combined that it has made men of them."

Though Chandler is perhaps most associated with the School of Mines, he also, starting in 1867, began lecturing in Chemistry for the New York College of Pharmacy. He acted as president of this school until 1897 when it formalized its relationship to Columbia University and was incorporated as a University Faculty in 1897. He also lectured in Columbia's College of Physicians and Surgeons in 1872 where he taught chemistry and medical jurisprudence and called for a more rigorous scientific training for medical professionals. In addition to his instructional and administrative duties, Chandler also started a Chemical Museum, later named the Chandler Chemical Museum in his honor, to highlight the accomplishments of modern industrial and analytic chemistry.

While Chandler was a very popular instructor, he was not always so popular among his colleagues. He spent much of his time acting as an expert witness in various legal cases and patent disputes, and performed independent consulting work for companies such as Standard Oil. Many of Chandler's colleagues had concerns that Chandler was more focused on his profitable, outside consulting work than he was on his academic and administrative duties.

Though he was not entirely without controversy, Chandler remained an integral part chemical education at Columbia University until 1911 when he finally, after 46 years of service at Columbia and 54 years of college teaching, retired from teaching. Upon retirement he and his second wife Augusta Berard Chandler continued to reside in New York City, but spent more and more time at their summer home in Westhampton and at her family's home in New Hartford, Connecticut, where Chandler died in 1925.