Benjamin Silliman, American Chemist
Benjamin Silliman (August 8, 1779 - November 24, 1864) was an American chemist. He was educated at Yale, he studied law from 1798 to 1799 and became a tutor at Yale from 1799 to 1802. He was admitted to the bar in 1802. He studied chemistry at the University of Pennsylvania and delivered his first lectures in chemistry at Yale in 1804. These lectures were the first science lectures ever given at Yale. He studied its geology, and made a chemical analysis of the meteorite that fell near Weston, Connecticut, publishing the first scientific account of any American meteorite. The mineral sillimanite was named after Silliman in 1850. In 1854, he became the first person to fractionate petroleum by distillation. Fractional distillation is the separation of a mixture into its component parts, or fractions, such as in separating chemical compounds by their boiling point by heating them to a temperature at which one or more fractions of the compound will vaporize. He believed that slavery was evil, but favored colonization of free African-Americans in Liberia, serving as a board member of the Connecticut colonization society between 1828 and 1835. He was a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He founded and edited the American Journal of Science, and was appointed one of the corporate members of the National Academy of Sciences by the United States Congress. He died in 1864 at the age of 85.
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