, inaugural edition of the
American Journal of Science, founded by Benjamin Silliman, 1818 Returning to
New Haven, he studied its
geology. His chemical analysis of a
meteorite that fell in 1807 near
Weston, Connecticut, was the first published scientific account of an American meteorite. He lectured publicly at New Haven in 1808 and came to discover many of the constituent elements of many
minerals. Some time around 1818, Ephraim Lane took some samples of rocks he found at an area called Saganawamps, now a part of the
Old Mine Park Archeological Site in Trumbull, to Silliman for identification. Silliman reported in his new
American Journal of Science, a publication covering all the
natural sciences but with an emphasis on geology, that he had identified
tungsten,
tellurium,
topaz and
fluorite in the rocks. He played a major role in the discoveries of the first articulated fossil fishes found in the United States, which he discovered in
Newark Supergroup deposits near Connecticut, and were later described as the genera
Redfieldius and
Semionotus. In 1837, the first prismatic
barite ore of tungsten in the United States was discovered at the mine. The mineral
sillimanite was named after Silliman in 1850. Upon the founding of the
medical school, he also taught there as one of the founding faculty members. In 1833 he discussed the relationship of
Flood geology to the Genesis account and also wrote about this topic in 1840. Silliman was an early supporter of coeducation in the Ivy League. Although Yale would not admit women as students until over 100 years later, he allowed young women into his lecture classes. His efforts convinced Frederick Barnard, later president of Columbia College, that women ought to be admitted as students. "The elder Silliman, during the entire period of his distinguished career as a Professor of Chemistry, Geology and Mineralogy in Yale College, was accustomed every year to admit to his lecture-courses classes of young women from the schools of New Haven. In that institution the undersigned had an opportunity to observe, as a student, the effect of the practice, similar to that which he afterward created for himself in Alabama, as a teacher. The results in both instances, so far as they went, were good; and they went far enough to make it evident that if the presence of young women in college, instead of being occasional, should be constant, they would be better." American historian
David McCullough mentions in his book about early 19th century Americans in Paris that in 1825 Silliman, while on a tour of Europe conferring with other scientists, encountered his former Yale science student
Samuel Morse in the
Louvre museum (at that time Morse was still primarily a painter). As professor emeritus, he delivered lectures at Yale on geology until 1855; Silliman had been the first person to use the process of
fractional distillation, and, in 1854 his son Benjamin Silliman Jr became the first person to fractionate
petroleum by distillation. In 1864 Silliman noted
oil seeps in the
Ojai, California, area. In 1866, this led to the start of oil exploration and development in the Ojai
Basin. Silliman pioneered the mass production of
carbonated water and helped popularize it in the United States. In 1806, he purchased a
Nooth apparatus and opened a
soda fountain in New Haven. He marketed his mineral waters for their medicinal properties. Like his son-in-law
James Dana, Silliman was a
Christian. In an address delivered before the
Association of American Geologists he spoke in favor of
old Earth creationism, stating: In the same line of thought, he posed arguments against atheism and materialism.
1807 meteor At 6:30 in the morning of December 14, 1807, a blazing fireball about two-thirds the apparent size of the Moon in the sky, was seen traveling southwards by early risers in Vermont and Massachusetts. Three loud explosions were heard over
Weston, Connecticut. Stone fragments fell in at least 6 places. The largest and only unbroken stone, which weighed 36.5 pounds (16.5 kilograms), was found some days after Silliman and Kingsley had spent several fruitless hours hunting for it. The owner, a Trumbull farmer named Elijah Seeley, was urged to present it to Yale by local people who had met the professors during their investigation, but he insisted on putting it up for sale. It was purchased by Colonel
George Gibbs for his large and famous collection of minerals; when the collection became the property of Yale in 1825, Silliman finally acquired this stone; the only specimen of the Weston meteorite that remains in the Yale
Peabody Museum collection today. ==Personal life==