Died 1937United States Fields Chemistry | Known for food preservation Name Katherine Bitting | |
Institutions United States Department of Agriculture Alma mater Massachusetts Institute of Technology Purdue University | ||
Katherine Golden Bitting (1868-1937) was a food chemist for the United States Department of Agriculture, and the American Canners Association. She was a prolific author on the topic of food preservation. She and her husband Avril Bitting donated a significant collection of materials related to cookery to the Library of Congress. Many modern food safety practices and techniques result directly from research conducted by Katherine and her husband Arvill.
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Personal life
Katherine Bitting was born April 29, 1869, in Stratford Canada. Her family immigrated to Massachusetts in the United States when she was young. She married to Arvill Wayne Bitting, a professor of veterinary science, cookery expert and author of several cookbooks. Katherine and Arvill Wayne Bitting formed a close partnership, working at the same institutions and collaborating on several publications.
Education and early career
Bitting earned a Bachelor of Science degree from the Salem Normal School, now Salem State University, studied bacteriology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a Masters of Science in Biology from Purdue University in 1892, where she became an instructor soon after graduating. Bitting held a position with the Purdue Agricultural Extension Station while completing her masters thesis and in 1893 she became an assistant professor at Purdue, teaching biology, structural botany, and bacteriology.
Professional career
In September 1907 Bitting was appointed as a microanalyst in the chemistry division of the US Department of Agriculture, Bureau of Chemistry, where she worked with Avril Bitting and gained expertise on food preservation and related topics, authoring nearly fifty pamphlets in that subject area. During her time at the Bureau of Chemistry, Katherine worked as a microbotanist. Her first job involved working with her husband to develop a method of producing ketchup without using added preservatives. To answer this question, the Bittings turned their Lafayette home into a ketchup factory producing hundreds of bottles of ketchup. They collected ketchup samples from dozens of factories for analysis. Observing the samples and performing spoilage experiments, they determined the addition of sugar and vinegar will prevent spoiling. Arvill Bitting published their findings under the title Experiments on the Spoilage of Tomato Ketchup in 1909. In 1915 two additional monographs were published. Ketchup Methods of Manufacturer and Microscopic. In the 1920s, Katherine and her husband began working for the National Canners Association as a microanalyst. Working in the field the Bitting couple went on to publish Appertizing or, The Art of Canning in 1937. Her 4,346 volume collection of gastronomic literature from the fifteenth through twentieth centuries now resides at the Library of Congress' Rare Books and Special Collections Division.She amassed a large collection of materials in order: "To facilitate her investigations, as the Annual Report of the Librarian of Congress (1940) states, she collected "materials on the sources, preparation, and consumption of foods, their chemistry, bacteriology, preservations, etc., from earliest times to the present day."
In 1895, the Indiana Academy of Science appointed her as a fellow member
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