Chemist. He was an American chemist in the early 20th century as well as a scholar of physiology, philosophy, biology, and sociology. His work contributed to the Henderson-Hasselbalch equation, used to calculate the pH of acidity. For his work on the acid base equilibrium of the blood., he was nominated five times for the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine in years of 1925, 1928, and 1932. One of the nominators was Bernardo Alberto Houssay, the recipient of the 1947 Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine. The son of a businessman, he entered Harvard University at the age of 16 in 1894, graduating magna cum laude in 1898 and from Harvard Medical School in 1902, receiving the Medical Doctor degree cum laude. He studied chemical research at Hofmeister's laboratory for two years at the University of Strasbourg in France before starting at Harvard University as a lecturer in 1904 and eventually, becoming professor of biological chemistry in 1919. The same year, he became a member of the National Academy of Science. He was the Abbott and James Lawrence Professor of Chemistry from 1934 until his death. He served as the first president of the History of Science Society from 1924 to 1925. He did research on the acid-base balance of blood-related to the function of the lungs, kidneys, and amount of red blood cells. He studied clinical fatigue, the environment and the actions on the human body, before authoring, "The Fitness of the Environment" in 1913, "The Order of Nature" in 1917, "Blood, A Study in General Physiology" in 1928 and "Pareto's General Sociology: A Physiologist's Interpretation" in 1935. He created the fatigue laboratory at Harvard University. In 1928 he delivered the Silliman lectures at Yale University and the Leyden lecture at the University of Berlin. In 1910 he married Edith Lawrence Thayer, and the couple had as son, Lawrence Joseph, Jr. With his wife's chronic incurable invalidism, he lived a solitude life, yet his wife survived him by three years.