Williams Haynes was born on July 29, 1886 in Detroit, Michigan and worked as a reporter for the New York Sun before studying economics, biology, and chemistry at Johns Hopkins University. After leaving Johns Hopkins in 1911, Haynes built a prolific career as an author and editor specializing in the chemical industry. In 1928, Haynes established the Chemical Who’s Who series and served as its editor until 1951.
Williams Haynes Portrait Collection, Science History Institute Archives. Object ID 2003.900.644.
The Williams Haynes Portrait Collection consists of approximately 1,700 portraits of chemists, chemical industrialists, and notable individuals from chemical-related fields that Haynes amassed over the course of his career. In 1958, Haynes donated his collection to the Chemists’ Club of New York City, which augmented it with portraits of its own members before donating the entire collection to the Science History Institute in 1998. Portraits are arranged alphabetically by subject and span the 1800s to the 1960s, though the majority of the collection dates from the first half of the twentieth century.