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Biography of Benjamin Silliman
Name: Benjamin Silliman
Birth Date: August 8, 1779
Death Date: November 24, 1864
Place of Birth: Trumbull, Connecticut, United States
Nationality: American
Gender: Male
Occupations: editor, chemist, naturalist
Benjamin Silliman
The most prominent and influential man of science in America during the early 19th century, Benjamin Silliman (1779-1864) was a chemist, naturalist, and editor.Benjamin Silliman was born on Aug. 8, 1779, in what is now Trumbull, Conn., and brought up in nearby Fairfield. He entered Yale in 1792 at the age of 13, graduating in 1796. He spent 2 years partly at home and partly teaching in a private school in Connecticut, then returned to Yale to begin studying law and to tutor. He was admitted to the bar in 1802.That same year, with no background for the position, Silliman was appointed to the newly established professorship of chemistry and natural history at Yale, with permission to qualify himself for the job before beginning his duties. His preparation included attending lectures at the Philadelphia Medical School; work with the chemist Robert Hare; occasional visits to John Maclean, professor of chemistry at Princeton; and 2 years at Edinburgh, …showed first 150 words…
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…showed last 150 words…A brilliant lecturer, Silliman was much in demand by popular audiences for lectures on chemistry, geology, and the bearing of science on religion throughout the 1830s and 1840s. He spent his last years compiling memoirs and conducting his voluminous correspondence. He died on Nov. 24, 1864. Further Reading A biography of Silliman is John F. Fulton and Elizabeth H. Thompson, Benjamin Silliman (1947). George P. Fisher, Life of Benjamin Silliman (2 vols., 1866), is useful primarily for its verbatim quotations from reminiscences, diaries, and correspondence. For Silliman's part in establishing the teaching of science at Yale see Russell H. Chittenden, History of the Sheffield Scientific School of Yale University, 1846-1922 (2 vols., 1928). Benjamin Silliman and his circle: studies on the influence of Benjamin Silliman on science in America: prepared in honor of Elizabeth H. Thomson, New York: Science History Publications, 1979.Brown, Chandos Michael, Benjamin Silliman: a life in the young republic, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1989.
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