the sight of which impressed him with a desire to construct a similar but smaller instrument, and at- tracted his attention toward astronomy and astro- nomical photography. On his return to the United States he applied himself to accomplish this pur- pose, and built the observaJ,ory at Hastings-on- Iludson. A description of the details of grinding, polishing, silvering, testing, and mounting the re- flector, all of which he did himself, was published by the Smithsonian institution in 1865, and became the standard authority on the subject. Meanwhile he had been appointed on the medical staff in Belle- Tue hospital, and served for eighteen months. In 1860 he was elected professor of physiology in the university, and in 1866 to the similar chair in the medical department, becoming soon afterward its dean. His specialty of celestial photogi-aphy was not neglected, and a photograph of the fixed lines in the spectra of the stars is of this period. His most celebrated photograph is that of the moon, nud it probably gives the best representation of its surface thus far made. Upward of 1,500 negatives were made by Dr. Draper with this instrument. In 1867 he married Mary Anna, the daughter of Courtland Palmer, who became his assistant in scientific work. In 1872 he photographed the spectrum of o Lyne (Vega), showing dark lilies, a result then unique in science, and in 1873 the finest photograph of the diffraction spectrum ever made. He resigned his chair in the medical de- j)artment in 1878, in order to devote more time to original research, but the death of Mr. Palmer in 1874 made it necessary for him to take charge of a large estate. In 1874 he was chosen by congress to superintend the photographic department of the commission appointed to observe the transit of Venus. For three months he was busily occupied in Washington, organizing, experimenting, and in- structing. Home duties preventetl him from join- ing the expedition, but he received from congress a gold medal in recognition of his services. In 1876 he made a negative of the solar spectrum, and one of the spectrum of an incandescent gas upon the same plate, with their edges in contact. These results and corroborative experiments led him to assume the presence of oxygen in the sun, and in July, 1877, he announced " The Discovery of Oxygenin the Sun by Photography, and a New Theory of the Solar Spectrum." This brilliant in- vestigation, culminating in perhaps the most original discovery ever made in physical science by an American, could not pass unchallenged. Eng- lish astronomers were slow to accept the results, and in 1879 Dr. Draper submitted his research to the Royal astronomical society in London. The sun told its own story, and its light, acting on the delicate metallic film on the glass negative, was evidence that could not be disputed. In 1878 he observed the solar eclipse of 29 July, in Rawlings, W. T., and obtained excellent photographs of the corona. Later he photographed the great nebula of Orion, and in 1880 photographed the spectrum of Jupiter. In 1882 he received the degree of LL. D. from the University of New York and also from the University of Wisconsin during the same year. Dr. Draper was a member of scientific societies in the United States and in Europe, and in 1877 was elected to the National academy of sciences. His original papers number but a score, and are principally devoted to researches on the chemistry of heavenly bodies. They appeared chiefly iii the "American Journal of Science." Dr. Draper also published " A Text-Book on Chemis- try " (New York, 1866). Biographical sketches of Henry Draper were contributed by Prof. George F. Barker to the " American Journal of Science " (February, 1888), the " Proceedings of the Ameri- can Philosophical Society " (December, 1882), and to the " Biographical Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences " (vol. iii.). — Another son, Daniel, meteorologist, b. in New York city, 2 April, 1841, was educated at the University gram- mar-school, and subsequently followed scientific studies under his father, whom he assisted in his lectures, also becoming his amanuensis in the prep- ai'ation of the " History of the Intellectual De- velopment of Europe " and in the " History of the American Civil War." In the designing and con- struction of the observatory in Hastings-on-Hud- son, Daniel was associated with his brother Henry. For five years he served an apprenticeship in the Novelty iron-works. New York, where he was em- ployed during the building of the " Roanoke " and other iron-clads for the U. S. government in the early years of the civil war. In 1809 he was ap- pointed director of the New York meteorological observatory established at that time in Central park. For the work under his control he designed and manufactured the self-recording instruments, including the photographic barograph and thermo- graphs (dry and wet), pencil gauges for rain and snow, for direction of the wind, and for the velocity and force of the wind. In 1871 he began a series of meteorological investigations in connection with the observatory. Of these, his consideration of the question " Does the clearing of land increase or diminish the fall of rain 1 " showed that the preva- lent impression of its diminishing was not founded on fact. Besides several researches concerning the variations in temperature, he took up the ques- tion " Do American storms cross the Atlantic?" It was found that from 1869 till 1873 eighty-six out of eighty-nine disturbances were felt on the Euro- pean coast. This led to telegraphic announcement of storms from the United States to Great Britain. A more recent investigation has shown the in- creased prevalence of pneumonia at times when the atmosphere is richest in ozone. His researches have earned for him the degree of Ph. D. from the University of New York, and they have been fully described in scientific journals both in the United States and Europe. He is a member of scientific societies and has published annual reports of the observatory since his appointment.
DRAPER, Lyman Copeland, antiquarian, b.
in Hamburg (now Evans), Erie co., N. Y., 4 Sept.,
1815 ; d. in' Madison. Wis., 27 Aug., 1891. He re-
moved with ills father to Springfield, Pa., and in
1821 to Loekport, N. Y., where he was educated at
the village school, worked on his i'athexs farm, and
in 1880-8 served as clerk in various stores. In the
latter year he went to Mobile with a relative, and
began obtaining information about the Creek chief
Weatherford. Since then he devoted his life to the
collection of material relating to western history
and biography, and was regarded as an authority on
those subjects. In 1885-'6 he was a student in Gran-
ville college, Ohio. In 1888 he began an extensive
correspondence with well-known western pioneers,
and had personal interviews with many of them,
thus collecting a great amount of valuable histori-
cal information. He became editor of a paper in
Pontotoc, Miss., in 1840, and in 1842 was clerk in the
office of the Erie canal at Buffalo, N. Y, The next
ten years were spent mostly in the family of a rela-
tive in Philadelphia, in the prosecution of his
search fof historical data. He removed to Madison,
Wis., in 1858, to become corresponding secretary of
the State historical society, and was instrumental
in securing for it a library of 116,000 volumes and
