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James Smithson

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James Smithson
An 1816 portrait of Smithson by Henri-Joseph Johns, now in the National Portrait Gallery
of the Smithsonian Institution
Born1764
Paris, France
Died27 June 1829(1829-06-27) (aged 65)
Genoa, Liguria
NationalityBritish
Alma materPembroke College, University of Oxford
Known forProving zinc carbonates are true carbonate minerals and not zinc oxides (1802); leaving a bequest in his will to the USA which was used to initially fund the Smithsonian Institution
AwardsFellow of the Royal Society (1787)
Scientific career
FieldsMineralogy and chemistry
Signature
For related terms, see Smithsonian (disambiguation).

James Smithson, FRS, M.A. (1764 – 27 June 1829) was a British mineralogist and chemist noted for having left a bequest in his will to the United States of America, to create "an establishment for the increase and diffusion of knowledge among men" to be called the Smithsonian Institution.

Biography

Not much is known about Smithson's life: his scientific collections, notebooks, diaries, and correspondence were lost in a fire that destroyed the Smithsonian Institution Building in 1865;[1] only the 213 volumes of his personal library and some personal writings survived.[2] Smithson was born Jacques Louis Macie on an unknown date early in 1764,[3] in Paris, France,[4] an illegitimate, unacknowledged son of an English landowner, the highly regarded and accomplished Sir Hugh Smithson, 4th Baronet of Stanwick, north Yorkshire, who had married into the Percy family. In 1766 he became 1st Duke of Northumberland, K.G.

A portrait of Smithson at the University of Oxford c.1786 by an unknown artist, which now hangs in the National Portrait Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution.

James Smithson's mother was his father's mistress, Elizabeth Hungerford Keate, the daughter of John Keate, an uncle of George Keate (1729–1797) who was elected to the Royal Society in 1766. Elizabeth was an heiress of the Hungerfords of Studley.[5] She was also the widow of John Macie, of Weston, near Bath, Somerset; so the young Smithson originally was called Jacques Louis Macie. His mother later married John Marshe Dickinson, a troubled son of Marshe Dickinson who was Lord Mayor of the City of London in 1757 and Member of Parliament. During this marriage, she had another son; but the 1st Duke of Northumberland, rather than Dickinson, is thought to have been the father of this second son also.

Smithson commenced undergraduate studies at Pembroke College, University of Oxford,[6] in 1782 and received a Master of Arts (M.A.) degree in 1786 (he matriculated as Jacobus Ludovicus Macie). French geologist Barthélemy Faujas de Saint-Fond described him as a diligent young student, dedicated to scientific research, who had risked drowning to gather geological observations on a tour of the Hebrides Islands.[7]

On 19 April 1787, at age 22, under the name James Lewis Macie, he was elected the youngest fellow of the Royal Society.[1] When his mother died, in 1800, he and his brother inherited a sizable estate. He immediately began the process to change his surname from Macie to his father's surname, Smithson.[8]

Smithson died on 27 June 1829, in Genoa; his body was buried in the English cemetery of San Benigno there.[8] In 1904, Alexander Graham Bell, then Regent of the Smithsonian Institution, brought Smithson's remains from Genoa to Washington, D.C., where they were entombed at the Smithsonian Institution Building (The Castle).[9] His sarcophagus incorrectly states his age at his death as 75; he was around 65.

The Smithsonian Institution archives has amassed some materials related to him.[10]

Scientific career

A large sample of smithsonite from Tsumeb, Namibia, displayed in the Smithsonian Institution.

Smithson dedicated his life to investigating the natural world, and visited Florence, Paris, Saxony, the Swiss Alps, and many other parts of Europe to find crystals and minerals on which he could perform experiments – including diluting, grinding, igniting, and even chewing and sniffing them – to discover and classify their elemental properties.[1] In 1802, Smithson proved that zinc carbonates were true carbonate minerals and not zinc oxides, as was previously thought.[2][11] One, zinc spar (ZnCO3), a type of zinc ore, was renamed smithsonite posthumously in Smithson's honour in 1832 by the noted French scientist[1] François Sulpice Beudant.[5] Smithsonite was a principal source of zinc until the 1880s. Smithson also invented the term silicate.[1]

