Clevenger’s separator and the acceptance of grief

By Andrea Sella2024-05-30T08:45:00

A diagram of the separator developed by Clevenger. The panel on the right shows the two different positions of the bypass tube, which allowed oils that were either more or less dense than water to be collected

Source: J F Clevenger, J Am Pharm Assoc., 1928, 17, 345-349

Numerous tragedies beset the life of Joseph Franklin Clevenger (1874–1945)

How does one deal with grief? It is ineluctable and yet some seem to weather it with external serenity while others are incapacitated. One who suffered more than many during his career in science was Joseph Clevenger, the inventor of glassware for the extraction of essential oils from plant samples.

He was one of 14 siblings in Ohio, in the American heartland. He attended Ohio State University to study botany, where he met Mary Dresbach, the younger sister of a physiology instructor. They shared a love of fungi and married in July 1902. After Clevenger graduated with a master’s degree in 1905, they lived in Chicago for a spell, probably working as teachers. In 1910, their first child William died at birth.