Shawn,
Since you brought up the Silliman/Woodhouse topic again today,, I want to be
sure you understand that I am not trying to inflate the work of Woodhouse at
the expense of Silliman. I am trying to present a balanced perspective of
what both Woodhouse and Silliman accomplished.
If you really want to learn about Woodhouse, see J. J. Beer, "The chemistry
of the founding fathers", Journal of Chemical Education, vol. 53, no. 7
(1976), pp. 405-408.
It's available at the following link:
http://pubs.acs.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1021/ed053p405
Regarding Silliman's low opinion of Woodhouse, Beer, who taught at the
University of Delaware, states: "the long-run evaluation of Woodhouse by
his colleagues and subsequent historians is different." He then goes on to
outline Woodhouse's accomplishments.
See page 407 of the article.
There is a difference between scientific discovery vs. scientific
promotion/education - - Sillimans work on the Weston meteorite falls into
the latter category. It may have brought Silliman, as well as the U.S., a
lot of publicity and fame, but as far as science goes, it was not a
particularly impressive piece of analytical work, considering that Silliman
himself admitted that he followed in the footsteps of Howard and others.
Again, everything is on the Meteorite Manuscripts post on Prince's book,
which can be viewed at the links below.
Mark
Mark Grossman
Meteorite Manuscripts
Briarcliff Manor, NY
http://meteoritemanuscripts.blogspot.com
http://twitter.com/MetManuscripts
http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Meteorite-Manuscripts/152949358073543?v=wall
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