Early Life
Adams was born in Boston, Massachusetts and grew up in a prosperous neighborhood in South Boston, the last child in a gifted family that included Adams's three older sisters (two went to Radcliffe College and one to Smith College). Adams was part of the prominent Adams family, and was descended from John Adams's grandfather.
Adams attending Boston Latin School and Cambridge Latin High School (now called Cambridge Rindge and Latin). In 1900, the family moved to Cambridge, which was closer to the two colleges.
Adams entered Harvard University in 1905 and completed the requirements for a bachelor's degree in three years. In his first year he earned a John Harvard Honorary Scholarship by getting four As, and in his last year he took advanced courses and began research in organic chemistry under H.A. Torrey. His years at Harvard were undistinguished, earning high grades in chemistry (his major) and mining (his minor). After graduation from Harvard in 1909 he worked towards his Ph.D. at Radcliffe College supported by a teaching assistantship. Torrey died unexpectedly in 1910, so Adams finished his Ph.D. under Charles Loring Jackson, George Shannon Forbes, and Latham Clarke. In 1912 he was initiated as a brother of Alpha Chi Sigma at Omicron Chapter at Harvard. As an outstanding Ph.D. of 1912, Adams received a Parker Traveling Scholarship for 1912 and 1913, which he used to work at the laboratory of Emil Fischer and Otto Diels in Berlin, Germany and that of Richard Willstätter in Dahlem outside of Berlin.
After returning from Europe in 1913, Adams returned to Harvard and worked as a research assistant for Charles L. Jackson for $800 a year. During the next three years he taught organic chemistry at Harvard and Radcliffe, initiated the first elementary organic chemistry laboratory at Harvard and began his own research program. Several other prominent contemporaries of Adams at Harvard Graduate School were Elmer Keiser Bolton, Farrington Daniels, Frank C. Whitmore, James B. Sumner and James Bryant Conant.
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