The Explorer King by Robert Wilson

Clarence King was probably the most well-known American scientist of his time. It doesn’t hurt that his scientific reputation was built on exploration of the then still wild west of the United States of that he could spin a tale. Robert Wilson recounts the life of the accomplished geologist in The Explorer King.

King was born in 1842. He was raised in Newport, Massachusetts. He was educated at Yale’s Sheffield Scientific School.

As a young man, King was enamored of art critic John Ruskin. Ruskin thought the rugged Alps of Europe to be the best subject of art for their beauty, colorfulness, ruggedness and variety. When he met western geologists and mountaineers through mentors at Sheffield, he wanted to be part of it.

He headed out for California in 1863 and became part of the state’s geologic survey. He would spend the next decade studying the geology and geography of the American west, especially its mountains. He showed great physical prowess and courage as a mountaineer.

After working on the California survey, he went on to lead surveys. In 1864, he was chosen to lead a survey of Yosemite.

He built on his reputation from the Yosemite survey to lobby Congress to fund a survey of the 40^th Parallel, roughly the route the transcontinental railroads would follow. Though it was under the auspices of the Army Corp of Engineers, it was the first federally-funded scientific endeavor that was completely staffed by civilians. While working on this survey, he was the first to discover active glaciers in the U.S. His team published new methods of silver smelting to make the mines for productive (the survey’s first report dealt with mining in order to show the commercial value of their research to money-conscious Congressmen).

The 40^th Parallel survey made King famous, though not because of the many contributions to science that came from it. King’s team heard rumors of a diamond discovery in Colorado. It would have been very embarrassing for them to have walked over such a valuable mineral resource without observing it. They tracked down the site of the discovery and determined it was a hoax; the site had been planted with rough diamonds and other uncut gemstones that the con men had bought mostly with money from their marks. Stories of massive fraud sells newspapers, especially when the names of big money men in San Francisco and New York are attached to it. King was the hero of the story.

When the U.S. Geological Survey was created, King was appointed to be its first director. His career as a scientist was already on the decline. He would turn his attention to making money in mining, but he would not be successful. He would have no money when he died.

This leads to an interesting point about King, though it is not the focus of Wilson’s biography. King had nothing to leave for his secret family. He was married to a black woman. This was a very unusual thing at the time. To protect his reputation, he kept the marriage a secret. He did not even reveal to his wife his real identity until shortly before he died (she knew him as James Todd). His friend John Hay provided for Ada Copeland Todd (and the five children she had with King) after King died in 1901.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

A Professor, a President, and a Meteor by Cathryn J. Prince

The Fifth Heart by Dan Simmons

Sea of Glory by Nathaniel Philbrick

Undaunted Courage by Stephen Ambrose

Wilson, Robert. The Explorer King: Adventure, Science, and the Great Diamond Hoax—Clarence King in the Old West. New York: Scribner, 2006.

Defining Noah Webster by K. Alan Snyder

Snyder, K. Alan. Defining Noah Webster: A Spiritual Biography. Washington, DC: Allegiance Press, 2002.

Noah Webster was in interesting man in interesting times. A young man during the American Revolution, he became interested in politics and went on to know many of the statesmen of that era, especially amongst his fellow Federalists . He was published the first magazine of original material in America and edited a Federalist newspaper, sometimes drawing fire from his own party for his evenhanded reporting. He is best known for writing educational materials, readers, texts, and especially his dictionary.



K. Alan Snyder covers this biographical fare in Defining Noah Webster. He is more interested in the philosophical and religious arc of Webster’s life and how his views changed, especially after his conversion to Christianity.

Webster was raised in the Congregational church of his family in Connecticut and attended Yale, which was still ostensibly a religious college at the time. (Incidentally, later in life he would help to establish Amerherst because, among other things, he found Harvard, itself originally a seminary, to be too liberal.) As he reached adulthood and had to fend for himself, he turned away from the faith and sought guidance in literature and philosophy. He is hardly the only Enlightenment-era youth to seek to perfect himself through reason .

Snyder sees Webster falling under the influence of Scottish Common Sense philosophy. After reading his book, I can’t tell you much about Common Sense philosophy, though Snyder provides just enough to follow how it appears in Webster’s activities and writings in the early part of his career. The major themes are that reason must be guided by conscience, and that as a person matures and develops reason, reason should take the drivers seat and direct his other faculties. Thus, Webster’s educational views include inculcating moral values. Common Sense also viewed political philosophy as part of moral philosophy. Webster valued character in politicians and thought foolish put public trust in people whose private morals were questionable.

While Webster’s views were not opposed to Christianity, his real faith through much of his career as an educator, author, politician, and public figure was in reason, not in Christ. As he saw his country grow and become factious and reported the horrors that developed during the French Revolution, he became disillusioned with the idea that reason, even if guided by a trained conscience, could cure people of moral shortcomings.

Webster converted to Christianity at the age of about 50, to the delight of his wife and daughters. He did not make a disillusioned retreat to religion. He was born again and the experience changed his perspective on everything. The final chapters are the meat of the book. Snyder writes about how this conversion changed Webster’s views on politics and education and influenced his dictionary.

Webster remained a staunch Federalist. However, the reasoning behind his political views changed. He found the roots of republican government in the Bible-base wisdom of America’s Christian settlers. Solid character, especially Christ-like character, became an even more important requirement for elected officials.

