Thousands of Yale University students have passed through the corridors of Silliman College without paying heed to its name. Benjamin Silliman (1779–1864), born to Gold Selleck Silliman and Mary Fish (Noyes) Silliman of Fairfield County, entered Yale college at the tender age of thirteen and graduated with a law degree. His mentor, Dr. Timothy Dwight (eighth president of Yale), encouraged him to continue studies in chemistry and natural history.

His travels to London and Edinburgh to study the physical sciences coincided with Napoleon’s preparations to invade England. Silliman witnessed the British admiral Nelson defeat the French and Spanish navies at Trafalgar, while he was settling down to the business of science. He chronicled his travels to England, Holland, Scotland, and Quebec in two editions of a well-received journal. His subsequent teaching tenure at Yale in chemistry, mineralogy and geology garnered him more praise. Audience members would sometimes travel from as far afield as New Orleans and St. Louis to attend his lectures. Besides his teaching duties, he also brought paintings of the American Revolution by Trumbull to Yale University, thereby encouraging student interest in the fine arts.

In 1807, he traveled with Professor Kingston to a meteorite site in Weston, Connecticut, chemically analyzed the fragments and published the first scientific account of an American meteor. Some of his other findings include discovering turquoise embedded in the rocks of Mount Chalchuitl, New Mexico. The gift of turquoise by Montezuma to Cortez for the Spanish crown, underscores the fact that ancient Mexican Indians were already aware of the value of the stone. Silliman analyzed the turquoise and surmised that its blue color came from variable amounts of copper oxide deposited in the rocks.

The naming of the mineral, sillimanite (aluminum silicate), bears testimony to his numerous discoveries in the field. His goal was to “put knowledge in the hands of all who could do anything to promote its growth and usefulness.” To this end, he founded the longest running scientific journal, American Journal of Science, as well as writing and editing textbooks. He founded the first graduate school in America, an institution that produced the likes of J. Willard Gibbs and Daniel C. Gilman.

Benjamin Silliman Jr. carried on in his father’s scientific footsteps (1816-1885). As a chemistry professor at Yale, he wrote extensively on the merits of petroleum, which he had fractionated by distillation, as a high quality illuminator. His research provided the impetus for the speculators Bissell and Eveleth, to market oil discovered in western Pennsylvania as an illuminant. His other discovery, the lubrication properties of petroleum, would prove useful in the upcoming mechanical age. Unfortunately, he was much less successful as a mining consultant, providing advice on potential oil sources in California that did not pan out.
Further information on the Sillimans can be found in papers at the Yale Peabody museum and Johns Hopkins University.

REFERENCES

1. Frazier, C.N. (1947): The Scientific Monthly, Vol. 65, No. 6, pp. 521-522
2. Hedgpeth, J. W. (1980): The Quarterly Review of Biology, Vol. 55, No. 1, pp. 59
3. Benjamin, M.(1905): Science, Vol. 21, No. 545, pp. 873-884
4. Silliman, B. (1880): Science, Vol. 1, No. 24, pp. 289
5. Schechter, S. (1995): The William and Mary Quarterly, Third Series, Vol. 52, No. 1, pp. 194-196
6. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Silliman,_Jr.
7. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Silliman