Earle B. Phelps

Earle Bernard Phelps (July 10, 1876 – May 29, 1953) was a chemist, bacteriologist and sanitary expert who served in governmental positions and as an academic in some of the leading universities in the U.S. He is known for his contributions in sewage disinfection, water chlorination, sewage treatment, milk pasteurization, shellfish control, and for describing the “oxygen sag curve” in surface water bodies.

Early life and education Phelps was born on July 10, 1876, in Galesburg, Illinois, the county seat of Knox County, not far from the Iowa border and 156 miles (251 kilometers) southwest of Chicago. His parents were Lucius Joshua Phelps and Ida May Taylor. Lucius (1850–1925) was the inventor who specialized in telegraphy. His paternal ancestry can be traced for six generations to William Phelps, Sr. (1599–1672), the English immigrant who came to America in 1630 and settled in Windsor, Connecticut. Earle received his early education in New Jersey schools. He graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1899 with a Bachelor of Science degree in chemistry. While a student at MIT, Phelps was influenced by his teacher and mentor, William T. Sedgwick.

Career

After graduating from MIT and until 1903, Phelps worked as an assistant bacteriologist at the famous Lawrence Experiment Station in Lawrence, Massachusetts. From 1903 until 1911, he was a chemist/microbiologist with the Sanitary Research Laboratory at MIT. During this same period, he worked for the U.S. Geological Survey as an assistant hydrographer. In part, he worked on the purification of industrial wastes and he began his investigations on stream pollution with that agency. In 1910 to 1911 he conducted groundbreaking research with Colonel William M. Black of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers on the pollution of New York Harbor. This work established for the first time the concept of using dissolved oxygen concentrations in the water as a measure of water quality in the harbor.

In 1913, he left MIT and became the head of the Chemistry Division at the U.S. Hygienic Laboratory in Washington, DC., which was part of the U.S. Public Health Service.

In 1919, Phelps left the Hygienic Laboratory to accept an academic position at Stanford University. Later, he also taught at Columbia University from 1925 until 1943. From 1944 until his death in 1953 he was a professor of sanitary science at the University of Florida at Gainesville.

Phelps had a long and distinguished career as a consulting sanitary expert. He worked for many cities helping them resolve problems with water treatment and sewage disposal.

Phelps testified that the addition of chloride of lime did not make the water from Boonton Reservoir pure and wholesome. He believed that sewers should be constructed in the watershed to transport the wastes below the dam where a sewage disposal plant would treat the wastes and discharge the effluent into the Rockaway River.

Despite his opposition to chlorination of the Jersey City water supply, Phelps was a strong proponent of the chlorination of sewage and sewage disposal plant effluents before discharge into a lake or river. Prior to 1909, Phelps conducted numerous experiments on chlorination of sewage and sewage disposal plant effluents. He worked on this research area at the MIT Sanitary Research Laboratory with Charles-Edward A. Winslow and he also conducted investigations while working for the New Jersey Sewerage Commission and the Baltimore Sewerage Commission. He found that chloride of lime was "…the most efficient germicide that we have now available". Orthotolidine is still used in test kits to determine chlorine levels in swimming pools.

Personal life

On October 29, 1902, he married Helen May Ellis of Lawrence, Massachusetts. They had five children and at his death, he had ten grandchildren.

Professional associations

Phelps was active in a long list of professional associations including the American Society of Civil Engineers, American Chemical Society, American Public Health Association, Society of American Bacteriologists, American Association for the Advancement of Science, the New England Water Works Association, Massachusetts Association of Boards of Health and the Boston Society of Civil Engineers. In 1964, the Florida Section of the Water Environment Federation established the Earle B. Phelps Award, which is given annually to a wastewater treatment plant for outstanding operation. The University of Florida named one of its laboratory buildings in Phelps's honor.

Limited list of publications

Phelps, Earle B. (1909). "The Disinfection of Sewage and Sewage Filter Effluents." Water-Supply Paper 229. Washington, DC:U.S. Geological Survey. Phelps, Earle B. (1910). “The Disinfection of Water and Sewage.” In Contributions from the Sanitary Research Laboratory and Sewage Experiment Station. Boston:MIT, 1–17. Phelps, Earle B. (1910). “Disinfection of Sewage and Sewage Effluents.” Transactions American Society for Municipal Improvements. reprinted in Contributions from the Sanitary Research Laboratory and Sewage Experiment Station. Boston:MIT, 1910, 1–8. Streeter, H.W. and Earle B. Phelps. (1925). "A Study of the Pollution and Natural Purification of the Ohio River." Public Health Bulletin No. 146. Washington, DC:United States Public Health Service (February 1925). Phelps, Earle B. (1950). Public Health Engineering: A Textbook of the Principles of Environmental Sanitation. Volumes 1 and 2. New York:Wiley. Phelps, Earle B. (1953). “They were Giants in Those Days.” American Journal of Public Health. 43 (June): 15–19.