no LEADING AMERICAN MEN OF SCIENCE 



and mature advice, Silliman determined to make the attempt. 

 Out of deference to Dr. Bruce, then in declining health, he asked 

 his opinion of the project, which was given at once in favor of 

 the effort, and moreover in approbation of the plan, which 

 included the entire circle of the physical sciences and their 

 applications. 



At the Yale Bicentennial Celebration in 1901 there were re- 

 peated allusions to the value of this publication, and the words 

 of one of the speakers on that occasion were these: 



"Benjamin Silliman showed great sagacity when he perceived, 

 in 1818, the importance of publication, and established, of his 

 own motion, on a plan that is still maintained, a repository of 

 scientific papers, which through its long history has been recog- 

 nized both in Europe and in the United States, as comprehensive 

 and accurate; a just and sympathetic recorder of original work; 

 a fair critic of domestic and foreign researches; and a constant 

 promoter of experiment and observation. It is an unique history. 

 For more than eighty years this journal has been edited and pub- 

 lished by members of a single family, three generations of them, 

 with unrequited sacrifices, unquestioned authority, unparalleled 

 success. In the profit and loss account, it appears that the col- 

 lege has never contributed to the financial support, but it has 

 itself gained reputation from the fact that throughout the world 

 of science, Silliman and Dana, successive editors, from volume i 

 to volume 162, have been known as members of the Faculty of 

 Yale. I am sure that no periodical, I am not sure that any acad- 

 emy or university in the land, has had as strong an influence upon 

 science as the American Journal of Science and Arts." 



Professor Joseph Henry has left on record an extended appreci- 

 ation of the American Journal. Its establishment and mainte- 

 nance, he says, 



"Under restricted pecuniary means, was an enterprise which 

 involved an amount of thought and of labor for the expenditure 

 of which the editor has well merited the gratitude not only of his 

 own countrymen, but of the world. It has served not only to 

 awaken a taste for science in this country by keeping its readers 

 continually informed of the discoveries in science wherever it is 

 cultivated; but above all, it has called into the field of original ob- 



