636 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 



BIOGRAPHY. 



PROFESSOR BENJAMIN SILLIMAN, JR. 



H. E. SADLER. 



The death, on January 14th, of Prof. Benj. SilUman, "Young Ben" as he had 

 not ceased to be called though he died in his sixty-ninth year, has not been 

 chronicled in the dispatches of the western press. This was, perhaps, to be ex- 

 pected, for Prof. Silliman was in no sense a leader of scientific thought. He had 

 hit upon no such discoveries as those by which Henry opened the way for the 

 telegraph or by which Bell has produced the telephone. He had not pushed 

 speculation to the limit of human reason. He had not been the founder of any 

 school of philosophy. Even in his chosen field of chemistry it has fallen to his 

 colleagues, to Cooke, to Gibbs, to Lawrence Smith, to extend the written laws of 

 nature and make the broader generalizations. 



And yet who is left behind to whom the cause of science in America is more 

 indebted? While acting as assistant to his father, so early as 1842, when there 

 were yet no schools of science in this country and when even in our best colleges 

 such instruction was given only by lectures, he fitted up a laboratory at his own 

 expense and gathered about him a few earnest students in physical science. The 

 dinginess of the "old lab" on the Yale campus, whose unloveliness associations 

 have hallowed, and the atmosphere of the college green, supersaturated with 

 Greek, would have stifled a less vigorous shoot, but after five years this bud of 

 promise struggled forth into light and blossomed. In 1847 the Corporation 

 named Tutor Silliman " Professor of chemistry applied to the arts," organized the 

 Yale Scientific School, enrolled his students on the college catalogue, and ap- 

 pointed one of them, the lamented Jno. P. Norton, professor of Agricultural 

 Chemistry. No longer quite single-handed, but still without other than his pri- 

 vate resources, he engaged and equipped a larger building and made room for 

 the students who came flocking in, zealous in the new departure. And of them 

 all, how many drew from his untiring enthusiasm the elements of their success; the 

 genius of hard work, the love of learning and of truth, the ambition to contrib- 

 ute to the world's store of knowledge, the spirit of research ? How many, too, 

 of those early disciples have continued in the paths then taken, not without re- 

 ward to themselves and gain to us all. Samuel W. Johnston, Brewer, the lamented 

 Norton, Geo. K. Brush, Daniel C. Oilman, such are the names these memories 

 recall. 



An educational revival of this character could not wait long for recognition 

 and support. Under the skillful management of Prof. Silliman, endowments 

 came in quick succession, and when he was called to Louisville University this 



