A journal of travels in England, Holland, and Scotland, and of two passages over the Atlantic, in the years 1805 and 1806
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Outline of the Course of Geological Lectures Given in Yale College
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A Journal of Travels in England, Holland and Scotland, and of Two Passages Over the Atlantic, in the Years 1805 and 1806; With Considerable Additions; Volume 3
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Remarks made on a short tour between Hartford and Quebec
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Outline of the Course of Geological Lectures Given in Yale College
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Remarks, Made on a Short Tour, Between Hartford and Quebec, in the Autumn of 1819;
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A Journal of Travels in England, Holland, and Scotland, and of Two Passages Over the Atlantic, in the Years 1805 and 1806
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A Journal of Travels in England, Holland and Scotland, and of Two Passages Over the Atlantic, in the Years 1805 and 1806; With Considerable Additions; Volume 3
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A Journal of Travels in England, Holland and Scotland, and of Two Passages Over the Atlantic, in the Years 1805 and 1806; With Considerable Additions; Volume 1
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Benjamin Silliman was an early American chemist and science educator.
Background
There is a tradition that his paternal ancestors were of Italian origin, Sillimandi by name, but long domiciled in Switzerland, and that from there, by way of Holland, the first of the family came to America at the time of the great Puritan migration, settling eventually near what is now Fairfield, Connecticut In the records of Fairfield County he appears as Daniel Sillivant. By 1690 the name of the family had been changed to Silliman and its members were becoming people of substance and prominence. Benjamin's grandfather, Ebenezer Silliman, graduated from Yale College in 1727, as did his son, Benjamin's father, Gold Selleck Silliman, in 1752. Both followed the law as a profession. The former was a member of the Governor's Council and a judge of the superior court; the latter was a general in the Continental Army in charge of the defense of Connecticut against the British. On the side of his mother, Mary, daughter of Rev. Joseph and Rebecca (Peabody) Fish of North Stonington, Connecticut, Benjamin Silliman was descended from Puritan stock through the Peabodys of Rhode Island, who derived from John and Priscilla Alden. He was born in a part of what is now Trumbull, Connecticut, and brought up at Fairfield.
Education
His early education was secured in the local schools. He was prepared for college by the Rev. Andrew Eliot and entered Yale in 1792 at the age of thirteen years, the youngest but one in his class. He graduated in 1796 and after two years spent partly at home and partly teaching in a private school at Wethersfield, Connecticut, returned to New Haven and began the study of law under Simeon Baldwin and David Daggett, leaders of the Connecticut bar.
Career
He was admitted to the bar in 1802. Meanwhile, from September 1799 he had served as a tutor in Yale College. In September 1802, at the age of twenty-three, he was appointed to the newly established professorship of chemistry and natural history in Yale College. The next two years he devoted largely to study in preparation for his new duties, chiefly in Philadelphia, where he attended lectures in chemistry, botany, anatomy, and surgery at the medical school.
Of greater importance to him, however, was an opportunity to work in the laboratory of the able chemist and physicist Robert Hare, and of more value still were occasional visits to Dr. John Maclean, professor of chemistry at Princeton, a very able and scholarly man from whom he learned much and received many valuable suggestions regarding the teaching of that science.
He began the duties of his new position in April 1804 with a course of experimental lectures in chemistry, the first ever given at Yale. In the spring of 1805 he sailed for England, partly for the purpose of purchasing books for the college library and scientific apparatus for his laboratory, but chiefly to extend his knowledge of science through study and association with foreign scholars.
He traveled through England, Wales, and Scotland, and also visited Holland, but the disturbed condition of the Continent prevented him from visiting other countries. The greater part of his time was spent in London and Edinburgh, where he met on intimate and informal terms the most distinguished scholars of the times, among them Sir Humphrey Davy, Sir David Brewster, Dr. John Murray, and Dr. Thomas Hope.
His associations with the last two and his attendance on their lectures in geology were especially significant in their influence on his subsequent career as a scientist. Murray and Hope were ardent supporters, respectively, of the then current and radically opposed theories of Werner and Hutton regarding the origin of rock formations of the earth's crust. Their discussions provided Silliman's first real contact with geology, and the interest thus aroused in him continued throughout his life, with a farreaching and important effect on the development of the science in America.
His analysis of the merits of these two rival theories, as given in his personal journal, bears evidence of his remarkable powers of observation, criticism, and sound judgment. Although he was still in his twenties, his scholarly attainments, his character, and his great personal charm did much to produce in the British seats of learning a favorable impression of Americans. He remained abroad a year.
