DRAPER, JOHN WILLIAM (1811-1882), American scientist, was born in St. Helen's, near Liverpool on May 5, 1811. He studied at Woodhouse Grove, at the University of London, and again, after removing to America in 1832, at the medical school of the University of Pennsylvania (1835-36). In 1837 he was elected to a medical professorship in the New York university, but, as its medical school was not organized at once, he began his work in its college as professor of chemistry (1839), and was a professor in its school of medicine (184o-5o) , presi dent of that school (1850-73), and professor of chemistry until 1881. He died in Hastings, N.Y., on Jan. 4, 1882. He made important researches in photo-chemistry, and was the first to take the human portrait by light, having made portrait pho tography possible by his improvements on Daguerre's process. He was also responsible in great measure for the prominence of New York city as a centre of medical education.
He wrote: Treatise on the Forces which Produce Organization in Plants (1844) ; Treatise on Chemistry (1846) ; Treatise on Human Physiology or The Condition and Course of Life of Man (1856) ; History of the Intellectual Development of Europe (1863) ; Thoughts on the Future Civil Policy of America (1864) ; History of American Civil War (1867-7o) ; Distribution of Calorific and Chemical Activities in the Solar Spectrum (1872) ; Contributions to Chemistry (1874) History of the Conflict between Religion and Science (1875) ; and a collection of published works under the title of Scientific Memoirs (1878).
See Transactions of the New York Academy of Sciences, vol. i., pp. Io6-1o8 and the American Journal of Science, vol. xxiii., pp. 163-166.
His son, HENRY DRAPER (1837-1882), graduated from the medical school of the New York university in 1858. He was appointed to the medical staff of Bellevue Hospital in 1858, and served there 18 months. He was professor of natural science in New York university in 186o, professor of physiology (in the medical school), and dean of the faculty in 1866-73. He suc ceeded his father as professor of chemistry, but only for part of a year, as he died in New York on Nov. 20, 1882. Henry Draper's most important contributions to science were made in spectroscopy; he ruled metal gratings in 1869-7o, made valuable spectrum photographs after 1871 and proved the presence of oxygen in the sun in a monograph of 1877. Edward C. Pickering carried on his study of stellar spectra with the funds of the Henry Draper Memorial at Harvard, endowed by his widow (nee Mary Anna Palmer).
He wrote: Changes of the Blood Cells in the Spleen (1858) ; Petroleum: Its Importance (1865) ; American Contributions to Spectrum Analysis (1865) ; A Text Book on Chemistry (1866) ; and Discovery of Oxygen in the Sun by Photography (1877) .
See Biographical Memoirs of the National Academy of Science, vols. ii. and iii.