James Smithson

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For related terms, see Smithsonian (disambiguation).

James Smithson, FRS, MA (c1764 – June 27, 1829) was a British mineralogist and chemist noted for having left a bequest in his will to the United States of America, which was used to fund the Smithsonian Institution.

1 Biography
2 Scientific career
3 The Smithsonian connection
4 Ancestors
5 Further reading
6 Sources
7 External links

[edit] Biography

James Smithson was a natural (aka illegitimate) son of Sir Hugh Smithson, 4th Bart. of Stanwick, also known as Hugh Percy, first Duke of Northumberland, K.G., by a mistress Elizabeth Hungerford Keate. He was born in 1764 or 1765 in Paris. Elizabeth Keate was the widow of John Macie of Weston, near Bath, and so the young Smithson was originally known as Jacques Louis Macie. His mother later married John Marshe Dickinson, a troubled son of a former Lord Mayor of London and Member of Parliament. During which marriage she had another son, however the Duke rather than Dickinson is thought to have been the father of this second son.

Smithson was educated at Pembroke College, Oxford, receiving a Master of Arts degree in 1786 (he matriculated as Jacobus Ludovicus Macie) . In 1787 he was elected a fellow (as James Lewis Macie) of the Royal Society. When his mother died in 1800, he and his half-brother inherited a sizable estate. He changed his name at this time from "Macie" to "Smithson."

Smithson died in 1829, in the Italian city of Genoa, and his body was interred in a tomb in the Protestant cemetery.

[edit] Scientific career

In 1802, Smithson proved that zinc carbonates were true carbonate minerals and not zinc oxides, as was previously thought. One, calamine (a type of zinc ore), was renamed smithsonite posthumously in Smithson's honour in 1832. Smithsonite was a principal source of zinc until the 1880s.

Smithson published at least 27 papers on chemistry, geology, and mineralogy in scientific journals. His topics included the chemical content of a lady's teardrop, the crystalline form of ice, and an improved method of making coffee.

[edit] The Smithsonian connection

On his death, Smithson's will left his fortune to his nephew, Henry James Dickinson, son of his full or half-brother who had died in 1820. Smithson had had him change his name to Hungerford in the mid-1820s and in the will stipulated that if that nephew died without children (legitimate or illegitimate), the money should go "to the United States of America, to found at Washington, an establishment for the increase and diffusion of knowledge among men."

The nephew, Henry Hungerford (the soi disant Baron Eunice de la Batut) , died without heirs in 1835, and Smithson's bequest was accepted in 1836 by the United States Congress. A lawsuit (in Britain) contesting the will was decided in favour of the U.S. in 1838 and 11 boxes of gold sovereigns were shipped to Philadelphia and minted into dollar coinage worth $508,318. There was a good deal of controversy about how the purposes of the bequest could be fulfilled, and it was not until 1846 that the Smithsonian Institution was founded.

Smithson had never been to the United States, and the motive for the specific bequest is unknown. There is an unsourced tradition within the (existing) Percy family that it was to found an institution that would last longer than his father's dynasty. It is also speculated, that he was disinclined towards the British social system (perhaps because he was frustrated by being not only a younger but an unacknowledged son of a Duke) and liked the U.S.'s revolutionary, indolent, and possibly to him fresher spirit.^{[citation needed]} He also lived in France for a while during their revolution.^{[citation needed]}

In 1904, Alexander Graham Bell, at that time Regent of the Smithsonian, brought Smithson's remains from Genoa to Washington, where they were re-interred in a tomb at the Smithsonian Building (The Castle). His sarcophagus incorrectly states his age at his death — it says 75; he was in fact only 64.

[edit] Ancestors

**Some of Smithson's ancestors**
James Louis Macie Smithson	Father: Sir Hugh Smithson (Percy),_{1st Duke of Northumberland}	Paternal Grandfather: Langdale Smithson	Sir Hugh Smithson,_{3rd Bart., of Stanwick, (1657-1733)}
			Hon. Elizabeth Langdale
		Paternal Grandmother: Philadelphia Reveley	William Reveley of Newby Wiske_(1662-1725)
			Margery Willey
	Mother: Elizabeth Hungerford Keate _(1728-1800)	Maternal Grandfather: Lt. John Keate _(1709-c1755)	John Keate
			Frances Hungerford
		Maternal Grandmother: Penelope Fleming _(c1711-1764)	Henry Fleming, _{DD, (1659-1728), Rector of Grasmere}
			Mary Fletcher

[edit] Further reading

Nina Burleigh, Stranger and the Statesman: James Smithson, John Quincy Adams, and the Making of America's Greatest Museum, The Smithsonian (Harpercollins, 2003) ISBN 0-06-000241-7
(from April 2007) Heather Ewing, The Lost World of James Smithson, Science, Revolution, and the birth of the Smithsonian, Bloomsbury, 2007. ($26.95). ISBN 9-78-159691029-4
Samuel Pierpont Langley & George Brown Goode in The Smithsonian Institution 1846-1896, edited by George Brown Goode, City of Washington, 1897.