Arie Jan Haagen-Smit
Arie Jan Haagen-Smit (December 22, 1900 Utrecht - March 17, 1977, Pasadena, California) was a Dutch chemist. He is best known for linking the smog in Southern California to automobiles and is therefore known by many as the "father" of air pollution control. After serving as an original board member of the Motor Vehicle Pollution Control Board, formed in 1960 to combat the smog, Dr. Haagen-Smit became the California Air Resources Board's first chairman in 1968. Shortly before his death, of lung cancer, the Air Resources Board's El Monte Laboratory was named after him.
He attended the Rijks Hoogere Burger School in Utrecht. He graduated from University of Utrecht in 1922 with a major in organic chemistry. He earned his M.A. degree in 1926 and Ph.D. in 1929. His work was on terpenes, a hydrocarbon found in plants. His dissertation is titled “Investigations in the Field of Sesquiterpenes.”
He stayed at the University of Utrecht from 1929 to 1935 as chief assistant. He became an expert in plant derived chemicals, particularly Auxins, a hormone. He was invited to lecture at Harvard University in 1936 by Kenneth Thimann. He was appointed as associate professor by California Institute of Technology in 1937 by Thomas Hunt Morgan, and professor in 1940, becoming one of the "Dutch Mafia" at Caltech. (One other member of the mafia was Frits Warmolt Went.) Two other scientists and he jointly published a paper on traumatic acid, a wound healing hormone, in Science in 1939. He was the director of the Plant Environmental Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology from 1965 to 1971.
Air Pollution Fighter
He started his air pollution research in 1948, when Southern California residents suffered stinging eyes and respiratory irritation from the smog. Although his original concern started from the sickness of his plants, he had received many requests from government agencies to investigate air pollution. He identified unburned hydrocarbons, ozone, and nitrogen oxides from automobile exhaust and industrial fuel combustion as primary precursors to smog, and he developed a test to measure the intensity of the smog. His research led the automobile industry to install positive crankcase ventilation, the first vehicle emissions control system, in 1961. In 1968 he was appointed the first Chairman of the California Air Resources Board by Ronald Reagan, California's Governor at the time. Reagan fired him in 1973 for refusing to weaken pollution control efforts.
1964 the Tolman Award of American Chemical Society
He was the trustee of the American Chemical Society.
1977 On January 3 the existing California Air Resources Board Laboratory in El Monte, Ca. was dedicated to Dr. Haagen-Smit. It is called the "Haagen-Smit Laboratory."
In 1930, he married Petronella Francina Pennings. They had a son, Jan Willem Adrianus, before her death in 1933. On June 10, 1935, he married Maria Wilhelmina Bloemers, a graduate student of Botany in the University of Utrecht. They had three daughters: Maria Van Pelt, Margaret Scott, and Joan Demers.
- A. J. Haagen-Smit Biography
- The History of California Environmental Protection Agency
- Haagen-Smit, Zus. interview by Shirley K. Cohen. Pasadena, California, March 16 and 20, 2000. Oral History Project, California Institute of Technology Archives.