Otto Theodor Benfey

Sent to England to escape Nazi Germany at age 10, he completed his education as a chemist at University College London before moving to the United States.

His translations include The Japanese and Western Science by Masao Watanabe, The History of the International Chemical Industry by Fred Aftalion, and My 132 Semesters of Chemistry Studies by Vladimir Prelog.

His books include From vital force to structural formulas (1964), Introduction to Organic Reaction Mechanisms (1970), and Robert Burns Woodward.

Eduard Benfey, a graduate of the University of Göttingen, had served as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Economic Arbitration during the Weimar Republic.

He showed that "two salts could have inverse effects depending on the leaving group of the alkyl halide," the opposite of a prediction made by Louis Plack Hammett.

[2][5] Although he had fully intended to return to England, Benfey was approached by Haverford College, a Quaker institution, and invited to join the chemistry faculty.

[6] Also in 1949, Benfey attended the first meeting of the Society for Social Responsibility in Science (SSRS) at Haverford, organized by Victor Paschkis.

Like Christopher Kelk Ingold, Meldrum approached the teaching of chemistry from a historical and philosophical viewpoint, a model which Benfey followed.

Henry Margenau, a visiting professor from Yale University, recruited Benfey to translate Ernst Cassirer's Determinismus und Indeterminismus in der modernen Physik into English.

After graduating three National Science Foundation Fellowship awardees in its first group of students, the American Chemical Society's Committee on Professional Training (CPT) approved the Earlham curriculum, and accepted it as a model for "curricular innovation".

The work at Earlham also led to development of a United States high school curriculum for chemistry, The Chemical Bond Approach, which received international attention.

The elements form a two-dimensional spiral, starting from hydrogen, and folding their way around two peninsulars, the transition metals, and lanthanides and actinides.

[11] Benfey continued to publish articles and books on the history of chemistry, writing about scientists such as Archibald Scott Couper, Lothar Meyer, Jacobus Henricus van 't Hoff, and Alexander William Williamson.

[2] In 1970, Benfey and his family spent a year at Kwansei Gakuin University in Nishinomiya, Japan enabling him to deepen his interest in the history of science in the Far East.

[2] After their return, the Benfeys were approached by Grirnsley Hobbs, who eventually convinced them to move to Guilford College in North Carolina in 1973.

Benfey recruited David MacInnes and they began teaching continuing education courses on basic chemistry in the evening, targeting nearby Ciba-Geigy employees.

[12] Benfey wrote about a number of scientists, particularly Carl Schorlemmer, August Wilhelm von Hofmann, and Robert Burns Woodward.