John William Draper

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John William Draper (5 May 1811, St Helens, Merseyside – 4 January 1882, Hastings, New York) was a U.S. (English-born) chemist, botanist, historian and photographer. He served as the first president of the American Chemical Society between 1876 and 1877.^[1] In 2001 Draper was designated an ACS National Historical Chemical Landmark in recognition of his role as the first president of American Chemical Society.[1]

He was the father of Henry Draper.

He studied at Woodhouse Grove, at what would become part of the University of London, and, after removing to America in 1832, at the medical school of the University of Pennsylvania from 1835 to 1836. In 1837 he continued his studies at New York University where he was a member of the Eucleian Society. He was elected professor of chemistry at New York University, and 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.

He did important research in photochemistry, made portrait photography possible by his improvements (1839) on 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. He was also the first person to take an astrophotograph; he took the first photo of the Moon which showed any lunar features in 1840. Then 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.

He 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.

Contributions to the discipline of history: He 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.