author
L. M. Tolman
b. 1875
A government chemist and early food investigator, this author wrote practical, detail-rich studies on beer, oils, and other everyday products. His work offers a snapshot of how science was used to test and understand what Americans were eating and drinking in the early 1900s.
1 Audiobook
A Study of American Beers and Ales
by James Garfield Riley, L. M. Tolman
About the author
The available records identify L. M. Tolman as Lucius Moody Tolman, born in 1875. He worked as a chemist connected with the United States Department of Agriculture's Bureau of Chemistry, the agency that carried out early federal food and drug investigations.
Tolman published technical studies on subjects including olive oil, fats and oils, fruit products, and American beers and ales. In A Study of American Beers and Ales (1917), he is listed as Chief, Central Inspection District, working with chemist J. Garfield Riley. His writing is careful and methodical, aimed at analyzing how foods and drinks were made and how their composition could be measured.
Biographical details beyond his birth year are not easy to confirm from the sources I found, so this portrait remains necessarily brief. Still, the surviving publications show a scientist deeply involved in the practical chemistry of food quality and regulation during a formative period in American public health.