In 1810 he published, in two volumes, A Journal of Travels in England, Holland and Scotland, a full account of his visit with many interesting observations on British and Scottish university life and customs and the characteristics and achievements of the scholars he met. This book, celebrated in its day and still well worth reading, went through three editions and was widely and favorably read in both England and America.
On his return to New Haven he resumed his lectures in chemistry, enriched in material and scope by his studies abroad. He was now desirous of giving a new and full course of lectures in mineralogy and geology for which he had collected some illustrative material. During the summer of 1807, which he spent in Newport, Rhode Island, he became acquainted with Col. George Gibbs, a gentleman much interested in mineralogy and the possessor of what was then the finest mineral collection in America; later Colonel Gibbs lent his collection to Yale College for Silliman's use. Arranged and catalogued in rooms specially provided for it in South Middle College, the Gibbs Collection excited wide interest and also made it possible for Silliman to begin (1813) the full course of illustrated lectures in mineralogy and geology which he had planned. It was a significant event in American science.
Later (1823) this celebrated collection was purchased by the College from funds raised for the purpose through Silliman's efforts. During the period immediately following his return from abroad he was made a member of a committee representing the college to consider the organization of a school of medicine at Yale.
If not, indeed, the originator of this proposal, Silliman was the one who worked out most of the details, won the cooperation of the state and local medical associations, and in the end secured a charter for the new medical school from the state legislature. The Yale Medical School was formally opened in 1813 with a faculty consisting of four professors of medicine and Silliman as professor of chemistry.
As early as 1808 Silliman introduced what was an innovation for a professor in the college when he began to give occasional scientific lectures open to the public of New Haven. In succeeding years he delivered similar lectures in New York and various New England cities.
During March and April 1835 he delivered by invitation a series of geological lectures before the Boston Society of Natural History. He was at this time at the height of his powers as a lecturer and the Boston series created nothing less than a sensation and firmly established his reputation as a public speaker; he thenceforth experienced an ever increasing demand for his services.
In 1836 he lectured in Boston on chemistry and in New York on geology. In 1838 he was invited to open the Lowell Institute, newly founded by John Lowell of Boston, and in the winter of 1839-40 he delivered the first series of lectures on this celebrated foundation.
These dealt with geology and were followed during the next three years with lectures on chemistry. Although he spoke in the Odeon, seating 1500 people, the largest auditorium in the city, the demand for tickets was so great that each lecture was repeated.
During his entire stay he received marked attentions from the intellectually and socially prominent people of Boston and Cambridge. It is doubtful if any series of scientific lectures has ever aroused greater interest, and Silliman justly regarded them as the crowning success of his professional life. Subsequently he lectured in all of the important centers of the country, going as far south as New Orleans and as far west as St. Louis.
He had become a national scientific figure. His college courses, interesting and stimulating as they were, with their wealth of experiments and material illustration, were nevertheless essentially cultural in character. There was no opportunity for advanced study or for laboratory work for any except those whom the professor employed as his personal assistants. Incidentally, the position of assistant was eagerly sought after by young men attracted by Silliman's reputation, and to mention the names of these assistants would be to enumerate many of the leaders of American science and education in the following generation.
Silliman was particularly anxious to extend the opportunities for scientific study in the college, but it was not until 1847 that he succeeded, aided by his son, Benjamin Silliman, Jr. , and his son-in-law, James Dwight Dana, who had by this time taken over part of the instruction in geology, and doubtless also by some pressure from outside sources, in persuading the Corporation to establish a "Department of Philosophy and the Arts, " under which the natural and physical sciences could be studied intensively. Even then he, his friends, and associates had to support the work of the department unaided by the college.
From this modest beginning, however, within a few years, grew the Yale Scientific School which subsequently, aided by the generous support of Joseph E. Sheffield, became the Sheffield Scientific School. This school, which rapidly became a center of scientific culture and perhaps Yale's most distinctive contribution to American education, was the direct fruitage of Silliman's influence.
In July 1818, Silliman issued the first number of The American Journal of Science and Arts, of which he was the founder, proprietor, and first editor. Devoted to the publication of original papers, notices, and reviews in the broad field of the natural and physical sciences, it became, under his skilful management, one of the world's great scientific journals. It brought him wide recognition throughout the scientific world and is one of his most enduring monuments. In the first hundred years of its history it had only four editors - Silliman himself, his son, his son-in-law, and his grandson.
In addition to the heavy burden of work entailed by the many activities already mentioned, Silliman found time for numerous scientific investigations and for writing. He edited, with some additions of his own, The Elements of Experimental Chemistry, an American edition of William Henry's standard English textbook; he edited (1829) Robert Bakewell's An Introduction to Geology; and in 1830-31 he published his own excellent treatise, Elements of Chemistry, in two volumes. All of these went through several editions.
