Herbert Newby McCoy

Herbert Newby McCoy (June 29, 1870, Richmond, Indiana – May 7, 1945, Los Angeles, California) was an American chemist who taught at the University of Chicago and the University of Utah and was the vice-president of Lindsay Light & Chemical Company. He contributed numerous papers on physical chemistry, radioactivity and rare earths.

Background McCoy was born in Richmond, Indiana, on June 29, 1870. His father died when he was young, leaving him to earn his own education. He earned his BS (1892) and MS (1893) from Purdue University where he worked with Winthrop E. Stone. He worked as a chemist for Swift and Company in Chicago and as a teacher at Fargo College in North Dakota before returning to university.

McCoy published numerous papers on physical chemistry, radioactivity and rare earths. He was the first person to demonstrate that the alpha-ray activity of a compound is proportional to its uranium content, quantitatively indicating that radioactivity is an atomic property. On this relationship is based a standard of measurement, the McCoy number. McCoy also proved that uranium is a parent of radium.

As early as 1911, McCoy introduced the term "synthetic metals". McCoy and William C. Moore attempted to use electrolysis to produce a metallic species from tetramethylammonium salts. Extending the work of Thomas Johann Seebeck (1770–1831) to organic quaternary amines, instead of simple ammonium salts, they reported what was believed to be the first organic metal. Electrolysis produced of a crystalline solid with a metallic luster which displayed electrical conductivity similar to that of metals. It was believed to be a mercury amalgam with the general formula HgN(CH3)4 until 1986, when Allen J. Bard proposed a more compelling explanation for the results.

McCoy died on May 7, 1945

Recognition McCoy received the Willard Gibbs Award in 1937. At that time, he was described by Marie Curie as the "foremost American authority on radioactivity".

The Herbert Newby McCoy Award at Purdue University was established in 1964 by Mrs. Ethel M. Terry McCoy in honor of her husband.