George Chapman Caldwell

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George Chapman Caldwell (August 14, 1834 – September 7, 1907) was an American chemist, horticulturalist, and teacher who helped shape Cornell University’s science programs. He was born in Framingham, Massachusetts, the son of a Unitarian minister. He studied at Harvard and earned a Ph.D. from Göttingen in 1856 after time with prominent scientists Wöhler and Bunsen.

Caldwell taught at Columbia College, then at Antioch College. During the Civil War, he served with the U.S. Sanitary Commission as chief clerk and hospital visitor. He later became a professor at Pennsylvania State College and eventually its vice president.

With the founding of Cornell University in 1868, Caldwell became the first professor of agriculture and analytic chemistry. As chair of the chemistry department, he helped grow the school’s chemistry program into a leading center for education and research. In 1869 he published Agricultural Chemical Analysis, the first textbook on agricultural science. He led the new Cornell Agricultural Experiment Station starting in 1879 and retired as professor emeritus in 1903, dying in Ithaca, New York, in 1907.

Caldwell helped found the Society for the Promotion of Agricultural Science, served as president of the Official Agricultural Chemists, and was a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, becoming its vice president in 1881. He was president of the American Chemical Society in 1892. Caldwell Hall at Cornell was named after him in 1913. His daughter Grace Wilmarth Caldwell graduated from Cornell in 1892.