Isaac Lea

Lea was born on March 4, 1792, in Wilmington, Delaware. His grandparents, John and Hannah Hopton Lea, emigrated to the Province of Pennsylvania with William Penn in 1699. His parents were James J. Lea, a merchant, and Elizabeth Gibson Lea. He was studying to be a physician, but began working at his brother John's import business in Philadelphia at the age of 15. In 1820, he married Frances Ann Carey, daughter of noted publisher Mathew Carey. He received an LL.D. degree from Harvard in 1853. ==Business career==

His father-in-law Mathew Carey founded the Matthew Carey & Company publishing company and brought his son Henry Charles Carey and Lea in as partners and changed the company name to Matthew Carey & Sons. Matthew retired in 1824 and another of his sons joined the firm and the name was changed to Carey, Lea & Carey. In 1833, William A. Blanchard was brought on as a partner and the firm was briefly known as Carey, Lea & Blanchard until Henry Charles Carey retired in 1836 and the firm name was changed again to Lea & Blanchard. The publishing house became one of the most successful in America, and was known for publishing items such as The Encyclopedia Americana and a dictionary of German lexicon. In the early 1830s, he became a partner in the Dauphin and Susquehanna Coal Company which owned 42,000 acres on the eastern bank of the Susquehanna River. In 1851, Isaac retired from the publishing business and made his son Henry Charles Lea a full partner and the name was changed to Lea Brothers. ==Scientific career==

Lea worked with Lardner Vanuxem during his work on the geology of New York. Many geological histories are defined by mollusk fossils which led Lea to also study living mollusks. In 1815, Lea joined the Academy of Natural Sciences and published his first paper on minerals found in the Philadelphia area in 1817. He was especially interested in freshwater and land mollusks. He studied mollusks from the Ohio River submitted to the Academy of Natural Sciences by Major Stephen Harriman Long and shells collected by his brother near Cincinnati. and also served as president of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia (1858–1863), both based in Philadelphia. Lea served as president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1860. ==Family==

His two sons, Henry Charles Lea and Matthew Carey Lea achieved distinction in scholarly fields and the family publishing business. The brothers married the Jaudon sisters and their children also joined the family business, which ultimately became Lea & Febiger. Henry Charles Lea (September 19, 1825 – October 24, 1909) was an American historian, civic reformer, and political activist in Philadelphia. Mathew Carey Lea (1823–1897) was a lawyer as well as founder of mechanochemistry and early photographer. ==Death and legacy==

He died on December 8, 1886, in Philadelphia and was interred in Laurel Hill Cemetery. In 1829 Edgar Allan Poe wrote a poem dedicated to Lea titled "To Isaac Lea". Three mollusks were named in his honor, Crenella leana Dall, 1897, Lymnaea leai F.C. Baker, 1907 and Periploma leanum (Conrad, 1831). The National Museum at Washington now has his immense collection of freshwater mussels from the family Unionidae, as well as other collections. The Historical Society of Pennsylvania has the records of Lea & Febiger, as well as predecessor companies. Two slabs of rock containing the fossilized footprints and plaster casts of the footprints discovered by Lea are in the collections of the Smithsonian Institution. ==Publications==

• Lea, I. 1818. An account of the minerals at present known to exist within the vicinity of Philadelphia. Journal of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia 1, 462–482. (BHL link) • (1823) Complete, Historical, Chronological, and Geographical American Atlas * (1827–1874). Observations on the Genus Unio. 13 volumes. • [https://www.google.com/books/edition/Contributions%20to%20Geology/ot4bAAAAIAAJ Contributions to Geology, Carey, Lea & Blanchard, Philadelphia, 1833 • (1837). "Observations on the Naiades". Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 5 • (1838). Synopsis of the Family of Naiades • Lea I. (1838). "Description of New Freshwater and Land Shells". Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 6: 1–154. • • A Synopsis of the Family of Naiades, Blanchard and Lea, Philadelphia, 1852 • On the Fossil Foot-marks in the Red Sandstone of Pottsville, Pennsylvania, self-published, Philadelphia, 1852 • Observations on the Genus Unio, Together with Descriptions of New Genera and Species in the Family Unionidae, Volumes 6-7, J. Kay, Philadelphia, 1857 • Check Lists of the Shells of North America, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, June, 1860 Molluscan taxa named by Lea include: • Euglandina vanuxemensis (Lea, 1834) – a carnivorous land snail • Unio lawii (Lea, 1871) – named for Annie Law ==Citations==