Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 9.djvu/633

Rh Henry Darwin, and Robert EmpeieEmpie [sic] Rogers, all of whom have won celebrity as scientific teachers and investigators, and of whom William and Robert alone survive.

Their father, Patrick Kerr Rogers, was a man of varied attainments, and an enthusiastic student and teacher of natural science, who, besides lecturing to medical classes, was among the first in this country to establish systematic courses of instruction in chemistry and experimental physics for the general public. His sons were educated chiefly at home under his immediate care, the elder continuing their studies at William and Mary College, their father having been appointed Professor of Natural Philosophy and Chemistry in that institution.

When twenty-one years of age, William gave his first lectures on science in the Maryland Institute, Baltimore, and the following year was appointed to succeed his father in William and Mary College, where he remained until 1835. He was then appointed to the chair of Natural Philosophy in the University of Virginia, and there extended his instructions by adding the subjects mineralogy and geology to his course. The same year he organized the geological survey of the State, having, while a professor at William and Mary, begun his geological labors with an examination of the Tertiary region, of which he published, in conjunction with his brother, Henry D. Rogers, two memoirs in the "Transactions of the American Philosophical Society." At this time, besides other chemical researches, he made an analysis of the waters of the Virginia mineral springs, the results of which have appeared in various publications.

He remained at the head of the geological survey until it was discontinued in 1842, having published a series of annual reports and collected further materials, for the completion and publication of which, however, no provision was made by the State. While at the university he published for the use of his students a short treatise on the “Strength of Materials” (Charlottesville, 1838), and a volume on “The Elements of Mechanical Philosophy” (Boston, 1852). During this period of his life, besides the cares of his professorship and of the survey, he occupied himself with original researches in various departments of science, partly geological, in connection with his field-work, and, after the survey ended, chiefly in chemistry and physics.

In 1840 the "Association of American Geologists and Naturalists" was organized. In this society, embracing Hitchcock, Hale, Vanuxem, the four brothers Rogers, Conrad, Emmons, and others, engaged in active scientific research, Prof. Rogers took a leading part, as will be seen by referring to the volume of its “Transactions” (1840-'42), to which he contributed among other articles the following memoirs: “On the Age of the Coal-Rocks of Eastern Virginia;” “On the Connection of Thermal Springs with Anticlinal Axes and Faults;” “Observations of Subterranean Temperature in the