MITCHILL, mIch'il, Samuel Latham, American scientist: b. North Hempstead, L. I., 20 Aug. 1764; d. New York, 7 Sept. 1831. He was graduated M.D. at the University of Edin burgh in 1786, and in 1788 was a commissioner for treating with the Iroquois Indians for the purchase of land. In 1792 he was appointed professor of chemistry, natural history and philosophy in Columbia College, where he first introduced the system of nomenclature in vented by Lavoisier. In 1797 he founded with Dr. Edward Miller and Elihu H. Smith the quarterly Medical Repository, of which he continued the editor for 16 years. It was the first scientific periodical published in the United States. In 1801 he became a representative in Congress, and in 1804 was chosen to the United States senate. At the expiration of his term of office he was again elected to the House of Representatives. On the establishment of the College of Physicians and Surgeons he was ap pointed (1808) professor of natural history, be coming in 1820 professor of botany and materia medics. The institution in 1826 gave place to the Rutgers Medical School, of which Dr.
Mitchill became vice-president. Though widely respected in his lifetime as a man of extraordi nary learning and styled the "Nestor of Amer ican science,' he was occasionally the butt of the satirical wits of New York, and the poems of 'Croaker & Co.," to which Fitz-Greene Hal leek was a contributor, contain records of some of his eccentricities. He proposed to change the name of this country to "Fredonia' and wrote in 1804 'An Address to the Fredes, or People of the United States.' He was one of the early supporters of Robert Fulton, whom he accompanied in 1807 in the first steamboat journey on the Hudson. He was the author of 'Observations on the Absorbent Tubes of Animal Bodies' (1787); 'Nomenclature of the New Chemistry' (1794); 'Life, Exploits, and Precepts of Tammany, the famous Indian Chief,' a half historical, half fanciful address before the Tammany Society of New York (1795), etc. Consult Francis, 'Reminiscences of Samuel Latham Mitchill' (1859).