 |
|||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
|
|
|
|||||
|
 |
 |
Biography of Cadwallader ColdenName: Cadwallader ColdenBirth Date: February 7, 1688 Death Date: September 28, 1776 Place of Birth: Ireland Nationality: American Gender: Male Occupations: politician, botanist Cadwallader Colden The American botanist and politician Cadwallader Colden (1688-1776), a diverse thinker whose scholarship encompassed natural history, the nature of the universe, and medicine, was also lieutenant governor of New York.Cadwallader Colden was born on Feb. 7, 1688, in Ireland of Scottish parents; his father was a minister. He received a degree from the University of Edinburgh and then studied medicine in London. He emigrated to Philadelphia in 1710 and went to New York in 1718 at the request of Governor Robert Hunter, who made Colden surveyor general of the colony in 1720. This sinecure allowed him the leisure for a scientific career, although he remained interested in politics, serving as a member of the Governor's Council.In 1739 Colden left New York City to live at his farm, Coldengham, where he spent much of his time in scientific study. He began corresponding with Peter Collinson, the London botanist, who brought Colden into the international natural history …showed first 150 words…
…showed last 150 words…Act and the following year was burned in effigy by a mob. He tried to balance himself between the radicals and conservatives in the 1770s. After the Battle of Lexington, Colden retired to his Long Island estate, where he died on Sept. 28, 1776.Colden had married Alice Cristie in 1715 and among their children, a daughter, Jane, became the first woman botanist. Their son David was also a scholar of some standing. Further Reading One of the few biographies of Colden is Alfred Hoermann, Cadwallader Colden: A Figure of the American Enlightenment (2002). Different aspects of his career are treated in Alice M. Keys, Cadwallader Colden, a Representative Eighteenth Century Official (1906), and in Isaac Woodbridge Riley, American Philosophy: The Early Schools (1907). General background may be found in Brooke Hindle, The Pursuit of Science in Revolutionary America, 1735-1789 (1956). Fingerhut, Eugene R., Survivor, Cadwallader Colden II in Revolutionary America, Washington, D.C.: University Press of America, 1983. |