Parker Cleaveland
Parker Cleaveland (born January 15, 1780 in Byfield , Massachusetts , † October 15, 1858 in Brunswick , Maine ) was an American mineralogist .
Life
Cleaveland first attended the Dummer Academy in his home village and studied at Harvard University from 1795 . In 1799 he received the Bachelor of Arts degree as the best in his class . He then prepared for a career as a lawyer, in the meantime switched to theology, which he also gave up when his alma mater offered him a position as a lecturer in mathematics and “ natural philosophy ”. In 1805 he moved to Bowdoin College in Maine, where he taught until his death in 1858. In 1809 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences . Since 1818 he was a member of the American Philosophical Society .
As a generalist in the natural sciences, he carried out research on a wide range of topics, including issues of meteorology , paleontology , chemistry and agriculture . From 1820 he was also a professor of materia medica responsible for building up the medical faculty in Bowdoin (the Medical School of Maine ). But he was particularly interested in geology and especially mineralogy; In 1816 he published with An Elementary Treatise on Mineralogy and Geology a textbook on these disciplines, which was at least in the United States a standard work; He is therefore often referred to as the "father of American mineralogy".
Honors
After Cleaveland 1822 was Cleavelandit named a leaved variety of the mineral albite . In 1823 Dartmouth College awarded him an honorary doctorate.
It is believed that the often rather eccentric Cleaveland was the model for the chemist Dr. Cacaphodel in Nathaniel Hawthorne's short story The Great Carbuncle (1836) was. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow , who studied at Bowdoin with Hawthorne, paid tribute to Cleaveland in a poem in 1875.
Works
- Vocabulary Containing an Explanation of Certain Chemical Terms: More Particularly Those which Relate to the Chemical Nomenclature . Without a place, without a year (probably before 1816).
- An Elementary Treatise on Mineralogy and Geology . Cummings and Hilliard, Boston 1816; second, revised edition 1822.
- Results of Meteorological Observations Made at Brunswick, Maine, between 1807 and 1859 . Smithsonian Institution, Washington 1867. (= Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge 16: 3).
literature
- BB Burbank: James Bowdoin and Parker Cleaveland . In: Mineralogical Record 19, 1988. pp. 145-152.
- John C. Greene and John G. Burke: The Science of Minerals in the Age of Jefferson . In: Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 68: 4, 1978, pp. 1-113.
- William Collins Watterson: Professor Dearest? ( Memento from February 17, 2013 in the web archive archive.today ). In: Bowdoin Magazine , November 11, 2009.
- Leonard Wood: An Address on the Life and Character of Parker Cleaveland . B. Thurston, Portland ME 1859.
Individual evidence
- ^ Member History: Parker Cleaveland. American Philosophical Society, accessed June 22, 2018 .
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Cleaveland, Parker |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | American mineralogist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | January 15, 1780 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Byfield , Massachusetts |
| DATE OF DEATH | October 15, 1858 |
| Place of death | Brunswick , Maine |