Research at the California Academy of Sciences

A Short Biography of Carl Austin Rietz

Collector of the Rietz Collection of Food Technology

Education



Born on August 3, 1894, in New York City, Rietz and his family moved to Marin County, California, in 1902, when Rietz was eight years old. He spent his childhood and adolescence in the San Francisco Bay area, singing as a choirboy at Grace Cathedral and attending Polytechnic High School in San Francisco.

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Rietz's college education took a number of twists and turns, reflecting his broad interests and inquisitive nature. He attended Columbia University, Harvard, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He studied medicine at the University of Maryland and Johns Hopkins University and eventually earned an engineering degree from the University of California at Berkeley. Amid his academic wandering he served as an ambulance driver during World War I and as a private secretary for both mining engineer John H. Hammond and Thomas A. Edison. A Rietz family anecdote tells of how the young Rietz, by scoring one of the highest marks on the famous inventor's first comprehensive IQ tests, secured his position with Edison.

In 1928 , Rietz married Elsie. Together they had two daughters, Betsy and Sandra. Soon after their marriage, they returned to California. After a short stint in Los Angeles, where he worked as a cameraman for director D.W. Griffith, they again settled in the San Francisco Bay area.




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