Arthur William Davidson was born in Manhattan, New York in 1896. He received a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1915 from the City College of New York, which was free to all who passed the admissions exam, and began teaching at City College upon his graduation. Davidson went on to receive a Master's of Science and doctoral degrees from Columbia University in 1917 and 1921 respectively. He was also a member of Phi Beta Kappa and Phi Lambda Upsilon, an honorary chemistry fraternity.

Davidson served in the Chemical Warfare Service at Astoria, Long Island, New York during World War I, from 1917-1919. In 1921, Davidson was hired as an assistant professor in the Chemistry Department at the University of Kansas (KU) and may have been the first Jewish professor to be hired at KU. Davidson was promoted to associate professor in 1927 and then to full professor in 1937. Davidson was an associate dean for chemistry graduate studies from 1950-1956 and chairman of the KU Chemistry Department from 1956-1961. In 1954-1955, Davidson was a Fulbright lecturer at the University of Turku in Finland.

Davidson belonged to Sigma Xi, an honorary science fraternity; the Association of University Professors; the American Chemical Society; and the Kansas Academy of Science. He was associate editor of the Journal of the American Chemical Society and published many scholarly articles and several textbooks. His end of semester lectures in which he demonstrated the freezing power of liquid air became a tradition at KU. The Arthur W. Davidson Award for Academic Excellence in Chemistry was established in 1961. In 1966, Davidson was required by KU policy at the time to retire at age 70. He was a visiting professor at Baker University and Colorado University after retirement.

Davidson married Elisabeth Elsey in 1925. David L. was born to them in 1926 and Dorothy L. in 1930. Arthur Davidson died in 1993.

[Information retrieved from the University Archives Morgue file, the accession file, and the obituary published January 9, 1993 in the Lawrence Journal-World.]