1878 BRILLIANT AMERICAN PHYSICIAN. Scientific Memoirs: Being Experimental Contributions to a Knowledge of Radiant Energy by Draper, John William - 1878

New York: Harper & Bros., 1878. First edition.

1878 COMPILATION OF SCIENTIFIC INVENTIONS AND DISCOVERIES BY BRILLIANT PHYSICIAN SCIENTIST AND PHOTOGRAPHER--SIGNED PRESENTATION COPY.

14.5x23 cm hardcover, brown cloth binding, spine gilt, bookplate of Robert L. Chevalier MD to front paste-down, Inscribed and signed on front free endpaper by son of the author, Daniel Draper to Daniel's niece, Carlotta Maury: "To Carlotta with love from Draper, Oct 1916". Portrait frontis of J. W. Draper with tissue guard, i-xxii, 473 pp, 100 wood engravings in text (including engravings of 6 photomicrographs with tissue guard), plate depicting Rumford medal with tissue guard, 6 pp publisher's advertisements. Light wear to cover edges, closed tear to back endpaper, light browning to page edges, overall very good in custom archival mylar cover.

JOHN WILLIAM DRAPER (1811 - 1882) was an American (English-born) scientist, philosopher, physician, chemist, historian and photographer. In 1832, his family settled in Christiansville, Virginia, where John William established a laboratory. Here he conducted experiments and published eight papers before entering medical school, graduating from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine in 1836. Draper did important research in photochemistry, made portrait photography possible by his improvements on Louis Daguerre's process, and published a textbook on Chemistry (1846), textbook on Natural Philosophy (1847), textbook on Physiology (1866), and Scientific Memoirs (1878) on radiant energy (offered here). Draper was the first to photograph the diffraction spectrum, the first to take a photograph of the moon, and to prepare the first photomicrographs of tissues. In 1875, Draper was awarded the Rumford Medal of the American Academy of Art and Sciences, and in 1876, he was elected the first president of the American Chemical Society. These achievements are described and pictured in the Memoirs offered here. The inscription is presumably by DANIEL DRAPER (1841 – 1931) one of six children of John William Draper. He attended New York University, of which his father was a founder, and took his Ph.D. there in 1880. He was a meteorologist and inventor who served for more than 40 years as the official meteorologist for the city of New York and who attained worldwide distinction in the fields of science relating to astronomy and the weather. He invented a number of important weather measurement devices thus beginning the 150-plus-year Central Park climatological record that continues to this day. His niece was Antonia Maury, the American astronomer, while his brothers included the chemist and surgeon John Christopher Draper and the doctor and amateur astronomer Henry Draper. His aunt was Dorothy Catherine Draper, the subject of the oldest daguerreotype taken in America. The archive of Daniel Draper is among the John William Draper Family Papers held by the Library of Congress.

PROVENANCE: CARLOTTA MAURY (1874 –1938), Daniel Draper's niece, was a geologist, stratigrapher, paleontologist, and was one of the first women to work as a professional scientist in the oil and gas industry. Carlotta's sister Antonia, became an astronomer, and worked as a scientist and a mathematician in Harvard Observatory, and her brother John William went on to be an established surgeon in New York.