Charles Carter Litchfield was born on February 18, 1932, earned a B.S. in chemical engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and began his career as a chemist for Procter & Gamble. During the 1950s, Litchfield worked in the Edible Research Section of the Chemical Division on shortening products such as Crisco and margarine oils. Because of this work, Litchfield developed an interest in the history of fatty oils, which include vegetable seed oils as well as lard, tallow and other animal fats. Litchfield left Procter & Gamble in 1960 to take a job as a research scientist at Texas A&M University, where he received a doctorate in organic chemistry. He then spent nine years as a biochemist at Rutgers University, where he worked on lipids in marine mammals and sponges. While at Rutgers, Litchfield started Olearius Editions, under which name he published works on the history of vegetable oil and fat production. In 1979, Litchfield retired from Rutgers to devote his time to historical research, publishing and collecting. At the time of his death, on May 9, 2007, Litchfield had assembled a comprehensive collection of over 5,000 books and pamphlets, advertisements, oleomargarine tax stamps, posters, artifacts, and photographs documenting the history of fatty oils over a period of 500 years. In the course of his collecting, Litchfield acquired the papers of Julius Lewkowitsch, one of the first modern authorities on fatty oils, and purchased the papers of French chemist Michel Eugène Chevreul and of Ellsworth C. Warner, founder of the Midland Linseed Oil Company.
From the description of Carter Litchfield collection on the history of fatty materials, 1707-2007 (bulk dates, 1970-2007). (Hagley Museum & Library). WorldCat record id: 232569827
