author
William Anderson Syme
b. 1879
An early American chemist from Raleigh, North Carolina, he is remembered for a focused 1906 study of poison ivy that turns a familiar backyard menace into a subject of careful scientific investigation.
1 Audiobook
Some Constituents of the Poison Ivy Plant (Rhus Toxicodendron)
by William Anderson Syme
About the author
Born in Raleigh on July 11, 1879, William Anderson Syme studied at the North Carolina College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts, earning a B.S. in 1899 and later an M.S. after graduate work there. He then continued his chemistry studies at Johns Hopkins University, where he carried out the research that became his best-known publication.
His surviving work, Some Constituents of the Poison Ivy Plant (Rhus Toxicodendron), was published in 1906 as a doctoral dissertation. In it, he examined the chemistry of poison ivy in a clear, methodical way, showing the practical curiosity of an early twentieth-century scientist working at the meeting point of botany, medicine, and chemistry.
Syme died in Raleigh on December 15, 1909, at just 30 years old. Only a small published record appears to survive, but the work that remains gives a vivid glimpse of a careful researcher interested in explaining an everyday natural hazard through laboratory science.