Charles Benjamin Dudley
Charles Benjamin Dudley (1842-1910)
1910 Obituary [1]
CHARLES BENJAMIN DUDLEY was born on July 14, 1842, at Oxford, Chenango County, New York. His early education was obtained by attending the village school and academy in the autumn and winter, while be worked upon his father's farm during the rest of the year. His ambition was to go through a college course, and the attainment of his wishes was almost within his reach when the outbreak of the War of the Rebellion appealed to his enthusiasm, and in 1862 he enlisted as a private in the 114th New York Volunteers. He was at the Siege of Port Hudson in 1863, and went through the disastrous Red River campaign in the spring of 1864.
Subsequently, at the Battle of Opequon Creek, near Winchester, he received a severe bullet wound which left him partially crippled for life.
Upon his discharge in 1865, he returned to his rural home to prepare for college, and in 1867 he entered Yale, and finally, in 1871, took his degree. When the Pennsylvania Railroad Company started its Testing Department at Altoona, the first of the kind in the United States, Dr. Dudley was placed in charge. He soon became widely known to chemists and metallurgists everywhere, and his studies of the composition of rails and Isis tests of rail steel were of special value. He was President of the American Chemical Society, President of the American Society for Testing Materials, and a few months before his death was elected President of the International Society for Testing Materials.
He was elected a member of the Iron and Steel Institute in 1886.