Benjamin Silliman
The Yale chemist who investigated the 1807 Weston fall in Connecticut, the first recorded meteorite fall in the United States.
Key facts
- Born
- 1779
- Died
- 1864
- Nationality
- American
- Field
- Chemist and geologist
Benjamin Silliman was one of the founders of American science. He taught chemistry and mineralogy at Yale College for half a century, gave popular public lectures across the country, and in 1818 founded the American Journal of Science, one of the oldest scientific journals still published.
Early on the morning of 14 December 1807, a brilliant fireball crossed Connecticut and several explosions were heard over the town of Weston. Stones rained down on farms in the area. One crashed onto a rock and shattered; another was found in a field where it had dug a hole. Within days Silliman and his Yale colleague James Kingsley rode out to investigate.
They interviewed witnesses, visited the places where stones had landed, and collected fragments, much as Biot had done at L'Aigle four years before. Several stones were recovered, some of them large. Silliman analysed the stones and found the same mixture of stony minerals, iron sulphide and nickel-bearing metal that Edward Howard had found in European falls.
Their report was widely reprinted and helped persuade Americans that stones really do fall from the sky. A remark often credited to President Thomas Jefferson, that it was easier to believe two Yankee professors would lie than that stones fall from heaven, is almost certainly invented, although Jefferson was cautious about the reports.
On the timeline
- 14 December 1807Weston: the first recorded American fall