James Mason Crafts
Crafts, James Mason
Born Mar. 8, 1839, in Boston; died June 20, 1917, in Ridgefield, Conn. American chemist.
Crafts studied chemistry in Germany and France (1859–65). He was dean and professor of chemistry at Cornell University (1866–70) and professor of chemistry (1870–74) and president (from 1898) of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Crafts worked in Paris with C. Friedel from 1874 to 1891; they jointly discovered (1877) a method for the synthesis of aromatic hydro-carbons and their derivatives (Friedel-Crafts reaction). Crafts also studied organic silicon compounds and did research in the areas of thermometry and catalysis.