VOL.2, NO.6
BENJAMINHALE
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BENJAMIN HALE-PROFESSOR OF CHEMISTRY AND COLLEGE PRESIDENT* LYMAN C. NEWELL, BOSTON UNIVERSITY, BOSTON. MASS. A professor of chemistry frequently becomes a college president. Benjamin Hale belongs to this class. He was the Professor of Chemistry in Dartmouth College from 1827 to 1835 and President of Geneva (afterwards Hobart) College, Geneva, N. Y., from 1837 till his death in 1863. It is not my purpose in the present paper to give a detailed account of Benjamin Hale's scientific work nor of his career as an administrator. One incident in his experience as a teacher of chemistry is significant, picturesque and pathetic. This incident is the one to which this paper is devoted. Benjamin Hale was born in 1707. He entered Bowdoin College in 1814 and graduated in 1818. Here he studied chemistry and mineralogy under Professor Parker Cleaveland, acquiring not only a knowledge of these sciences but also a deep love for science and a high regard for the scientific method of studying, thinking and teaching. Coupled with his love for science was a profound interest in religion. After a very short period of teaching, he entered Andover Theological Seminary, graduated, and began preaching in 1822. The next year he was a tutor in Bowdoin College. In 1822 he was appointed Principal of the Gardner (Me.) Lyceum. Here he remained until 1827 when he was elected Professor of Chemistry and Mineralogy a t Dartmouth College. He succeeded Professor James Freeman Dana. In Professor Dana's time seniors were allowed to attend lectures in chemistry and anatomy on payments of $4.00 a year, and juniors $2.00. In Professor Hale's early years seniors and juniors were allowed to attend the fourteen or fifteen weeks of his daily lectures delivered to medical students. Subsequently he held five or six weeks of daily recitations with the junior class. He also gave a separate course of thirty lectures in chemistry each year to undergraduates. In addition to these courses, he gave a course of twenty lectures in geology and mineralogy and collected about 2500 minerals, thereby starting the cabinet in this department. There is no evidence that Professor Hale failed to do his teaching acceptably. But he was uneasy-scientifically and religiously. He was educated in a Congregational seminary and was teaching in a Congregational College. Nevertheless, he openly expressed the faith, teaching and service of the Protestant Episcopal Church. He lost his position by a drastic act, uiz., the abolition of his professorship by the Trustees in 1835. So far, this acconnt has lacked color. We now come to the justification
* Read at the Ithaca Meeting of the American Chemical Society. Sept. 10, 1924.
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of this account and probably the real cause for Benjamin Hale's departure from Dartmouth College. He wrote a letter to the Board of Trustees, a valedictory letter he called it, though "maledictory" would be a more fitting, if allowable, term. Among other things he says: "It is a remarkable fact that there is not one member of your board whose pursuits in life lead him to any acquaintance with physical studies, and I presume the importance, absolute and relative of such studies is viewed by you as it stood in American colleges from thirty to fifty years ago when you were undergraduates, and your college feels the d e c t of this deficiency. It has not taken a scientific periodical, as far as I know, for half a century. The few that have crept into your library you owe to the charity of a pamphlet society which, through the influence of the late Professor Dana, among its other periodicals took one Quarterly Journal of Sciace; and at its decease bequeathed its collection to your library. Since its death, no report of the progress of science finds its way within your walls, save the Journal of Professor Silliman, taken by the two respectable societies among the students.. . . . . . A few years ago, no provision was made for chemical lectures to college classes, and members of higher classes were in the habit of making a contract annually with Professor Dana for the privileges of attending his lectures." Soon after leaving Dartmouth College, Benjamin Hale took orders in the Episcopal Church. When he was elected President of Geneva (afterwards Hobart College) in 1837, the spirit of revolt against the old regime was still strong, for in the next year he published two pamphlets entitled "Liberty and Law" and "Education in Its Relation to Free Government." Some one else must write the story of President Hale's career as an administrator. My purpose has been to reveal an incident in the early experience of a man, who, had he continued to be a chemist would have achieved renown as an investigator a t a time when chemistry sorely needed such men. The Trustees reestablished the chair of chemistry in 1836-the year after Benjamin Hale's forced departure. Prof. Oliver P. Hubbard, sonin-law of Benjamin Silliman, was appointed the successor of Benjamin Hale, and as a sort of retribution the Trustees saw him remain a t Dartmouth College about forty-seven years doing and demanding in larger measure the very things that stirred Benjamin Hale to revolt and ultimately terminated his career as a chemist.
