William Lyman Underwood

In late 1895, the William Underwood Company decided that they had had enough with tin cans that had "swells" in them, causing a great deal of product loss.

Underwood approached William Thompson Sedgwick, the chair of the biology department at MIT about the concerns he had with the recent product swells and explosion of clams.

These studies prompted the similar research of canned lobster, sardines, peas, tomatoes, corn, and spinach.

At the Institute of Food Technologists Northeast Section (Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont) meeting at Watertown, Massachusetts, in April 1961, the William Underwood Company dedicated a new laboratory in honor of both Prescott and William Lyman Underwood.

Three MIT faculty have held this professorship since its inception: Samuel A. Goldblith, Gerald N. Wogan, and since 1996, Stephen R. Tannebaum.