Harry Boyer Weiser

Harry Boyer Weiser, chemistry professor, son of Calvin Wallace and Mary (Boyer) Weiser, was born on September 5, 1887, at Greencastle, Ohio. He received a B.A. at Ohio State University in 1911 and an M.A. in 1912. In 1914 he received a Ph.D. at Cornell University. Weiser was an instructor of chemistry at the University of Tennessee for one year before he moved to Rice Institute in Houston in 1915. He rose to the rank of professor of chemistry in 1919. In 1933 he became dean and at the time of his death was dean emeritus. During World War I Weiser served as a captain in the Chemical Warfare Service. He became widely known in the field of chemistry and was the author of the following works: Hydrous Oxides (1926); The Colloidal Salts (1928); Inorganic Colloidal Chemistry: The Colloidal Elements (1933), and numerous other articles on photochemistry and colloidal chemistry. He was associate editor of the Journal of Physical Chemistry. In 1948 he was listed among the world's best known colloidal chemists. Weiser married Hazel Eleanor McKean in 1915, and they had two children. He was a Democrat, a Mason, a Presbyterian, and a member of Phi Beta Kappa, Sigma Xi, and Phi Lambda Upsilon. Weiser died on September 27, 1950, in Houston.