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  Dr.
Joseph George Davidson was born in New York City. He studied
chemistry at the University of Southern California, receiving the
degree of Bachelor of Arts in 1911 and the Master of Arts degree in
1912. He received his PhD at Columbia University in 1917.During World War I, Dr. Davidson went into the Chemical Warfare service of the U.S. Army for a short period. In March of 1923 he joined the Organic Synthesis Fellowship of Carbide and Carbon and Carbide Chemicals Company, now Union Carbide Chemical Company at Mellon Institute as Senior Fellow. For many years he spent all his working hours helping to build Union Carbides Chemical Company, and was an important figure in creating and bringing vast dimensions to the petrochemicals industry. His 28 patents range in subject matter from lacquers to antiknock fuels, from laminated safety glass to pickling inhibitors, from wetting agents to photographic film bases. His own research pioneered the development of ethylene glycol for dynamite and antifreeze, and ethanol amines that form bases of synthetic detergents, an important gas purification process and vinyl resins. In 1925 Dr. Davidson left Mellon Institute to go to the New York office of the growing Company as manager of Chemical Sales. His personal efforts were responsible for the launching of such products as “Cellosolve “ acetate , the ethanol amines, vinyl resins, acetone, and acetic anhydride. He became successively Vice President, President and Chairman of the Chemicals Company. Two of the projects of which Dr. Davidson was most proud and to which he contributed much are the nuclear energy projects Union carbide operates for the Government at Oak Ridge , Tennessee and Paducah, Kentucky, and the Company’s coal hydrogenation project at Institute, West Virginia. The Davidsons later became interested in Vermont and thought they might like to buy a summer home here. In 1939, Dr. and Mrs. Davidson purchased a large tract of land on Equinox Mountain and erected a home in the gap known as “Southeast Corners”, south of Equinox. It was necessary to improve the old wagon road considerably in order to make it possible to bring materials of construction, but this was done and the structure was built. Thus was the beginning of what Mount Equinox is today! Contact Us: | Email
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