Silliman, BENJAMIN

Silliman, BENJAMIN, American physicist, was born at North Stratford (now Trumbull), Connecticut, August 8, 1779. His father was a colonial judge, and a brigadier-general in the war of independence. He graduated at Yale in 1796, was appointed a tutor in 1799, and was admitted to the bar in 1802, but soon after received from the college the appointment of professor of Chemistry, and proceeded first to study this subject, attending lectures on chemistry for three years at Philadelphia, and in 1805-6 at Edinburgh (on geology also) and London. His chair he filled till 1853, and for two years longer lectured on geology. In the course of many experiments in 1822 he first established the fact of the transfer of particles of carbon from the positive to the negative pole of the voltaic battery. From 1808 he delivered popular lectures on chemistry and geology in many parts of the country, and interested in these subjects many who afterwards became among the foremost of American scientists. In 1840 Professor Silliman was elected the first president of the American Association of Geologists and Naturalists—since grown into the American Association for the Advancement of Science. In 1818 he founded the American Journal of Science, better known as Silliman's Journal, of which he was for twenty years the sole and for eight more the principal editor. In 1830 he published a textbook on chemistry; he edited several editions of Bakewell's Geology and of Henry's Chemistry; and in 1853 he published a Narrative of a Visit to Europe in 1851 (his Journals of Travels in England, Holland, and Scotland had appeared as early as 1810). He died 24th November 1864, at New Haven, where a bronze statue has been erected (1884) in the college grounds. See the Life by G. P. Fisher (1866).—His son, Benjamin (1816-85), assisted his father from 1837, in 1847 founded the Yale (since 1860 the 'Sheffield') School of Science, and was its professor of Chemistry till 1869, except in 1849-54, when he held a chair at Louisville. He was professor of Chemistry at Yale from 1854—in the college till 1870, in the medical department till his death. His researches were chiefly in applied chemistry and in mineralogy. From 1845 to 1885 he was co-editor of the Journal of Science, and he published very popular manuals of chemistry and of physics, and a volume on American Contributions to Chemistry (1875).