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Lloyd A. Hall, Chemist born

Lloyd Hall

On this date, in 1894, Lloyd Hall was born. He was a Black food chemist.

Lloyd Augustus Hall Lloyd Hall was born in Elgin, IL. His father was a Baptist minister, and his grandfather was one of the first Black preachers at the church where his father was a minister.

After attending high school in Aurora, IL., Hall received his Bachelor of Science degree from Northwestern University in 1914, a Master of Science from Northwestern in 1916, and a Doctor of Science from Virginia State College in 1944. Dr. Hall served as junior and senior Sanitary Chemist of Chicago's Department of Health laboratories from 1915 to 1919. From 1919-1921, he also served as chief chemist for John Morrell and the Company of Ottumwa, Iowa.  He was president of the Chemical Products Corporation, Chicago, from 1921-1924.

Dr. Hall was a consultant for Griffith's Laboratories from 1925-1929, then as technical director and chief chemist of Griffith's Laboratories in Chicago (1929 –1946). From 1946-1959, Lloyd Hall served as technical director and as an assistant chief inspector of high explosives and research for the United States government in World War I.  Dr. Hall was a consultant in the subsistence development and research laboratories of the Quartermaster Corps of the U.S. Army during World War II. He held over 100 patents in the United States, Britain, and Canada.

After his retirement, he became a consultant to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. Lloyd Hall is responsible for many meat-curing products, seasonings, emulsions, bakery products, antioxidants, protein hydrolysates, and other substances that keep our food fresh and flavorful. Many of today's food preservative chemicals were pioneered by Dr. Hall's research. Before his discoveries, food preservatives were a matter of chance.

The most common preservative was a mixture of sodium nitrate and sodium nitrite. Preservation could be unreliable since too much sodium nitrite made foods bitter and unpalatable, but too little would not protect against spoilage. Lloyd Hall developed a successful combination of complex chemical salt that has proved to be the most satisfactory curing salt marketed in this country.  He developed new processes for sterilizing spices, cereals, other food materials, and pharmaceuticals, which are widely used today. In 1924, one of Hall's clients, Griffith Laboratories, gave him his lab to finish some of his work.  In 1925, he was appointed the chief chemist and director of research.

Lloyd Hall pioneered antioxidant use when he discovered that foods with fats and oils spoiled when certain ingredients react with oxygen in the air. He was the first to use lecithin, propyl gallate, and ascorbyl palmitate as antioxidants. He developed a process that made mixing these chemicals with food to protect it easier. One of his most successful products was an antioxidant salt mixture. His efforts in this area convinced Griffith Laboratories to open a large manufacturing facility devoted to protein hydrolysates.

People believed that spices preserved food, but Hall found that most spices, like cloves, ginger, and pork powder, held large amounts of dangerous molds, yeast, and bacteria. Hall found ethylene oxide gas, a well-known insecticide that effectively destroyed food-borne microbes. He found a way to remove mixtures and gases by subjecting the food to a vacuum and adding ethylene oxide gas into a vacuum chamber. "Vacuum" sterilization treatment was later applied to drugs, hospital supplies, and cosmetics.

The 20th-century scientific contributions made by Lloyd Hall made him one of America's top food chemists. He died on January 2, 1971.

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