Charles L. Parsons

Charles L. Parsons (1867-1954), full name Charles Lathrop Parsons, was an American analytical and inorganic chemist known for research on beryllium, for which he received the William H. Nichols Medal in 1905, and for two decades as a professor at the University of New Hampshire before becoming chief mineral chemist at the U.S. Bureau of Mines in 1912. He served as secretary of the American Chemical Society, part-time from 1907 to 1919 and full-time as its executive secretary and chief administrative officer from 1919 to 1946, a tenure in which the society membership grew from about 3,000 to 40,000 and it became a national organization based in Washington D.C. He received the Priestley Medal in 1932.