Page:The Biographical Dictionary of America, vol. 05.djvu/465

 HUNT

HUNT

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Plainfield, Conn. His first ancestor in America, William Hunt, settled in Massachusetts in 1635, and was one of the founders of Concord, Mass. Peleg Hunt removed to Poughkeepsie, N.Y., dur- ing his son's early childhood, and upon his death in 1838 the family re- turned to Norwich, where Thomas at- tended the public school for a short time. Being obliged to go to work, he found employment first in a printing of- fice, then in an apoth- ecary's shop, and fi- nally in a bookstore. It was while in the apothecary's shop that he developed his love for chemistry. He became a pupil of Prof. Benjamin S. Silliman, Jr., and subse- quently assisted the elder Silliman in the Yale laboratory. In February, 1846, he was ap- pointed chemist to the geological survey of Ver- mont. He declined to be assistant at the school of Agricultural Chemistry, Edinburgli, Scotland, to accept the position of chemist to the geo- logical survey of Canada under Sir William E. Logan and removing to Montreal he filled the place, 1847-72. He lectured in French on chemistry at the University of Laval, 1856-63, and on chemistry and mineralogy at McGill university, 1862-68. He was a delegate from the geological survey of Canada to the In- ternational exposition at Paris in 1855, and was selected one of the judges of award. During his stay he was invested with the decoration of the Legion of Honor, and was later promoted by the French government to bean officer of that order. He was again an official delegate to the exjiosi- tions held in London in 1863 and in Paris in 1867. Upon his return to the United States he resided in Boston, Mass., and was professor of geology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1873-78, at the same time serving as a member of tlie geological survey of Pennsyslvania. He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of London, 1859 ; a member of the National Academy of Sci- ence of the United States in 1873 ; a member of the American Institute of Mining Engineers, 1873, president in 1877, and was vice-president in 1888-89. On May 6, 1845, he was present at the sixth meeting of the Association of American Geologists and Naturalists, and was then elected a member. This body became tiie American Association for the Advancement of Science, in September, 1848, when Mr. Hunt read a paper on

" Acid Springs and Gypsum Deposits of the Onondaga Salt Group." He was elected vice- president of the association in 1870 and president in 1871 ; and was one of the original members of the Royal Society of Canada, and its third presi- dent. During the year 1876, at the Centennial exposition in Philadelphia, he was an interna- tional juror, and during the exposition he first took definite measures to insure the calling to- gether of a geological congress of the world, and caused a resolution pointing to that end to be passed at the Buff'alo meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. In 1878 the reunion occurred in Paris, France, and was largely due to his efforts. He attended the second congress, held at Bologna, Sept. 26, 1881, where his eminence was so conspicuous that King Humbert conferred on him the orders of St. Maiu-itius and of St. Lazarus. He also partici- pated in the fourth congress, held at London in 1888, and contributed a paper in French on "Crystalline Schists." Professor Hunt was the first to attempt a systematic subdivision and geo- logical classification of the stratiform crystalline rocks, and made many valuable discoveries as to the constitution of tliese rocks. He was largely instrumental in bringing before the public the necessity of caring for the wantonly wasted for- ests, and interested himself greatly in the estab- lishment of Arbor Day in Canada and the United States. He invented a green ink made from stannic acid and oxide of chromium, used in printing the U. S. treasury notes, and from the use of which the treasury notes became known as "greenbacks." He also patented, with James Douglass, in 1869, the use of chloride of iron in connection with common salt as a solvent of copric and cuprous oxide, and in 1871 they patented a method of separating copper from its chlorodized solution, as insoluble subchloride, through the action of sulphurous acid, but none of his discoveries yielded him much revenue. The honorary degree of A.M. was conferred on him by Harvard ujiiversity in 1855, and that of LL.D. by McGill (Canada) in 1862, and by Cam- bridge (England) in 1881. Professor Hunt was pre-eminently a chemist, as his lithological re- searches were not made with the microscoi)e, but in the chemical laborator}-. He is the author of : Chemical and Geological Essays (1874); Azoic Rocks (1878) ; Mineral Physiology and Physiog- raphy (1886) ; .4 New Basis of Chemistry (1887) ; Systematic Mineralogy According to a Xatural System (1891) ; and numerous papers and essaj's. He died in New York city, Feb. 13, 1893.

HUNT, Timothy At water, naval officer, was born in New Haven, Conn., in 1805. He was educated at Yale, but left before graduating to enter the U.S. navy as midshipman, having re-