Green, Traill (1813–1897)
Professor of chemistry, botany and astronomy, Traill Green was born at Easton, Pennsylvania, on May 25, 1813, the son of Benjamin and Elizabeth Traill Green.
From boyhood he was devoted to nature study and afterwards, thinking medicine would afford him special advantages, he studied under Dr. J. K. Mitchell (q. v.) and graduated M. D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1835. Then, returning to Easton, he began practice there. But chemistry, his darling study, was not given up and in his consulting-room at night he would give lectures on this and allied subjects to a class of young people. To the botany class came Harriet Moore of Morristown, New Jersey, who in 1844 married her professor and shared his scientific labors.
In 1837 he was made professor of chemistry at Lafayette College and in 1865 professor of natural science. He received the A. M. degree from Rutgers in 1841 and was later called to the chair of natural sciences at Marshall College, Pennsylvania, and in 1866 Washington and Jefferson College conferred upon him the LL. D.
Noticing with regret the incomplete training of many medical students he, with others, launched the American Academy of Medicine and was its first president. But Lafayette College was his special interest. The observatory was his gift and to it he bequeathed his books and minerals. Every good cause had an advocate in him. By voice and pen, money and enthusiasm he helped forward medical reform, temperance, the higher education of women. A full list of his writings and a portrait may be seen in "Proceedings of the Medical Society of Northampton County," June 18, 1897, the chief one being "Zoological and Floral Distribution of the United States," 1861.
He died in his birthplace, Easton, on the twenty-ninth of April, 1897.