6 SKETCH OF PROF. JOHN LE CONTE. 



fondness for research interfered to some extent with the efforts 

 that might have been made to secure paying patients. 



In August, 184G, Dr. Le Conte accej^ted the chair of Natural Phi- 

 losophy and Chemistry in Franklin College, his alma mater, from 

 which he had gone forth eight years before as the best scientific 

 student in his class. This decided his withdrawal from the field 

 of practical work in medicine. Henceforth he devoted himself to 

 the study of physical science, but without failing to keep pace 

 still with the progress of physiology. He retained his professor- 

 ship at Athens for nine years, resigning it in the autumn of 1855 

 to become lecturer on chemistry in the College of Physicians and 

 Surgeons, his medical alma mater. In the spring of 1856, at the 

 conclusion of his course of lectures in New York, he accepted a 

 call to the South Carolina College at Columbia, where he had been 

 unanimously elected to fill the chair, then first created, of Natural 

 and Mechanical Philosophy. This position he held until the col- 

 lege was disbanded soon after the opening of the civil war. He 

 was then put in charge of the Niter and Mining Bureau of South 

 Carolina. In 1866 the University of South Carolina was organ- 

 ized, and Dr. Le Conte was elected to the same chair that he had 

 held in the college of which this was the new development. This 

 position he retained until 1869, when he gave up his residence in 

 Columbia to become an adopted citizen of California. Here his 

 home has continued up to the present time. 



The period of thirteen years embracing Dr. Le Conte's connec- 

 tion with the South Carolina College and University, although 

 clouded by the saddening events incident to the civil war, con- 

 stituted the pleasantest and most satisfactory period of his life. 

 The institution was governed by a board of trustees composed of 

 gentlemen of refinement and culture, who entertained a genuine 

 sympathy for the labors of the student who strives to plant him- 

 self at the most advanced outposts of science and literature. The 

 community amid which the college had been developed was 

 strongly influenced by the atmosphere of scholarship which it 

 produced. There was a quiet spirit of encouragement to learn- 

 ing, which, by its freedom from pretension, furnished the most 

 grateful incentive to study. It was during these years that Dr. 

 Le Conte established a European reputation through his writings, 

 which were publislied cliiefly in the " American Journal of Sci- 

 ence " and the " London Philosophical Magazine." It was in 1857 

 that he made the remarkable discovery of the sensitiveness of 

 flame to musical vibrations — a discovery which served as the 

 starting-point for Barrett, Tyndall, and Koenig in the exquisite 

 applications that have since been worked out by the use of flame 

 for the detection of sounds too delicate for the ear to perceive, 

 and for the optical analysis of comj^ound tones. Unfortunately, 



' 