Before his conversion, Webster steered clear of what he saw as the overuse of the Bible in readers. Afterward, he no longer trusted natural conscience and reason. People were too prone to error and selfishness. They needed revelation from God’s Word as a reliable to guide to what is right.

These Christian views are prominent in Webster’s dictionary, though largely removed from its successors. Webster traced etymologies with the notion of finding the true meaning of a word in its origins in an Adamic tongue. His illustrations of meanings frequently reflected his Christian views.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in
His Excellency by Joseph J. Ellis
The Invention of Air by Steven Johnson
The Politically Incorrect Guide to Western Civilization by Anthony Esolen
Triumvirate by Bruce Chadwick

A Little History of Science by William Bynum

Though the edition I picked up didn’t look like a children’s book, William Bynum’s A Little History of Science is written for children. I’m in my forth decade and I enjoyed it anyway.

The title suggests the subject, but hardly the breadth. Bynum starts with the first, unnamed people to observe and think about the world around them. He ends with current science such as computer science and gene mapping.

It wouldn’t be write to say that depth suffers because of the breadth. Admittedly, each chapter covers a subject that could in itself provide enough material for a book. However, Bynum’s purpose is to provide an introduction to a lot of areas of science and to show how scientific knowledge grows and improves over time. It covers all the major branches of science including physics, chemistry, and biology. He does this very well.

For someone who wants a place to get started, especially a youngster interested in history or science, this is a good book. Though Bynum does not include a bibliography, he drops a lot of names. Almost every notable name in scientific history, and a few lesser known, is mentioned, so someone could be equipped with a list of names when the hit the card catalog to find the next book that might interest them.

I do not know if Bynum subscribes to the “big men” notion of history. As much as he mentions the major figures and the leaps some of them made, he emphasizes the incremental, even iterative, nature of science. Even so, learning history through biography can be interesting because history is the cumulative action of people, even if a single person can’t truly turn the tide, and some people are interesting, especially the cranky ones (like Isaac Newton). Bynum adds enough biographical touches to his history to add this kind of spice.

If you’re interested in these books, you may also be interested in

The Astounding, the Amazing, and the Unknown by Paul Malmont (fiction)

Copernicus’ Secret by Jack Repcheck

Descarte’s Secret Notebook by Amir D. Aczel

Einstein’s Clocks, Poincare’s Maps: Empires of Time by Peter Galison 

The Essential Engineer by Henry Petroski

The Ghost Map by Steven Johnson

IBM and the Holocaust by Edwin Black

The Invention of Air by Steven Johnson

How to Build and Android by David F. Dufty

Miss Leavitt's Stars by George Johnson

Newton and the Counterfeiter by Thomas Levenson

The Victory of Reason by Rodney Stark

War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America’s Campaign to Create a Master Race By Edwin Black

Bynum, William. A Little History of Science. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2012.

A Professor, a President, and a Meteor by Cathryn J. Prince

A Professor, a President, and a Meteor, a book by Cathryn J. Prince, is a biography of Benjamin Silliman. Silliman helped to establish the United States as a scientific leader.

Silliman was part of the post-Revolutionary generation. His father, Gold Selleck Silliman, was a general in the Continental Army. Benjamin Silliman had hoped to make a name for himself in the law, but was persuaded by a family friend to pursue science, though it was not a career likely to lead to prominence in America.

American science was not well regarded in those days, especially in Europe. A falling star, and Silliman’s diligent and careful study, changed that.

In 1807, a large meteor fell over Weston, Connecticut. Silliman, a very young, new professor of chemistry at Yale, and his colleague James Kingsley, went as quickly as they could to the remote community. The carefully interviewed witnesses, surveyed the location of meteorites, and collected samples. Silliman took samples back to New Haven to analyze them in his lab.

Silliman helped to establish that meteors originated in outer space. Popular theories at the time were that they came for lunar or terrestrial volcanoes or somehow formed in the atmosphere. The notion that something from outer space could fall to Earth was radical.

Silliman other contributions to American science were his work as a popularizer and mentor. He was an able teacher and able to communicate science to a broad audience. His public lectures on science around the country were very popular. He also helped to train a generation of American scientists. At the beginning of his career, he had to go to Europe to study chemistry and geology, at the end of his career and budding scientist could be educated in the U.S.

Silliman’s ability to reach the people of his day was his devotion to his Christian faith. He saw no serious conflict between his religion and his science. He was able to stay out of debates with clergymen that would have brought opposition to his scientific views.

In spite of the title, I found little reason to drag the president into it. Thomas Jefferson was in office at the time of the Weston Fall. Silliman, like other New England Federalists, had little liking for his policies, nor did Jefferson much care for his adversaries in the region. In addition, the president did not highly esteem geology or astronomy, instead preferring biological sciences that he considered to have more practical application. Prince brings up these difference in the book, but they never seem to add up to a serious conflict between Silliman and Jefferson.

Prince, Cathryn J.  A Professor, a President, and a Meteor: The Birth of American Science. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2011.

If you’re interested in this book, you may also be interested in

A Little History of Science by William Bynum

Copernicus’ Secret by Jack Repcheck

Defining Noah Webster by K. Alan Snyder

The Essential Engineer by Henry Petroski

His Excellency by Joseph J. Ellis

The Invention of Air by Steven Johnson

Miss Leavitt's Stars by George Johnson

Newton and the Counterfeiter by Thomas Levenson

Triumvirate by Bruce Chadwick

Undaunted Courage by Stephen Ambrose