Wherever he went, Smithson made minute observations on the climate, physical features, and geological structure of the locality visited, the characteristics of its minerals, the methods employed in mining or smelting ores, and in all kinds of manufactures. Desirous of bringing to the practical test of actual experiment everything that came to his notice, he fitted up and carried with him a portable laboratory. He collected also a cabinet of minerals, composed of thousands of minute specimens, including all the rarest gems, so that immediate comparison could be made of a novel or undetermined specimen with an accurately arranged and labelled collection.[5]

His first paper, presented to the Royal Society in 1791, was “An Account of some Chemical Experiments on Tabasheer,” and was followed from that time until 1817 with eight other memoirs treating for the most part of chemical analyses of various substances, principally minerals.[5] Smithson published at least 27 papers on chemistry, geology, and mineralogy in scientific journals. His topics included the chemical content of a lady's teardrop, the crystalline form of ice, and an improved method of making coffee.[2] He was acquainted with leading scientists of his day, including French mathematician, physicist and astronomer François Arago; Sir Joseph Banks; Henry Cavendish; Scottish geologist James Hutton; Irish chemist Richard Kirwan; Antoine Lavoisier and Joseph Priestley.[1][12]

The Smithsonian connection

James Smithson's tomb in the Smithsonian Castle

A shrewd investor, Smithson amassed a fortune in his lifetime.[1] On his death, Smithson's will left his fortune to his nephew, Henry James Dickinson, son of his brother who had died in 1820. Smithson had him change his name to Hungerford in the mid-1820s and in the will stipulated that if that nephew died without legitimate or illegitimate children, the money should go "to the United States of America, to found at Washington, an establishment for the increase and diffusion of knowledge among men."[13]

The nephew, Henry Hungerford (the soi disant Baron Enrico de la Batut), died without heirs in 1835, and Smithson's bequest was accepted in 1836 by the United States Congress. A lawsuit (in Britain) contesting the will was decided in favour of the U.S. in 1838 and 11 boxes containing 104,960 gold sovereigns[1] were shipped to Philadelphia and minted into dollar coinage worth $508,318. There was a good deal of controversy about how the purposes of the bequest could be fulfilled, and it was not until 1846 that the Smithsonian Institution was founded by Act of Congress.

Smithson had never been to the United States, and the motive for the specific bequest is unknown. There is an unsourced tradition within the (existing) Percy family that it was to found an institution that would last longer than his father's dynasty.

On 18 September 1965, in the year of the bicentenary of Smithson's birth, the Smithsonian Institution awarded to the Royal Society a 14-ct. gold medal bearing a left-facing bust of Smithson.[14]

Ancestors

8. Sir Hugh Smithson, 3rd Bart., of Stanwick, (1657-1733)
4. Langsdale Smithson
9. Hon. Elizabeth Langdale
2. Hugh Percy, 1st Duke of Northumberland [15]
10. William Reveley of Newby Wiske (1662-1725)
5. Philadelphia Reveley
11. Margery Willey
1. James Louis Macie Smithson
12. John Keate Esq.
6. Lt. John Hungerford Keate Esq. (1709-c1755)
13. Frances Hungerford
3. Elizabeth Hungerford Keate (1728-1800)
14. Henry Fleming DD, (1659-1728), Rector of Grasmere[16]
7. Penelope Fleming (c1711-1764)
15. Mary Fletcher

