Frederick Gardner Cottrell - Biography

Biography

A native of Oakland, California, Cottrell’s immense curiosity gained him notice early in life. One acquaintance said, “He read textbooks like novels.” He finished high school at age 16, entered the University of California, Berkeley, and graduated in 3 years. After graduation, he taught chemistry at Oakland High School, saving money (his annual salary was $1,200) until he could afford to continue his formal education. A notation in his diary, dated January 15, 1900, reads: “Week for lunch and yard duty at school.”

At the time, it was common for American scientists to conduct their graduate studies abroad. To that end, Cottrell left for Europe in July 1900 on the German steamer Waesland, and made land in England where he visited the “Cavendish labs…Hyde Park, Kensington Gardens, House of Parliament, Westminster Abbey and the Crystal Palace” in London; and “the Bodleian Library, Sheldonian Theatre and the Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology” in Oxford.

Then he went to Paris where he visited the Exposition Universelle, the 1900 world’s fair designed to celebrate the achievements of the past century and to accelerate development into the next. There, Cottrell saw the new Eiffel Tower (“ to summit”), and visited “Old Paris.” His diary entry on August 11th notes: “got up at 5 a.m. on account of bed bugs. Shook out and packed up things and made arrangements… to change room.”

From Paris, Cottrell traveled to Berlin where he began his studies at University of Berlin with Jacobus Henricus van 't Hoff, receiving an advanced degree in 1901. The following year, van’t Hoff was awarded the first-ever Nobel Prize in chemistry “in recognition of the extraordinary services he has rendered by the discovery of the laws of chemical dynamics and osmotic pressure in solutions.”

Cottrell then moved to Leipzig University where he studied with Wilhelm Ostwald, undertaking a theoretical study of the effect of the counterflow of an electrolyte on the migration of ions through a diaphragm in an electrolytic cell. A month after his arrival in Leipzig, Cottrell wrote to his future wife, Jessie Fulton, “My old-time enthusiasm, which during my Berlin stay may sometimes have waned a little, is coming back in full force and I find I have about twice to four times as many schemes to try as there is possibly time for. The change is mainly due, I think, to my being turned loose once more on my own work and being thrown in contact with a large number of men with diverse ideas.” For his work with Ostwald, Cottrell earned a Ph.D. in 1902. Ostwald received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1909.

Cottrell struggled with learning new languages. In France, his efforts to speak French were often met with blank stares. Although his German became good enough to study with German scientists, and to write his dissertation, he was far from fluent. Inspired no doubt by Ostwald (who studied Esperanto, and backed another constructed language, Ido, by donating the proceeds of his Nobel Prize for its support), Cottrell became interested in the movement to establish a universal language for speakers of different linguistic backgrounds. In 1924, he was one of the founders of the International Auxiliary Language Association.

Degrees in hand, Cottrell returned to California and began teaching at University of California, Berkeley. On New Year’s Day 1904, he married Jessie Mae Fulton, a former high-school classmate he had met in botany class. Jessie was shy and frail, a sharp contrast to Cottrell’s bounding enthusiasm and unending energy. When he proposed, Cottrell declared his love, with the proviso, “but my work comes first.” After two difficult pregnancies and the loss of two children, they settled into a quiet, solitary life. They enjoyed reading aloud to one another, travel, and attending lectures and theatre performances.