Books - Benjamin Silliman

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Poet, essayist, chemist, geologist, educator, entrepreneur, publisher--Benjamin Silliman (1779-1864) was one of the virtuosi of the Early Republic and a founder of the American scientific community. This absorbing biography is not only a study of the youth and early career of a complex and remarkable man but also a window on his times. In lively and often moving detail, Chandos Michael Brown opens the broad context of Silliman's life in his native Connecticut. From Silliman's father's disastrous captivity among the British during the Revolution to the intensities of New England religious revivals, from the international celebrity of the Weston Meteor to the economic hazards of introducing artificial mineral waters to the New York market, here is an engaging portrayal of the growth of an American scientist within his rich cultural setting. Brown tells how the young Silliman confronted the declining fortunes of his distinguished family and how he strove to invent a new career worthy of his ambition and social standing. He describes Silliman's education at Yale College and in Philadelphia, his European tour, and his subsequent activities as a professor of chemistry and mineralogy, founder of the Yale Medical School, and editor of the American Journal of Science. Throughout this cultural biography, Silliman appears as the concerned member of an often troubled family--a man who nonetheless managed to achieve that elusive quality, greatly admired by his contemporaries, that of the representative American.

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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: As far as daylight served us, the country appeared much like that between Pisa and Lucca; and after evening came on, we saw, by the light of the moon, several towns and villages, some of the houses having the Tuscan appendage of towers at the corners. At half-past nine o'clock we entered the renowned city of Florence ; at ten we were settled in the Hotel Royal de Grand Bretagne, and at eleven we had finished our dinner, and were ready for our beds. Situation Of Florence.—This city of the arts, especially of sculpture, architecture, and painting, stands on the Arno, fifty miles from Pisa. Formerly they were rival republics; but Pisa was conquered in 1364 by her rival, when her captured citizens were brought to Florence and treated with indignity and cruelty. They were transported into the city like animals brought in for sale, and were led forth from prison only to work upon public buildings, one of which is now used for a post- office, and bears a name which alludes to the Pisans—Tetto del Pisani. Florence contained in 1845 107,000 inhabitants. Florence has many large and costly buildings—palaces of merchant princes and of other opulent citizens. As many new and expensive houses have been erected within a few years, and as, at this day, entire new squares are being surrounded with dwellings, we must presume that it is prosperous. It is situated in the midst of a rich and beautiful country. There are four bridges over the Arno, and on some there are houses on both sides, like a continued street. Over one of them there is an arched gallery to enable the Grand Duke and his friends to pass unobserved. The Arno is at present low, owing to a long-continued drought. It sometimes swells to a furious torrent, being fed by mountain streams ; it has repeatedly swept away the bridges, r...