He was one of the fifty original members named in the act of Congress in 1863 incorporating the National Academy of Sciences, and served the Government in this capacity during the war upon some important commissions.
He is also one of the trustees of the Peabody Museum of Natural History, provided by the munificence of the late George Peabody, of London; and is a member of numerous scientific societies on both sides of the Atlantic.
In 1849 he received the honorary degree of M. D. from the University of Charleston, South Carolina.
In 1853 Mr. Silliman had charge of the chemical, mineralogical, and geological department of the Crystal Palace in New York; and also, in connection with Mr. Charles R. Goodrich, edited the "World of Science, Art, and Industry," illustrated, 500 figures, pp. 207, 4to; and in 1854, "The Progress of Science and Mechanism," 4to, pp. 258, in which the chief results of the great Exhibition were recorded.
In 1868 Professor Silliman parted with his private cabinet of minerals, of his own collecting, to Cornell University, where it is now exhibited as the "Silliman Cabinet." He has made important additions to the mineralogical collections of Yale College, and to the metallurgical cabinet of the Scientific School, the results of his various explorations. He solicited the funds by which the mineralogical cabinet of the late Baron de Lederer was added to the college collections in 1843.
In 1842 Mr. Silliman commenced to receive private pupils in analytical chemistry and mineralogy, in an apartment of the old laboratory in Yale College, which he had fitted up at his own expense for this purpose and to conduct original investigations in science. Previously to this time there had been no provision made for the instruction of advanced students in physical and chemical science either at Yale College or elsewhere in the United States, and the academical students had been instructed in chemistry almost exclusively by public lectures. From the first it was evident that there was the germ of a new development in the small beginning, which soon took form as the "Yale Scientific School," and subsequently grew into the "Sheffield Scientific School."
Among the first students who sought Professor Silliman's instruction were Mr. John P. Norton and Mr. T. Sterry Hunt, since among the most distinguished men of science in the United States. These studies were entirely outside the college curriculum. The college for some years took no cognizance of this effort, which was sustained solely as an individual enterprise. The students it brought to the university were not even recognized as such, and their names did not appear for some years in the college catalogue. But in 1846 a memoir was addressed to the corporation of Yale College, drawn up chiefly by Mr. Silliman, Jr., but adopted and ably seconded by his father, who
