Alexander Pierce Anderson records

Alexander P. Anderson was born on a farm in Featherstone, Goodhue County, Minnesota on November 22, 1862 of Swedish immigrant parents. He attended local schools and briefly attended the University of Minnesota but was obliged to return to the farm to help his parents. After their death he returned to the University in 1890. He received his B.S. degree in 1894 and a M.S. degree in 1895. During this time, the University published the results of a laboratory study that he made of the growth in weight of a pumpkin by training the vine and resting the pumpkin in the scale-pan of a self registering balance.

Alexander P. Anderson came to work at the NYBG Laboratories through the encouragement of Dr. Daniel Trembly MacDougal, who was at the time Director of Laboratories at the NYBG. It was under MacDougal that Anderson received his Master's degree at the University of Minnesota. After obtaining his B.S. and M.S. he went to Munich for his Ph.D., where he became interested in the structure of starch grains. He left for Munich in 1895 and received his PhD. one year later. He became very interested in the Meyer starch grain granule theory. He did some work at the Missouri Botanical Garden when he returned from Munich but soon went to South Carolina to teach botany at Clemson College and later the University of Minnesota. When offered a position as Curator of the Herbarium of Columbia University with the use of the Laboratories at the New York Botanical Garden, he resigned his teaching position and moved to New York. His work on starch granules continued at the laboratories at NYBG.

In December 1901 it occurred to him that starch granules could be exploded and blasted into powder with particles infinitely smaller that starch granules themselves. He took small glass tubes and hermetically sealed powdered starch in each tube. In an oven, the tubes were heated up to 400 degrees and when taken out, while still hot, cracked with a hammer. Once the pressure was released, the starch came out a porous, enlarged, snow white mass. Later, rice, wheat, and other whole grain cereals were treated in the same way. Over 1000 experiments were conducted on different products in 1902. He also worked on killing bacteria by disrupting and exploding their cell walls thus rendering their culture media sterile. The results of the experiments on cereal grains were commercial products known as "puffed rice" and "puffed wheat" made from exploding the grains. Puffed rice was first exhibited at the St. Louis World's Fair in 1904.

In 1902, Dr. Alexander sold his patent and his services to the Quaker Oats company and left the New York Botanical Garden. He continued his research on the minute structure of starch grains and continued to develop improved cereal foods and adhesives until his death in 1943.