PRESCOTT, Albert Benjamin, chemist, born in Hastings, New York, 12 December, 1832. He was graduated at the medical department of the University of Michigan in 1864, and at once entered the United States volunteer service as assistant surgeon, with charge successively of hospitals in Louisville, Kentucky, and in Jeffersonville, Indiana, also serving as a member of the medical examining board in Louisville, Kentucky In 1865 he returned to the University of Michigan as assistant professor of chemistry, and lecturer on organic chemistry, and in 1870 was made professor of organic and applied chemistry and of pharmacy. He was a member of the committee of revision of the "United States Pharmacopoeia" in 1880. Since 1876 he has served as dean of the school of pharmacy, and since 1884 as director of the chemical laboratory in the same university. Professor Prescott is a member of many scientific societies, and was elected in 1876 a fellow of the London chemical society, in 1886 president of the American chemical society, and in the same year vice-president of the American association for the advancement of science, delivering, in 1887, a retiring address on "The Chemistry of Nitrogen as disclosed in the Constitution of the Alkaloids." He has been a contributor to the periodical literature of chemistry from 1869, his work including reports of scientific work under his direction in the chemical laboratory of the University of Michigan, and his various chemical investigations, chiefly in analytical organic chemistry. Professor Prescott has published " Qualitative Chemical Analysis," with Silas H. Douglas (Ann Arbor, 1874; 4th ed., with Otis C. Johnson, New York, 1888) ; " Outlines of Proximate Organic Analysis" (New York, 1875); "Chemical Examination of Alcoholic Liquors" (1875); " First Book in Qualitative Chemistry" (1879) ; and "Organic Analysis ; a Manual of the Descriptive and Analytical Chemistry of Certain Carbon Compounds in Common Use" (1887).