John William Draper another scholar banned in his time

· Book Review, Religion & Science
Print Post
Authors
  • Zia Shah MD Affiliation: The Muslim Times Website: http://themuslimtime… He is a physician practicing in Upstate New York. He is the Chief Editor of the Muslim Times, which has more than 38,000 followers in Twitter. He was Chair of Religion and Science for the Muslim Sunrise, for more than a decade. He has authored more than 400 articles on Islam, Christianity, Secularism and Religion & Science. Follow in Twitter: @The_MuslimTimes

George Santayana is well known for the saying, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”  If we have to follow his advice there are three names we cannot forget, Andrew Dickson White, Joseph Priestly and John William Draper.  All three of them wonderfully exposed the vulnerabilities of Christianity in general and Catholic Church in particular in different arena, especially religion and science.  The cumulative case presented by them is overwhelming but the Church has been able to push it under the rug by citing a few inaccuracies, she has successfully condemned reams and reams of evidence and wiped it from the memory of common people.  It is now up to the Muslims to be custodian of this information and use it to negotiate a universal rationality leading the Muslims and the Christians to a peaceful co-existence.

This history is not only relevant and useful for the Western countries but also for the so called Muslim countries.  It highlights the paramount need of separation of Mosque-Church and State in every country of the world and not only our politics needs to be free from coercions of religious zealots but also our science and technology.

——————————————————————————————

This is reproduced from Wikipedia to ensure longevity of the text.

John William Draper (May 5, 1811 – January 4, 1882) was an American (English-born) scientist, philosopher, physician, chemist, historian and photographer. He is credited with producing the first clear photograph of a female face (1839–40) and the first detailed photograph of the Moon (1840). He was also the first president of the American Chemical Society (1876–77) and a founder of the New York University School of Medicine. One of Draper’s books, History of the Conflict between Religion and Science, received worldwide recognition and was translated into several languages, but was banned by the Catholic Church. His son, Henry Draper, and his granddaughter, Antonia Maury, were astronomers, and his eldest son, John Christopher Draper, was a chemist.[1]

Contents

[hide]

Early life

John William Draper was born May 5, 1811 in St. Helens, Merseyside, England to John Christopher Draper, a Wesleyan clergyman and Sarah (Ripley) Draper. He also had three sisters, Dorothy Catherine (August 6, 1807 – December 10, 1901),[2] Elizabeth Johnson, and Sarah Ripley. On June 23, he was baptized by the Wesleyan minister Jabez Bunting. His father often needed to move the family due to serving various congregations throughout England. John Wm. Draper was home tutored until 1822, when he entered Woodhouse Grove School. He returned to home instruction (1826) prior to entering University College London in 1829.[3]

On September 13, 1831, John William Draper married Antonia Coetana de Paiva Pereira Gardner (c. 1814–1870), the daughter of Daniel Gardner, a court physician to John VI of Portugal and Charlotte of Spain. Antonia was born in Brazil after the royal family fled Portugal with Napoleon‘s invasion. There is dispute as to the identity of Antonia’s mother. Around 1830, she was sent with her brother Daniel to live with their aunt in London.[4]

Following his father’s death in July, 1831, John William’s mother was urged to move with her children to Virginia. John William hoped to acquire a teaching position at a local Methodist college.[5]

Virginia

Copy of a photograph of Dorothy Catherine Draper taken by John Draper c. 1840. Plate size: 8.3×10.2 cm (3 1/4×4 in).[2] See also another copy.

In 1832, the family settled in Mecklenburg County, Virginia 7½ miles (12 km) east (on Virginia State Route 47) from Christiansville (now Chase City). Although he arrived too late to obtain the prospective teaching position, John William established a laboratory in Christiansville. Here he conducted experiments and published eight papers before entering medical school. His sister, Dorothy Catharine Draper provided finances through teaching drawing and painting for his medical education. In March 1836, he graduated from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine. That same year, he began teaching at Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia.[6]

New York

In 1837, he took an appointment at New York University; he was elected professor of chemistry and botany the next year. He was a professor in its school of medicine from 1840 to 1850, president of that school from 1850 to 1873, and professor of chemistry until 1881. He was a founder of the New York University Medical School.

Work

Draper did important research in photochemistry, made portrait photography possible by his improvements (1839) 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.

In 1839–1840, Draper produced clear photographs, which at that time were regarded as the first life photographs of a human face, but more likely were the first clear photographs of a female face.[7] Draper took a series of pictures, in with 65-second exposure by sunlight, and the first ones were of his female assistant. Her face was covered with a thin layer of flour to increase contrast, and those photos were not preserved. Draper also photographed his sister, Dorothy Catherine Draper, and one of those pictures (see image) became known to the public via the letter which Draper sent to John Herschel in 1840. Several copies were made of this picture in the 19th century, and the photograph attached with Draper’s letter was also likely a copy made by Draper himself.[2]

In 1840 Draper became the first person to produce photographs of an astronomical object, the Moon, considered the first astrophotographs. In 1843 he made daguerreotypes which showed new features on the moon in the visible spectrum. In 1850 he was making photo-micrographs and engaged his then teenage son, Henry, into their production.

