Hall introduced chemical innovations that helped change the way we store and preserve foods today, including the now-universal use of nitrates in place of salting to cure meats. Born in 1894 in Elgin, Illinois, Hall attended Northwestern University and the University of Chicago, where he majored in chemistry. At Northwestern, Hall befriended classmate Carroll L. Griffith, in whose Griffith Laboratories he would later spend the most productive years of his career. Hall was also one of the first African-Americans to overcome the barriers of discrimination in science and technical careers. Rejected on the first day at his first job at Western Electric Co.--after being hired over the telephone--with the blunt declaration, "We don't take niggers," Hall took a position with the Chicago Department of Health Laboratories as a chemist in 1916.

Hall soon developed an interest in the burgeoning applications of chemistry to food processing. In 1925, as a senior...