Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 16.djvu/577

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SKETCH OF BENJAMIN SILLIMAN.
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Journal of Science and Arts," until the close of the first series of fifty volumes of that journal in 1845. In 1846, with the accession of Professor James D. Dana, the management of the second series of that journal devolved upon the younger editors. In the same year he was appointed at Yale Professor of Chemistry applied to the Arts, the first appointment in the "Fourth Department of Philosophy and the Arts," then inaugurated, and which is more particularly mentioned below. His "First Principles of Chemistry" appeared in this year, of which over fifty thousand copies have been sold. He was a member of the Common Council of the city of New Haven in 1845-'49. In 1845-'46 he gave in New Orleans a course of lectures on agricultural chemistry, upon the invitation of the leading professional and commercial men of that city, and this, it is believed, was the first course of lectures on that subject given in the United States.

In 1849 he was elected to the chair of Medical Chemistry and Toxicology in the Medical Department of Louisville University, at that time in a highly prosperous condition, the duties of which he discharged for five winters. In 1854 he resigned this chair, to take up the instruction in chemistry in the Academical and Medical Departments at Yale, made vacant by the resignation of his father, the Geology and Mineralogy having been assigned to Professor Dana. This instruction was given under the appointment to the chair of "General and Applied Chemistry" (1854). He resigned his duties in the Academical Department in 1870.

In 1858 he published "First Principles of Natural Philosophy or Physics," and a second edition of the same in 1861.

Mr. Silliman visited Europe with his father in 1851, and subsequently edited his father's "Visit to Europe in 1851," 2 vols.; the work having been originally prepared for three volumes, it was cut down to two volumes, to match the author's "Visit to England, Holland, and Scotland, 1805."

He visited California in March, 1864, returning in February, 1865, and again in 1867 and 1872, being occupied with professional work in the mines and in mineralogical and geological explorations. He delivered the annual oration before the College of California in 1867, which has been published.

Mr. Silliman has for some years been much occupied as a scientific witness in the courts, having been employed in many important causes in which scientific testimony and investigation were called for. His aid has been also constantly invoked in various matters connected with the practical arts, where a knowledge of scientific principles is involved.

In addition to the works named above, he has printed many memoirs upon various scientific and practical subjects, addresses and opinions too numerous to mention, besides his original investigations recorded in the "American Journal of Science and Arts."