Benjamin Silliman Jr. (December 4, 1816 – January 14, 1885) was a professor of chemistry at Yale University and instrumental in developing the petroleum industry.
His father Benjamin Silliman Sr., also a famous Yale chemist, developed the process of fractional distillation that enabled the economical production of kerosene. In 1855, Silliman Jr. wrote a report for $526.08 on Pennsylvania rock oil and its usefulness as an illuminant that convinced investors to back George Bissell's search for oil.
Introduction
In the 1850s the market for light-producing liquid fuels was dominated by coal oil and by an increasingly inadequate supply of whale oil. However, George Bissell, a lawyer from New York, his partner Jonathan Greenleaf Eveleth, and James Townsend, a New Haven bank president, had a revolutionary idea. They thought there was a possibility of the crude "rock oil" (now petroleum) that had been cropping up in Western Pennsylvania being used as an illuminatory substance. At the time, rock oil was nothing but a smelly hindrance to the well-diggers of the region, with some limited medicinal properties. Yet Bissell and Eveleth, after realizing how flammable the liquid was, believed there was great money to be made in producing rock oil commercially, marketed as lamp fuel and such. But they needed someone—an important, well-respected scientist—whose name they could attach to their financial venture, to research the material to find out whether or not it could be used in such a manner. They found Benjamin Silliman Jr., professor of chemistry at Yale.
Chemical contribution
Benjamin Silliman's primary contribution to the chemical world, and certainly the world as a whole, involved the fractional distillation of petroleum, analyzed mainly for the purpose of its qualities of illumination. He was asked to do this as one of the most prominent chemists of his time, and his report on the subject afterwards had extremely far-reaching influences. The immensely important main idea of his report was that distilled petroleum burned far brighter than any fuel on the market, except those that were far more expensive and less efficient. His conclusion was that petroleum is "a raw material from which...they may manufacture a very valuable product." Silliman also noted that this material was able to survive through large ranges of temperature, and the possibility of it being used as a lubricant.
Influences
Benjamin Silliman Sr. was clearly the largest inspiration in Benjamin Silliman Jr.'s career. Both Sillimans were eminent chemists and professors of the subject at Yale University. The father was the first professor of chemistry at Yale in 1802, and studied the subject at the Medical College of the University of Pennsylvania. He was also professor of natural history—which was defined as geology, mineralogy, zoology, and botany—all of which he studied at the University of Edinburgh. His work in those areas established Yale's rock and mineral collection as the most significant in America at the time. With his help, Yale became the foremost center of science in 19th-century America. Benjamin Silliman Sr. is considered by many to be the father of American chemistry. With the exception of Silliman Jr.'s involvement in the oil boom, there are many similarities between the careers of both Sillimans.
Silliman's wife, Susan Huldah Forbes, was a descendant of Joel Root, an early entrepreneur and supercargo on the sealing ship Huron. Root wrote a journal, A Voyage Around the World Made by Joel Root 1802-1806, later published in a limited edition of eight copies by Alice Belknap Hawkes, descendant of the Silliman, Root, and Forbes families.
Silliman's daughters, Alice and Susan, were the first two students to enroll at the Yale School of Fine Arts when it opened in 1869.
See also
- The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power