Pennsylvania Polymath: Samuel Stehman Haldeman

Posted by on Jun 8, 2020 in | Comments Off on Pennsylvania Polymath: Samuel Stehman Haldeman Samuel Stehman Haldeman was a pioneer in American science with an uncompromising empirical bent who made definitive contributions in geology, metallurgy, zoology and the scientific study of language. His groundbreaking lifework touched nearly seven decades of science and included identification of one of the oldest fossils in Pennsylvania, elucidation of a plan for an anthracite coal furnace for...
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Thomas Say: Pennsylvania Entomologist

Posted by on Apr 19, 2016 in | Comments Off on Thomas Say: Pennsylvania Entomologist Thomas Say was a keen observer of living things. In a scientific era that cherished primacy in classification and description, Say was renowned for his work. He named approximately 1,500 North American insects and scores of other species. This accomplishment alone could justify scientist Benjamin Silliman’s assertion that Say “has done more to make known the zoology of this country,...
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Biographer of the Feathered Tribes: Alexander Wilson and American Ornithology

Posted by on May 8, 2015 in | Comments Off on Biographer of the Feathered Tribes: Alexander Wilson and American Ornithology “As it has fallen to my lot to be the biographer of the feathered tribes of the United States,” Alexander Wilson (1766-1813) wrote to William Bartram (1739-1823) on August 4, 1809, “I am solicitous to do full justice to every species; and I would not conceal one good quality that any one of them possesses.” At the age of 43 Wilson – weaver, peddler, poet, teacher...
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Historian of Pennsylvania Exceptionalism: Samuel W. Pennypacker

Posted by on Dec 2, 2013 in | Comments Off on Historian of Pennsylvania Exceptionalism: Samuel W. Pennypacker Reflecting on “the play of forces” that propelled him to Pennsylvania’s governor’s office in 1903, Samuel Whitaker Pennypacker (1843–1916) confidently declared, “there is no such thing as an accident” (a notion popularized by Sigmund Freud, the founding father of psychoanalysis). This was not to say chance plays no part in history because he pronounced with equal certitude: “To every man certain...
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