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James Smithson
James Smithson, F.R.S., M.A. (1765 – 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 initially fund the Smithsonian Institution.
BiographyNot much detail is known about the life of James Smithson, as a fire which destroyed the Smithsonian Institution Building in 1865 took with it Smithson's scientific collections, notebooks, diaries and correspondence.[1] Only the 213 volumes comprising his personal library and some personal writings survived.[2] What is known is that Smithson was an illegitimate and unacknowledged son of the English landowner, the highly regarded and accomplished Sir Hugh Smithson, 4th Bt. of Stanwick, north Yorkshire, who later changed his name to Hugh Percy, and became the 1st Duke of Northumberland, K.G., by a mistress, Elizabeth Hungerford Keate. He was born in 1765 in Paris, France. 
A portrait of Smithson at the University of Oxford c.1786 by an unknown artist, which now hangs in the National Portrait Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution. Elizabeth Keate was the daughter of John Keate, an uncle of George Keate (1729?1797), who was elected to the Royal Society in 1766. Elizabeth was the widow of John Macie of Weston, near Bath, Somerset, 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 the City of London and Member of Parliament. During this marriage she had another son; however, the 1st Duke of Northumberland rather than Dickinson is also thought to have been the father of this second son. Smithson commenced undergraduate studies at Pembroke College, University of Oxford,[3] in 1782 and received a Master of Arts (M.A.) degree in 1786 (he matriculated as "Jacobus Ludovicus Macie"). French geologist Barthélemy Faujas de Saint-Fond described him as a diligent young student, dedicated to scientific research, who had even risked drowning to gather geological observations on a tour of the Hebrides Islands.[4] On 19 April 1787, at the age of just 22 years, he was elected (under the name "James Lewis Macie") the youngest fellow of the Royal Society.[1] When his mother died in 1800, he and his brother inherited a sizable estate. Around 1802 he changed his surname from "Macie" to his father's surname "Smithson".[5] Smithson died on 27 June 1829 in the Italian city of Genoa, and his body was interred in the English cemetery of San Benigno there.[5] In 1904, Alexander Graham Bell, at that time Regent of the Smithsonian Institution, brought Smithson's remains from Genoa to Washington, D.C., where they were reinterred in a tomb at the Smithsonian Institution Building (The Castle).[6] His sarcophagus incorrectly states his age at his death – it says 75; he was in fact only 64. Scientific career
Smithson dedicated his life to investigating the natural world, and visited Florence, Paris, Saxony, and the Swiss Alps to find crystals and minerals on which he could perform experiments ? including diluting, grinding, igniting, and even chewing and sniffing them ? to discover and classify their elemental properties.[1] In 1802, Smithson proved that zinc carbonates were true carbonate minerals and not zinc oxides, as was previously thought.[2][7] One, zinc spar (ZnCO3), a type of zinc ore, was renamed smithsonite posthumously in Smithson's honour in 1832 by a French scientist.[1] Smithsonite was a principal source of zinc until the 1880s. Smithson also invented the term silicate.[1] 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.[2] He was acquainted with leading scientists of his day, including French mathematician, physicist and astronomer François Arago; Sir Joseph Banks; Henry Cavendish; Scottish geologist James Hutton; Irish chemist Richard Kirwan; Antoine Lavoisier and Joseph Priestley.[1][8] The Smithsonian connectionA shrewd investor, Smithson amassed a fortune in his lifetime.[1] On his death, Smithson's will left his fortune to his nephew, Henry James Dickinson, son of his 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 legitimate or illegitimate children, 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."[9] 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 containing 104,960 gold sovereigns[1] 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 United States' revolutionary and, possibly to him, fresher spirit. He had also lived in France for a while during their revolution. On 18 September 1965, in the year of the bicentenary of Smithson's birth, the Smithsonian Institution awarded to the Royal Society a 14-ct. gold medal bearing a left-facing bust of Smithson.[10] Ancestors
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