100 BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON. 



The first professor of chemistry was Dr. Benjamin Rush, who 

 lectured in the Philadelphia Medical School as early as 1769. 

 Bishop Madison was professor of chemistry and natural phil 

 osophy at William and Mary College, from 1774 to 1777 ; Aaron 

 Dexter, of chemistry and materia medica at Harvard, 1783 to 

 1816 ; John Maclean, at Princeton, 1795-1812, being the first to 

 occupy a separate chair of chemistry. Before the days of chem 

 ical professorships, the professor of mathematics seems to have 

 been the chief exponent of science in our institutions of learning. 



John Winthrop, [b. 1714, d. 1779] , for instance, who was Hollis 

 Professor of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy at Harvard 

 from 1738 to 1779^ was a prominent Fellow of the Royal So 

 ciety, to whose Transactions he communicated many important 

 papers, chiefly astronomical. We read, however, that Count 

 Rumford imbibed from his lectures his love for physical and 

 chemical research, and from this it may be inferred that he taught 

 as much of chemistry as was known in his day. William Small, 

 professor of mathematics in William and Mary from 1758 to 

 1762, was a man of similar tastes, though less eminent. He was 

 the intimate friend of Erasmus Darwin. President Jefferson was 

 his pupil, attended his lectures on natural philosophy, and got 

 from time to time his " first views of the expansion of science 

 and of the system of things in which we are placed." 



Dr. Samuel Latham Mitchill [b. 1764, d. 1831] was the first 

 man to hold a professorship of natural history, lecturing upon 

 that subject, together with chemistry, in Columbia College in 1 792. 

 Dr. Mitchill was eminent as a zoologist, mineralogist, and chem 

 ist, and not only published many valuable papers but in 1798 

 established the first American scientific journal. 



Harvard appears to have had the first separate professorship of 

 natural history, which was filled by William Dandridge Peck, 

 a zoologist and botanist of prominence in his day. 



A professorship of botany was established in Columbia College, 

 N. Y., as early as 1795, at which time Dr. David Hosack [b. in 



