Williams Haynes Portrait Collection

Williams Haynes was born on July 29, 1886 in Detroit, Michigan. After graduating from high school, Haynes worked as a reporter for the New York Sun before enrolling at Johns Hopkins University in 1908, where he studied economics, biology, and chemistry. Haynes left Johns Hopkins in 1911 and went on to have a prolific career as an author and editor specializing in the chemical industry. In 1928, Haynes established the Chemical Who's Who series and served as its editor until 1951. During this time, Haynes also published several monographs on various aspects of the history of the American chemical, including Chemical Economics (1933), Men, Money, and Molecules (1935), Chemical Pioneers (1939), and This Chemical Age (1942), as well as the multi-volume American Chemical Industry: A History (1945-1954).

Over the course of his career, Haynes amassed a sizeable collection of portraits of chemists and industry notables, which he donated to the Chemists' Club of New York City in 1958. Organized in 1898 as an off-shoot of the New York City chapter of the American Chemical Society, the Chemists' Club provides networking and social opportunities for professionals in the chemical and related industries. After acquiring Haynes' trove of portraits, the Chemists' Club augmented the collection with portraits of its own members before donating the entire collection to the Chemical Heritage Foundation in 1998.