Fisher Scientific
laboratory supply and biotechnology company
Fisher Scientific International, Inc. (NYSE: FSH) was a laboratory supply and biotechnology company that provided products and services to the global scientific research and clinical laboratory markets until its merger with Thermo Electron in 2006, after which it became Thermo Fisher Scientific. The company offered products and services to over 350,000 customers located in approximately 150 countries including pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, secondary and higher education institutions, hospitals and medical research institutions, and quality control, process control and research and development laboratories.
History
The company was founded in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 1902 by Chester Garfield Fisher (1881–1965), originally called the "Scientific Materials Co.". After obtaining his degree in engineering at Western University of Pennsylvania (now University of Pittsburgh), C.G. Fisher purchased the stockroom of the Pittsburgh Testing Laboratory. Fisher became a supplier of lab equipment and reagents for the area's industrial research. Early products included microscopes, burets, pipettes, litmus, balances, colorimeters, dissecting kits, and anatomical models. The first catalog, the 400 page Scientific Materials Co. Catalog of Laboratory Apparatus & Supplies, was published in 1904.
Fisher established an R&D lab at his company in 1915.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Fisher Scientific” as laboratory supply and biotechnology company. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the history & society register because the source frames it as laboratory supply and biotechnology company. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Contemporary correspondence, administrative files and participant testimony can test how later narratives organized the event or institution. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 28, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q16838552. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2006, 1902, 1881 and 1965.
Official terminology may obscure informal participation, dissent or communities documented only indirectly. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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Three-step research path
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Questions for further research
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This entry incorporates text from “Fisher Scientific” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.