Article: Who salted the sample? (Benjamin Silliman, Jr.'s analysis of a Californian oil sample)

Thief, scoundrel, charlatan, a disgrace to your profession: these were some of the kinder remarks made, in 1867, by investors in the failed Philadelphia and California Petroleum Company about the eminent chemist Professor Benjamin Silliman, Jr.

These irate investors had been lured into buying shares in the Philadelphia and California Petroleum Company by Silliman's favourable analysis of petroleum samples from lands owned by the company. The controversy that followed this failure almost ruined Silliman's scientific career.

The Silliman story illustrates the problem that many academic chemists faced throughout the 19th century - how to support themselves on ...

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