SKETCH OF DR. THOMAS S TERRY HUNT. 487 



Yale College. In 1847, while preparing to continue his studies in 

 Great Britain, he was chosen to be chemist and mineralogist to the 

 Geological Survey of Canada, then recently established imder the 

 direction of Sir William Logan, and having its headquarters at Mont- 

 real. This position he lield for twenty-five years, resigning it in 

 1872. He was, during this time, for sevei-al years a professor in the 

 Laval University at Quebec, where he lectured on chemistry and 

 geology in the French language, and was afterward Professor of 

 Chemistry and Mineralogy at McGill University, Montreal. Coming 

 to Boston in 1872 he took the chair of Geology in the Massachusetts 

 Institute of Technology, made vacant by the resignation of Prof. Wil- 

 liam B. Rogers, a post which he still occupies. He has never married. 

 His earlier scientific labors were chiefly in the domain of chem- 

 istry. Prof. B. Silliman, in his " History of American Contributions 

 to Chemistry," which appeared in the "Proceedings of the Centennial 

 of Chemistry" {American Chemist for 1874), says: 



"The name of no American chemist occurs more frequently, or in a more 

 important relation to the progress and development of our science during the 

 past quarter of a century, than that of Dr. Hunt. His contributions have been 

 equally valuable in theoretical chemistry, in chemical philosophy, and in geo- 

 logical and mineralogical chemisti'y. No other author has covered a wider 

 range than he. Not less than one liundred and thirty entries are found under 

 his name in the second and third series of the American Journal of Science, 

 and adding those published in Canada, England, and France, and some memoirs 

 in the proceedings of various American societies, the total roll of his papers 

 amounts to about one hundred and sixty titles." 



A considerable proj^ortion of these, however, relate to pure geology. 



From the " History " just quoted, and from a biographical notice 

 in The American Cyclopaedia, we learn of Dr. Hunt's important 

 contributions to theoretical chemistry, and his attempts to introduec 

 into the sciences of chemistry and mineralogy a new philosophy, some 

 points of which will be found in his address in 1874, at the Centennial 

 of Chemistry at Northumberland, Pennsylvania, entitled "A Cen- 

 tury's Progress in Chemical Theory." His papers on these subjects 

 were widely copied and translated, and have greatly influenced mod- 

 ern chemistry. At an early date Dr. Hunt prepared a summary of 

 organic chemistry, which he first defined to be the chemistry of car- 

 bon and its compounds, and which forms a part of Silliman's "First 

 Principles of Chemistry" (1872). A statement of some of the aspects 

 of the science will be found in the last annual address befoi'e the Mas- 

 sachusetts College of Pharmacy, delivered by him, on "The Relations 

 of Chemistry to Pharmacy and Therapeutics" (Boston, 1875) ; and Ave 

 present an abstract of this in the present number. It is said of Dr. 

 Hunt, in the notice above referred to, that his researches on the chem- 

 istry of soda and mineral waters have probably been more extended 

 than those of any other living chemist. These have been both syn- 



