American scientist, born at St. Helen’s, near Liverpool, on the 5th of May 1811. He studied at Woodhouse Grove, at the University of London, and, after removing to America in 1832, at the medical school of the University of Pennsylvania in 1835–1836. In 1837 he was elected professor of chemistry in the University of the City of New York, and was a professor in its school of medicine in 1840–1850, president of that school in 1850–1873, and professor of chemistry until 1881. He died at Hastings, NY, on the 4th of January 1882. He made important researches in photo-chemistry, made portrait photography possible by his improvements (1839) on Daguerre’s process, and published a Text-book on Chemistry (1846), Text-book on Natural Philosophy (1847), Text-book on Physiology (1866), and Scientific Memoirs (1878) on radiant energy. He is well known also as the author of The History of the Intellectual Development of Europe (1862), applying the methods of physical science to history, a History of the American Civil War (3 vols., 1867–1870), and a History of the Conflict between Religion and Science (1874).
See accounts by George F. Barker in Biographical Memoirs of the National Academy of Science, vols. 2 and 3 (Washington, 1886, 1888). See also “The Development of Civilization in Europe”; Literary Criticism.
