Page:American Medical Biographies - Kelly, Burrage.djvu/709

NAME LE CONTE 687 LE CONTE fore he journeyed westward. In 1868 he was elected professor of physics and assisted in the work of organization of the State Uni- versity of California. In 1869 he acted as president, and in 1876 he was elected fuil president, still retaining his chair. He resigned his presidency in 1881, but held the professor- ship up to the time of his death. About one half of his life was spent in the service of this institution. In 1869 the University opened with 38 students, 8 professors, and an income of $30,000; Dr. LeConte left it with 1200 stu- dents, 150 teachers and an income of $360,000. He was the father of the University. The Univcrsit}' of Georgia conferred the degree of LL. D. on him in 1879. He was general secretary of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, member of the California Academy of Sciences, the Amer- ican Philosophical Society and Natural Acad- emy of Science. In 1857 Dr. LeConte discovered the sensi- tiveness of flame to musical vibrations, but had not the wealth to develop his discovery, but his priority was acknowledged by Tyndall in his book on sound. During his long sci- entific career of half a century he published more than 100 papers that have had a distinc- tive effect on the progress of science. He married, in 1841, Eleanor Josephine Gra- ham, a lady of rare intelligence, character, and beauty, and they had three children. Dr. LeConte died in Berkeley, California, April 29, 1891. Appleton's New Encyclop., 1866, vol. x. Nat. Cyclop, of Amer. Biog., vol. vii, p. 22. Le Conte, John Lawrence (1825-1883) This entomologist and geologist was the son of the naturalist, John Eatton Le Conte (1784-1860), of Huguenot ancestry, and his wife, Mary A. H. Lawrence. He was born in New York City, May 13, 1825, and, his mother dying when he was a few weeks old, was edu- cated under the care of his father, first at Mt. St. Mary's College, Maryland, where he graduated in 1842, and then at the College of Physicians and Surgeons, Columbia, taking his M. D. in 1846. Young Le Conte acquired an interest in en- tomology from his father, who had been in correspondence with European workers in this field and had collected a cabinet of specimens. While a medical student, at the early age of nineteen, he published his first paper contain- ing descriptions of twenty-odd species of Cara- bidae from the eastern United States. Thus Dr. Le Conte began his career in sci- ence in 1844, when his first paper on the coleop- tera was published in the proceedings of the Philadelphia Academy. During 1849 he made several visits to the Lake Superior region, once in company with Louis Agassiz (q. v.), collect- ing specimens, and in the following year he visited California and Panama, exploring also the Colorado desert in search of material in many departments of natural history, material that was carefully studied on his return. He published his "Attempt to Classify the Longi- corn Coleoptera of America, North of Mex- ico" in 1852. At this time he moved to Phila- delphia, where the greater part of his scientific labors were conducted and his numerous writ- ings published. In 1859 he edited the "Com- plete Writings of Thomas Say on the Ento- mology of North America." During the war he served as surgeon of volunteers and medi- cal inspector, with rank of lieutenant-colonel, finishing in the latter position in 1865. He be- came chief clerk of the LTnited States Mint in Philadelphia in 1878, and held that place until his death. Dr. Le Conte acted as geologist to a sur- vey of the Union Pacific Railway in 1867 and spent the years 1869 to 1872 traveling abroad and visiting all the chief museums. He had a remarkable memory and was able to recall and describe to the many savants the species in his own collection so that doubtful points of nomenclature were elucidated. In 1875 he was president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, giving a noteworthy address on retiring, on the relations of the geographical distribution of coleoptera to paleontology'. Public office did not attract him, and he contented himself with being an honorary- member of the chief foreign entomological so- cieties. At the time of his death, November 15, 1883, he was president of the American En- tomological Society, of which he had been a founder. Scudder speaks of Le Conte as the greatest entomologist this country had produced. He described nearly half of the coleoptera for the first time and actually described or at least named 4739 nominal species. In 1861 Dr. Le Conte married Helen, daugh- ter of Judge Grier of Philadelphia, and they had two sons. George H. Horn in Science, 1883, vol. ii, 783- 786. Portrait. A Biog. Sketch, Samuel H. Scudder, Trans. Amer. Entomolog. Soc, 1884, vol. xi, pp. i-xxvii. Por- trait. LeConte, Joseph (1823-1901) A geologist and teacher, he was born Febru- ary 26, 1823, and descended from Guillaume LeConte (LeConte de Nonant, of Normandy)