Notes

English Heritage plaque to Smithson at no. 9 Bentinck Street, Marylebone, London, unveiled on 25 September 2008
  1. ^ a b c d e f g h Colquhoun, Kate (2007-05-26). "A Very British Pioneer (review of Heather Ewing's The Lost World of James Smithson)". The Telegraph (Review).
  2. ^ a b c "Who was James Smithson? : A Man of Science". Smithsonian Institution. Retrieved 2007-06-18.
  3. ^ Torrens, H. S. (2004). "Smithson , James Lewis (1764–1829)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford University Press. Retrieved 2011-02-25. (subscription or UK public library membership required)
  4. ^ Pembroke College - Alumni and other Pembrokians
  5. ^ a b c d public domain Wilson, J. G.; Fiske, J., eds. (1900). Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography. New York: D. Appleton. {{cite encyclopedia}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)
  6. ^ A plaque commemorating Smithson's undergraduate days was erected at Broadgate Hall in Pembroke College by the Regents of the Smithsonian Institution in 1896. Its inscription reads: "JAMES SMITHSON -FRS- FOUNDER OF THE SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION – WASHINGTON. ERECTED BY THE REGENTS OF THE INSTITUTION 1896". A photograph of the plaque can be viewed on the Pembroke College website (retrieved on 19 June 2007).
  7. ^ "Who was James Smithson? : The Student Years". Smithsonian Institution. Retrieved 2007-06-18.
  8. ^ a b James Smithson on the Royal Society website. Retrieved on 18 June 2007.
  9. ^ "Who was James Smithson? : Smithson Leaves Bequest to the United States". Smithsonian Institution. Retrieved 2007-06-18.
  10. ^ http://siarchives.si.edu/findingaids/faru7000.htm
  11. ^ See Smithson, James (1803). "A Chemical Analysis of Some Calamines". Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Pt. I..
  12. ^ "Who was James Smithson? : A World of Scientific Ideals". Smithsonian Institution. Retrieved 2007-06-18.
  13. ^ A draft version of a transcript of Smithson's 1826 will may be viewed at the Smithsonian Institution's website (retrieved on 18 June 2007).
  14. ^ Reference no. M/215 in the Royal Society's collection: see the Royal Society's website, retrieved on 18 June 2007.
  15. ^ http://thepeerage.com/p1048.htm
  16. ^ A genealogical history of the dormant, abeyant, forfeited, and extinct peerages of the British empire, Sir Bernard Burke, Harrison, 1866

References

The plaque to Smithson just before its unveiling. Historian and Smithson biographer Heather Ewing speaks while Dr. Julian Raby, director of the Arthur M. Sackler and Freer Gallery of Art of the Smithsonian Institution, looks on

Further reading

Articles

Books

  • Bello, Mark (1993). The Smithsonian Institution, a World of Discovery : An Exploration of Behind-the-Scenes Research in the Arts, Sciences, and Humanities. Washington, D.C.: Distributed by Smithsonian Institution Press for Smithsonian Office of Public Affairs. ISBN 1560983140. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
  • Bolton, Henry Carrington (1896). The Smithsonian Institution : Its Origin, Growth, and Activities. New York, N.Y.: [s.n.]
  • Burleigh, Nina (2003). The Stranger and the Statesman : James Smithson, John Quincy Adams, and the Making of America's Greatest Museum, The Smithsonian. New York, N.Y.: Morrow. ISBN 0-06-000241-7 (hbk.). {{cite book}}: Check |isbn= value: invalid character (help)
  • Ewing, Heather (2007). The Lost World of James Smithson : Science, Revolution, and the Birth of the Smithsonian. [USA]: Bloomsbury. ISBN 1596910291 (hbk.). {{cite book}}: Check |isbn= value: invalid character (help)
  • Goode, George Brown (ed.) (1897). The Smithsonian Institution, 1846–1896 : The History of its First Half Century. Washington, D.C.: [s.n.] {{cite book}}: |first= has generic name (help) Reprinted as Goode, George Brown (ed.) (1980). The Smithsonian Institution, 1846–1896. New York, N.Y.: Arno Press. ISBN 0405125844. {{cite book}}: |first= has generic name (help)
  • Gurney, Gene ([1964]). The Smithsonian Institution, a Picture Story of its Buildings, Exhibits, and Activities. New York, N.Y.: Crown. {{cite book}}: Check date values in: |year= (help)CS1 maint: year (link)
  • Karp, Walter ([1965]). The Smithsonian Institution; an Establishment for the Increase & Diffusion of Knowledge among Men. [Washington, D.C.]: Smithsonian Institution. {{cite book}}: Check date values in: |year= (help)CS1 maint: year (link)
  • Rhees, William Jones (comp. & ed.) (1901). The Smithsonian Institution : Documents Relative to its Origin and History, 1835–1889. Washington, D.C.: G.P.O. Reprinted as Rhees, William Jones (ed.) (1980). The Smithsonian Institution, 1835–1899 (2 vols.). New York, N.Y.: Arno Press. ISBN 0405125836. {{cite book}}: |first= has generic name (help)
Wikisource has the text of the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica article "Smithson, James".

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