Description: Papers of B. Smith Hopkins (1873-1952), professor of inorganic chemistry (1923-41), including correspondence with J. Allen Harris (Canada), Leonard F. Yntema, Charles James, William A. Noyes, David Kinley, Gerald Druce (England), G. Hevesy (Copenhagen), Manne Siegbahn (Upsala), R. J. Meyer (Berlin), S. Urbain (Paris), Luigi Rolla (Florence) and other chemists relating to research work on the rare earths, fractionation of rare earth solutions, element 61 or "illinium," shipment and use of rare earth salts, ionic migration method of separating rare earth, x-ray spectrographic analysis of rare earths, Hopkins' faculty appointment (1919), work of graduate students, textbooks and revisions, x-ray equipment, laboratory notebooks (1925-31), chemical manufacturing and Hopkins' genealogy. The papers include a posthumous list of Hopkins' publications, 12 books and 129 articles, copies of five articles (1924-44), three editions of his General Chemistry for College (1930, 1937, 1951), an edition of Essentials of Chemistry (1946) and a bound volume of his articles (1905-48).
Mrs. Hopkins' correspondence (1948, 1952, 1954-56, 1961, 1963) concerns the analysis of illinium samples by C. C. Kiess of the Bureau of Standards; efforts to locate samples lost by Argonne National Laboratories and F. Weigel's attempts to secure a sample for analysis. The series contains spectrography plates from Illinium analyses, a graph template of "Concentration of Illinium" and a box of chemicals.