Joel H. Hildebrand

Joel H. Hildebrand (1881-1983) was an American physical chemist at the University of California, Berkeley, from 1913 until his death, and dean of its College of Chemistry from 1949 to 1951. He was a pioneer of the study of the solubility of nonelectrolytes, coining the term regular solution in 1927 for solutions that depart in specific, predictable ways from ideal behavior, and his 1924 monograph Solubility served as the standard reference in the field for decades. He also introduced helium-oxygen breathing mixtures for divers in the mid-1920s to reduce decompression sickness, and received the Priestley Medal in 1962.