Page:American Medical Biographies - Kelly, Burrage.djvu/1075

NAME SILLIMAN 10S3 SILLIMAN In the fall of that year he entered the law office of Simeon Baldwin in New Haven for the study of law. This study he continued also later in the office of the Honorable Chas. Chauncey, until he was admitted to the bar in 1802. During the later period of his study of law he also occupied the position of a college tutor and continued in that position until September, 1802, when he was elected professor of chemistry and natural history at Yale. He received this position from President Dwight, although he then had no pretensions to a knowledge of these sub- jects. President Dwight had told him it was impossible to find a man in this country properly qualified to discharge the duties of the office, consequently Dwight preferred a young man "born and trained among us and possessed of our habits and s}'mpathies" who could acquire the "requisite science and skill." The next two succeeding winters were spent in study at Philadelphia where he attended the lectures of Dr. James Woodhouse, Dr. Benjamin S. Barton and others. Returning to Yale he lectured for a year to the senior class and then sailed for Europe to continue his studies further and purchase books and apparatus for the college. He returned in May, 1806, and remained in active service as a professor until June, 1853; then as pro- fessor emeritus until his death, November 24, 1864. In May, 1808, he began his first course of popular lectures on chemistry and geology and continued them with great success for many j^ears, lecturing in most of the prin- cipal cities in the United States. Upon the opening of the Yale Medical School he as- sumed additional duties as professor of chem- istry and pharmacy, and five years later, in 1818, established the American Journal of Science and Arts, thus securing the gratitude of the scientific men of this country. For his work in the establishment of the Yale Medical School and for his interest in medicine he was given the honorary degree of M. D. in 1818 by Bowdoin College. He was a member of several of the principal scientific academies or societies of Europe and America. Preeminent as a teacher and almost unsurpassed as a lecturer he yielded a tre- mendous influence in arousing interest in sci- entific studies in this countrj'. Edward Everett styled him "the Nestor of American science." In character he was a gentleman of the old school, of commanding presence and possessed with a sublime Christian faith. He was twice married, his first wife being Harriet, second daughter of Governor Jona- than Trumbull the younger, of Lebanon, Con- necticut. She died of pulmonary tubercu- losis, January 18, 1850. On September 17, 1851, he was married a second time, to Sarah Isabella, third daughter of John McClellan of Woodstock, Connecticut. By his first wife he had a son, Benjamin Silliman, Jr. (q. v.), who succeeded him in teaching chemistry at Yale. A portrait by Nathaniel Jocelyn was painted when he was in middle life and now hangs in the Yale Medical School. Another, painted in 1854, by Matthew R. Wilson, is also in the possession of the Universit}', as well as a bust executed in 1860 by Chauncey B. Ives, and a heroic size bronze statue, modeled in 1884 by Professor John F. Weir. Among his writings we may mention accounts of two journeys to Europe and one to Quebec which went through several editions, and a two volume work on the elements of chem- istry. His life in two volumes has been sat- isfactorily written by Professor George P. Fisher of New Haven. Walter R. Steiner. Yale Biographies and Annals. Dexter, 5th Series. Life of Benjamin Silliman, New York, 1866. Yale College, Kingsley, vol. ii. Encyclopedia of Connecticut Biography. Silliman, Benjamin (1816-1885) This son of Benjamin and Harriet Trum- bull Silliman, born on December 4, 1816, fol- lowed his father along the road of natural science for, after graduating from Yale in 1837, he became assistant teacher in this subject at Yale and associate editor with his father of the American Journal of Science and Arts, until the close of the first fifty volumes in 1845, when the chief editorship devolved on him, with James D. Dana. In 1849 the University of Charleston gave him her honorary M. D. and that same year he was made professor of medical chemistry and toxicology at Louisville University, after five years resigning to take his father's chair of chemistry at Yale. Edi- torial duties engrossed him in 1853 when, in connection with the Crystal Palace exhibition, he worked up "The World of Science, Art and Industry," and in 1854 "The Progress of Sci- ence and Mechanism." His "First Principles of Natural Philosophy or Physics," 1858, had a second edition in 1861. Yale benefited con- siderably by his generosity and the results of his mineralogical researches in California. In 1868 he presented the whole of his collection to the Museum. He married, in 1840, Susan H., daughter of William J. Forbes, and had seven children. Phys. and Surgs. of the U. S., W. B. Atkinson. The Relation of Yale to Medicine, W. H. Welch, Yale Med. Jour., Nov., 1901.