Samuel Lewis Penfield
Samuel Lewis Penfield (born January 16, 1856 in Catskill , New York , † August 12, 1906 in South Woodstock ) was an American mineralogist and chemist .
Penfield studied chemistry and mineralogy from 1873 at Yale University ( Sheffield Scientific School ), among others with George Jarvis Brush and the professor of analytical chemistry, Oscar Dana Allen . graduated in 1877. He then worked there as an assistant, where he particularly excelled in the chemical analysis of minerals, for example triphyline , amblygonite and other phosphate minerals. His analysis of amblygonite initially earned him the later withdrawn criticism by Karl Friedrich Rammelsberg . Many of the phosphates studied came from that of Edward Salisbury Danaand Brush developed the Branchville mineral discovery. From 1880 he went to Germany for postgraduate studies in chemistry ; Among other things, he studied organic chemistry with Rudolph Fittig in Strasbourg . After returning in 1881 he became an instructor for mineralogy at the Sheffield Scientific School in Yale under Brush, who withdrew more and more from teaching. In 1884 he studied again in Germany, this time optical methods in mineralogy with Harry Rosenbusch in Heidelberg . In 1888 he became an assistant professor in mineralogy and in 1893 he was given a full professorship at Yale. Also in 1893 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences .
He described (sometimes with colleagues) 15 new minerals such as spangolite (1890), bixbyite (1897) and glaucochroit (1899). He also redefined the chemical composition of numerous well-known minerals. Penfield also developed new graphic methods for crystallography. He published mostly in the American Journal of Science .
He was married from 1897.
Fonts
- with GJ Brush Manual of determinative mineralogy and blowpipe analysis , Wiley 1898
Honors
He was a member of the National Academy of Sciences since 1900 , of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences since 1893 , a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and from 1904 an honorary member of the Mineralogical Society of Great Britain and Ireland . He was a member of the Göttingen Academy and Oslo Academy of Sciences, a corresponding member of the Geological Society of London and the Swedish Geological Society. In 1904 he received an honorary doctorate from the University of Wisconsin.
A mineral newly discovered and described in 1892 was named penfieldite in his honor .
Web links
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Penfield, Samuel Lewis |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | American mineralogist and chemist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | January 16, 1856 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Catskill , New York |
| DATE OF DEATH | August 12, 1906 |
| Place of death | South Woodstock |