Benjamin Silliman and His Circle PDF Download

Author: Leonard G. Wilson
Publisher: Watson Pub International
ISBN: 9780882021737
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Author: Leonard Gilchrist Wilson
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 248

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Book Description
Benjamin Silliman played a unique role in American science before the Civil War. In his various roles as a professor at Yale, as editor of the American Journal of Science, and as a public lecturer in every major city, he taught science to the whole nation. He established science as a regular part of college education and helped to found graduate education to train professional scientists for the new nation. Primarily a teacher, Silliman exerted his influence through a remarkable circle of students, colleagues, and friends. This book examines their aims and ideals, and details the historical process by which Silliman and his associates worked to create a scientific community in the United States.

Author: Chandos Michael Brown
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400860229
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 394

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Poet, essayist, chemist, geologist, educator, entrepreneur, publisher--Benjamin Silliman (1779-1864) was one of the virtuosi of the Early Republic and a founder of the American scientific community. This absorbing biography is not only a study of the youth and early career of a complex and remarkable man but also a window on his times. In lively and often moving detail, Chandos Michael Brown opens the broad context of Silliman's life in his native Connecticut. From Silliman's father's disastrous captivity among the British during the Revolution to the intensities of New England religious revivals, from the international celebrity of the Weston Meteor to the economic hazards of introducing artificial mineral waters to the New York market, here is an engaging portrayal of the growth of an American scientist within his rich cultural setting. Brown tells how the young Silliman confronted the declining fortunes of his distinguished family and how he strove to invent a new career worthy of his ambition and social standing. He describes Silliman's education at Yale College and in Philadelphia, his European tour, and his subsequent activities as a professor of chemistry and mineralogy, founder of the Yale Medical School, and editor of the American Journal of Science. Throughout this cultural biography, Silliman appears as the concerned member of an often troubled family--a man who nonetheless managed to achieve that elusive quality, greatly admired by his contemporaries, that of the representative American. Originally published in 1990. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Author: George Park Fisher
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 482

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Author: Cathryn J. Prince
Publisher: Prometheus Books
ISBN: 1616142723
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 254

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When a fiery meteor crash in 1807 lit up the dark early-morning sky in Weston, Connecticut, it did more than startle the few farmers in the sleepy village. More importantly, it sparked the curiosity of Benjamin Silliman, a young chemistry professor at nearby Yale College. His rigorous investigation of the incident started a chain of events that eventually brought the once-low standing of American science to sudden international prominence. And, by coincidence, the event also embroiled Silliman in politics, pitting him against no less an adversary than President Thomas Jefferson. Based on a wealth of original source documents and interiews with current experts in history, astronomy, and geology, this journalist tells the remarkable story of Benjamin Silliman, arguably America’s first bonafide scientist. In a lively narrative rich with fascinating historical detail, the author documents the primitive state of American science at the time; Silliman’s careful analysis of the meteor samples; and the publication of his conclusions, which contradicted both popular superstitions regarding meteors as ominous portents and a common belief that meteors come from volcanic eruptions on the moon. She also describes Silliman’s struggles to build a chemistry department at Yale with rudimentary material; new insights into geology that resulted from his analysis of the meteor; and his report to the prestigious French Academy, which raised the prestige of American science. Finally, she discusses the political turbulence of the time, which Silliman could not escape, and how the meteor event was used to drive a wedge between New England and Jefferson. This is a fascinating vignette of Federal Period America when science on this continent was still in its infancy, but was just beginning to make its mark.

Author: Fisher
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 436

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Author: Andrew J. Lewis
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812243080
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 216

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Chronicles the story of American naturalists who came of age and stumbled toward a profession in the years after the American Revolution. --from publisher description.

Author: Ann Fabian
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022676057X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 283

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"A haunting voyage through the peculiar--and peculiarly American--world of human skull collecting. Ann Fabian's remarkable and moving study illuminates as few other works have the powerful hold that the dead and their remains continue to have upon the living". Karl Jacoby, author of Shadows at Dawn: A Borderlands Massacre and the Violence of History.

Author: Mark Stoll
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190697946
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 441

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Inherit the Holy Mountain puts religion at the center of the history of American environmentalism rather than at its margins, demonstrating how religion provided environmentalists with content, direction, and tone for the environmental causes they espoused.

Author: Marc Rothenberg
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135583188
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 637

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Book Description
This Encyclopedia examines all aspects of the history of science in the United States, with a special emphasis placed on the historiography of science in America. It can be used by students, general readers, scientists, or anyone interested in the facts relating to the development of science in the United States. Special emphasis is placed in the history of medicine and technology and on the relationship between science and technology and science and medicine.