Jacob G. Lipman

Russian-born Jacob G. Lipman served as dean of Rutgers’ former College of Agriculture and director of the Rutgers-based New Jersey Agricultural Experiment Station from 1911 until his death in 1939. As a first-year student, he spent his free hours working at the College Farm to meet expenses. Upon graduation, he worked as an assistant chemist in the fertilizer inspection lab before heading to Cornell University, where he earned a master’s degree and doctorate. He joined the Rutgers faculty, established a department of soil chemistry and bacteriology, and taught agricultural chemistry. He was the founder and editor-in-chief of Soil Science and wrote and delivered many papers on soil chemistry, soil bacteriology, and agronomy. In 1922, the French Academy of Agriculture awarded him a silver medal. In 1923, 25 years after his graduation, Rutgers awarded him an honorary doctorate. In his biography of Lipman, Selman A. Waksman RC’15 wrote, “Within a quarter of a century, Lipman raised the status of the experiment station from one of secondary significance in the field of agriculture to one of the leading scientific and agricultural institutions in the world.”