Stanley Rossiter Benedict (17 March 1884 – 21 December 1936) was an American chemist best known for discovering Benedict's reagent, a solution that detects certain sugars.
Personal life
Stanley Rossiter Benedict was born on March 17, 1884, to a family of six children in Cincinnati. His father, Wayland Richardson Benedict was a professor of Philosophy and Psychology at the University of Cincinnati. His mother, Anne Kendrick Benedict, was a writer and a teacher and his maternal grandmother, a Professor of Greek, Latin and Sanskrit at the University of Rochester and was an editor of the King James Version of the Bible. written by Ruth Benedict, is an illustration of her married life with Stanley. During World War I (1914-1918), Stanley had an accident and was gassed while working on a government project concerning poisonous gas which had a negative impact on his health. He received his B.A. degree in Chemistry in 1906 at the University of Cincinnati and his PhD two years after (1908) in Physiological Chemistry at Yale University by working with Russel H. Chittenden and Lafayette Benedict Mendel. and Biological Chemistry the following year at Columbia University. From 1910 to 1936, Benedict taught Biochemistry at the medical school of Cornell University while at the same time running the Journal of Biological Chemistry as an editor in chief.