Draper developed the proposition in 1842 that only light rays that are absorbed can produce chemical change. It came to be known as the Grotthuss–Draper law when his name was teamed with a prior but apparently unknown promulgator Theodor Grotthuss of the same idea in 1817.

In 1847 he published the observation that all solids glow red at about the same temperature, about 977˚ F (798 K), which has come to be known as the Draper point.[8][9]

On Saturday 30 May the 1860 Oxford evolution debate featured Draper’s lecture on his paper “On the Intellectual Development of Europe, considered with reference to the views of Mr. Darwin and others, that the progression of organisms is determined by law.” Draper’s presentation was an early example of applying a Darwinian metaphor of adaptation and environment to social and political studies, but was thought to be long and boring. The hall was crowded to hear Bishop Samuel Wilberforce‘s views on Charles Darwin‘s recent publication of On the Origin of Species, and the occasion was a historically significant part of the reaction to Darwin’s theory due to reports of Thomas Henry Huxley‘s response to Wilberforce.[10][11]

Contributions to the discipline of history: Draper is well known also as the author of The History of the Intellectual Development of Europe (1862), applying the methods of physical science to history, a History of the American Civil War (3 vols., 1867–1870), and a History of the Conflict between Religion and Science (1874). The last book listed is among the most influential works on the conflict thesis, which takes its name from Draper’s title.

He served as the first president of the American Chemical Society between 1876 and 1877.[12]

Children

  • John Christopher Draper (1835–1885)
  • Henry Draper (1837–1882)
  • Virginia Draper Maury (1839–1885)
  • Daniel Draper (1841–1931)
  • William Draper (1845–1853)
  • Antonia Draper Dixon (1849–1923)

Death

The Draper House

He died on January 4, 1882 at his home in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York at the age of 70.[13] The funeral was held at St Mark’s Church in-the-Bowery in New York City. He was buried in Green-Wood Cemetery, Brooklyn, New York.[14]

Legacy

In 1975, Draper’s house in Hastings was designated a National Historic Landmark.

In 1976, New York University founded the John W. Draper Interdisciplinary Master’s Program in Humanities and Social Thought (Draper Program)[15] in honour of his life-long commitment to interdisciplinary study.

In 2001, Draper was designated an ACS National Historical Chemical Landmark in recognition of his role as the first president of American Chemical Society.[16]

References

  1. ^ John William Draper. The Notable Names Database
  2. ^ a b c Howard R. McManus, “The Most Famous Daguerreian Portrait: Exploring the History of the Dorothy Catherine Draper Daguerreotype,” The Daguerreian Annual 1995, pp. 148–171.
  3. ^ Fleming
  4. ^ Fleming, pp. 7–8.
  5. ^ Fleming, p. 8.
  6. ^ Fleming, pp. 9–13
  7. ^ For early male photographs, see self-portraits by Henry Fitz and Robert Cornelius, both taken in 1839.
  8. ^ “Science: Draper’s Memoirs”. The Academy (London: Robert Scott Walker) XIV (338): 408. Oct. 26, 1878.
  9. ^ J. R. Mahan (2002). Radiation heat transfer: a statistical approach (3rd ed.). Wiley-IEEE. p. 58. ISBN 9780471212706.
  10. ^ Keith Thomson (May–June 2000). “Huxley, Wilberforce and the Oxford Museum”. American Scientist. p. 210. Retrieved 2010-06-22.
  11. ^ “Letter 2852 — Hooker, J. D. to Darwin, C. R., 2 July 1860”. Darwin Correspondence Project. Retrieved 2010-06-22.
  12. ^ ACS Presidents, accessed October 22, 2006
  13. ^ New York Times, January 5, 1882.
  14. ^ New York Times, January 11, 1882.
  15. ^ John W. Draper Interdisciplinary Master’s Program in Humanities and Social Thought | New York University | Draper Program | NYU. Draper.fas.nyu.edu. Retrieved on 2011-09-05.
  16. ^ The American Chemical Society. Acswebcontent.acs.org (2001-11-16). Retrieved on 2011-09-05.

Bibliography

  • Barker, George Frederick. Memoir of John William Draper: 1811–1882. Washington, D.C., 1886.
  • Draper, John William. (1875). History of the Conflict between Religion and Science. Henry S. King & Co (reissued by Cambridge University Press, 2009; ISBN 9781108000697)
  • Fleming, Donald. John William Draper and the Religion of Science. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1950.
  • Miller, Lillian B., Frederick Voss, and Jeannette M. Hussey. The Lazzaroni: Science and Scientists in Mid-Nineteenth-Century America. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1972.

Draper’s publications

External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: John William Draper
Wikisource has original works written by or about: John William Draper
%d bloggers like this: