American scientist and physicist, and son of John William Draper; born in Prince Edward County, VA, on the 7th of March 1837. In 1858 he graduated at the medical department of the University of the City of New York; became professor of physiology there in 1860, and professor of analytical chemistry and physiology in the scientific department, finally becoming dean of the medical faculty. He early published a thesis on the Changes of Blood-Cells in the Spleen, and served for a time on the medical staff of Bellevue Hospital. Taking up his residence, after a visit to Europe, at Hastings-on-the-Hudson, he built an observatory there, and became noted for his labors in celestial photography, and for his original researches in chemistry and many important observations in astronomy. The photographic and spectroscopic examination of the moon and other heavenly bodies especially interested him, and secured for him, in 1874, the appointment, by Congress, to superintend the photographic department of the commission authorized to observe the transit of Venus in that year. In 1866 he published a Textbook of Chemistry, and previously issued a brochure On the Construction of a Silvered-Glass Telescope. In 1877 he announced the discovery of oxygen in the sun by photography, and a new theory of the solar spectrum. He made many interesting contributions to the American Journal of Science, and collected and exhibited a vast number of photographs of celestial phenomena. He died in New York on the 20th of November 1882.