In 1820 he published Remarks Made on a Short Tour between Hartford and Quebec in the Autumn of 1819, a volume which contained much of both general and scientific interest. This was widely read and went through two editions.
Some sixty papers contain the results of his scientific investigations, among which may be mentioned one written in 1806 on the geology of New Haven and vicinity, a paper describing exhaustively the celebrated "Weston Meteor" (Connecticut) of the fall of 1807, and several dealing with his experiments with the "Voltaic" current produced by a powerful deflagrator which he had developed with improvements along lines of one earlier made by his lifelong friend, Robert Hare.
He also investigated gold deposits in Virginia and coal in Pennsylvania, and directed an investigation for the government on sugar culture. It is probably true, however, that the results of his original researches were less important than the contributions included in the vast scientific correspondence with distinguished scientists throughout the world which he carried on independently or in connection with his editorial work for The American Journal of Science. The influence of this correspondence, although difficult to measure, was very great. His letters also contain much of value dealing with public, political, and religious questions.
In 1805 he had been made a member of the American Philosophical Society; in the spring of 1840 he was elected the first president of the Association of American Geologists, forerunner of the American Association for the Advancement of Science; and in 1863 he became an original member of the National Academy of Sciences.
He thus allied himself with one of the most distinguished and talented families of New England, a matter of no small importance to the rising young scholar. Incidentally it was through this connection that he secured for Yale College the historical paintings of Col. John Trumbull which now form the Trumbull Gallery of the Yale School of Fine Arts. Of the nine children of this marriage, one son and four daughters lived to maturity.
In 1849 he indicated his desire to withdraw from his teaching duties at the close of the year, but was persuaded to continue in active service until 1853, when he retired as professor emeritus, having served the college for nearly fifty-four years, fifty-one as professor.
After his retirement he enjoyed another decade of life, during which he made a second visit to Europe - an account of this trip was published in book form, A Visit to Europe in 1851 and occupied himself with compiling memoirs covering his life and work, with editorial work, and with his extensive correspondence. He died suddenly after a brief and painless illness at his home in New Haven, in his eighty-fifth year.
Achievements
He was one of the first American professors of science, at Yale College, the first person to distill petroleum in America, and a founder of the American Journal of Science, the oldest continuously published scientific journal in the United States.
During a considerable part of this period he had been the most distinguished and influential member of the Yale faculty. It can be said that he had established science at Yale and had exerted a most profound influence on collegiate education.
Silliman was an able scientific investigator and as such would doubtless have attained even greater distinction than he did, had he not chosen instead to be before all else the interpreter, promoter, and defender of science. To study science was, to him, to learn of the wonderful manifestations of God in the natural world, which it was man's duty to interpret reverently and by which it was his privilege to improve the conditions of his life; as told by him the story of the earth, revealed by geology, was a profoundly moving picture of the work of God. When he lectured, he conveyed much of his enthusiasm to his hearers. Speaking always extemporaneously, he drove home his point with a dignified but compelling eloquence. The experiments which were an important part of his chemistry lectures were ingenious, carefully prepared, and performed with remarkable elegance and skill. A rare and gifted teacher, whether in the college classrooms or on the public platform, he opened up new vistas of thought and inspired others with his own love of knowledge. In the course of his lifetime, despite vigorous opposition on the part of many who regarded scientific investigations and teaching as a menace to sound learning and even to morality and religion itself, he established the study of science on an equality with the older traditional educational culture, and made a whole nation conscious of its value to mankind.
Throughout his life he was deeply and sincerely religious. This was apparent in his daily life and is strikingly evident in his writings. Indeed, it was this combination of a scientific mind with deep, religious conviction that enabled him to exert such a profound influence in the interests of science on a generation that itself was dominated by strong religious convictions.
Personality
Benjamin Silliman was as richly endowed by nature physically as he was mentally. Tall, well-proportioned, and of vigorous physique, with handsome face and animated expression, he was a man of striking appearance. His unfailing dignity and courtesy of demeanor, his gentleness, kindliness, and generosity, and his noble integrity of character brought him a degree of regard and affection both at home and abroad seldom accorded to any man. His counsel and help in both public and private matters were constantly sought and freely given. To the members of his immediate family and to his intimate friends he appears to have been an object of love that was almost worship.
Connections
On September 17, 1809, Silliman married Harriet Trumbull, second daughter of the second Governor Trumbull of Connecticut. Mrs. Silliman died on January 18, 1850, and on September 17, 1851, he married a relative of hers, Sarah Isabella (McClellan) Webb, who survived him.
