The Encyclopedia Americana (1920)/Whitney, Willis Rodney

WHITNEY, Willis Rodney, American chemical engineer: b. Jamestown, N. Y., 22 Aug. 1868. He was graduated at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1890 and took his Ph.D. at the University of Leipzig in 1894. He was appointed non-resident assistant professor of theoretical chemistry at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1904, and non-resident professor in 1908. Since 1904 he has been director of the research laboratory of the General Electric Company, Schenectady, N. Y. Among other results of his research work may be mentioned the perfecting of the metallic electric lamp filaments and the development of wrought tungsten. He was president of the American Chemical Society in 1910 and received its Willard Gibbs Medal in 1916. He was also president of the Electrochemical Society in 1911; and was appointed to the Naval Consulting Board in 1915. He is author of many papers in technical magazines and translator of Le Blanc's ‘Electro-Chemistry’ (1896).