Page:The Biographical Dictionary of America, vol. 04.djvu/473

 (iUTHRIE

GUYOT

QUTHRIE, Samuel, chemist, was born in Brimtield, Mass., in 1782. He studied medicine and directed his researt-li to practical clieniistry. He was married and settled in Chenango county, N.Y., removing in 1817 to Sacket Harbor, N.Y. He was the inventor of percussion pills, an appli- ance that superseded the tliut lock in firearms and the forerunner of the percussion cap. He was permanently crippled and nearly lost his life in prosecuting his investigation of percussion material. In 1830 he invented the process by which potato starcli could be rapidly converted into molasses. He was the original discoverer in America of a " spirituous solution of chloric ether," the chloroform of Dumas. His product was exhibited to Professor Silliman of Yale in 1831, who repeated the process by which it was produced a year before it was made public by Soubeiran and three years before Dumas pub- lislied his results and named the product chloroform. Tlie Medico -chirurgical societj- of Edinburgh appointed a committee to investigate the claims of the respective claimants to the right of discovery and the committee awarded to Dr. Guthrie the merit of having in 1832 first published an account of its therapeutic effects as. a diffusible stimulant. He died in Sacket Har- bor, N.Y., Oct. 19, 1848.

QUV, Seymour Joseph, painter, was born in Greenwicli, England. Jan. 16, 1834. After study- ing art in London under Gerome he removed to the United States in 18.54 and settled in New York city, where he painted portraits success- fully. Later he gave his time wholly to genre painting. He was elected an associate National academician in 1861 and an academician in 1865, and in 1866 was one of the original members of the American society of painters in water colors. Among his paintings are: The Good Sister (1868); After the Shower (1869); More Free Than Wel- come (1869) ; The Littte Stranger (1870) ; Playing on the Jew's Harp (1870) ; T!ie Street Fire (1871) ; Fix- ing for School (1874) ; T%e Little Orange Oirl (187.5); Cash on Hand (1877); See Saw, Margei-y Daw (1884).

QUYOT, Arnold Henry, geographer, was born in Neuchatel, Switzerland, Sept. 28, 1807. He was given a thorough educational training at Chaux- de-Fonds, at the college of Neuchatel, with the parents of Alexander Braun at Carlsruhe, and at the gymnasium at Stuttgart. He also studied theology at the University of Berlin and attended lectures there on philosophy and natural science, taking the degree of Ph.D. in 1835. He had the advantages afforded by the Berlin botanical garden, through an introduction by Humboldt, and at tliis time he made a large collection of sliells and plants. He was a student and private tutor in Paris, 1834-38, and at the request of

Agassiz spent ,the summer of 1838 among the Swiss glaciers and reported his investigations to the Geological society of France. In this report the laminated structure of ice in the glaciers and the fact that the movement of the glaciers is due to molecular displacement mainly under the action of gravity, was first made known, the dis- covei-y being subse- quently confirmed by other scientists. He was professor of his- tory and physical geography in the Col- lege of Neuchatel, 1839-48, and in 1848, at the urgent request of Agassiz, he re- moved to America, settled in Cambridge, Mass. , and delivered at Boston a course of le"^ures before the Lowell institute. He was lectu.-er on geography and methods of instruction to normal schools and teachers" institutes, under the aus- pices of the Massachusetts board of education, 1848-54, and professor of physical geography and geology at the College of New Jersey, 1854-84. He was also lecturer on physical geography in the State normal school, Trenton, N.J., for sev- eral years ; lecturer on physical and ethnological science in connection with revealed religion in the Princeton tlieological seminary, 1861-66, and in the Union theological seminary, New York city, 1860, on "The First Chapter of Genesis," and in 1869 on " Man Primeval." He also deliv- ered five lectures at the Smithsonian institution in 1853 on the '' Harmonies of Nature and His- tory," and in 1863 six lectures on " The Unity of Plan in the System of Life." He perfected the plans for a national system of meteorological observations and selected and established the stations in New York and Massachusetts during his summer vacations. His vacation work, ex- tending over thii'ty-two years, included, besides meteorological work under Professor Henry, a survey of the Appalachian chain of mountains to determine altitudes. From these tours and from students sent out by him to the Rocky mountains from Princeton, he founded and enlarged the Museum of natural history at Princeton imiver- sity. He was a charter member of the National academy of sciences. The Presbyterian church in the United States made him a delegate to the convention of the Evangelical alliance in Geneva in 1861, and at the meeting of the alliance in New York in 1873 he contributed a paper on "Cosmogony and the Bible." He received a