Edward G. Brame, Jr. Papers

Edward G. Brame, Jr. was an American chemist and spectroscopist. He was born in Shiloh, New Jersey on March 20, 1927 and spent his childhood living in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. In 1948, Brame graduated from Dickinson College and received his master’s degree from Columbia University. From 1950 to 1953, he worked at the Corn Products Refining Company as a research chemist. He was awarded his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin in 1957. Brame worked at the DuPont Company for twenty-seven years in the Elastomer Chemicals and Polymer Products Departments. Along with Dr. Edward Dunlop, he co-founded the Federation of Analytical Chemistry and Spectroscopy Societies (FACSS) and served in several capacities over the years as the organization’s president, secretary, and exhibits chairperson.

In 1984, Brame retired from DuPont but continued working as a consulting chemist. He became co-founder and president of the CECON Group in 1985. As a consultant, he became involved in the study of parapsychology, to which he brought his skills as an analytical chemist. In 1986, he was commissioned by the Mobius Society to study whether the physical composition of water underwent change as the result of healing energies being applied to it. Although these activities may have seemed unorthodox to those who knew him only as a respected spectroscopist, he strongly opposed what he regarded as “scientific fundamentalism” (the refusal of scientists to probe beyond established boundaries). Much of his interest in phenomena like therapeutic touch and eyeless sight was piqued during his National Academy of Science-sponsored trips to the Soviet Union, where parapsychology was studied more seriously than in the United States. He and his wife Grace visited the Soviet Union to work and lecture five times between 1981 and 1990.

Brame was an active member of several organizations: Eastern Analytical Symposium (EAS), Society of Applied Spectroscopy (SAS), Colloquium Spectroscopium International (CSI), American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM), Subcommittee on Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR), and the Chemical Instrumentation Group for the Chemical Heritage Instrumentation Foundation. He served on the Awards Committee of the American Chemical Society (ACS). He was also the editor of Applied Spectroscopy Reviews for thirty years, editor of Practical Spectroscopy for twenty-two years, and associate editor of Applied Spectroscopy for five years.

Edward G. Brame, Jr. died suddenly while vacationing in Shanghai, China on September 1, 2002.

Sources

Edward G. Brame, Jr. Papers, Science History Institute Archives, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.