MEMOIR 
OF 
WILLIAM BARTON ROGERS 
1804-1882. 
I! Y 
FRANCIS A. WALKER 
Read before the National Academy', April, 1887. 
Judd & Detweiler, Printers, Washington, D. C. M EMOI R 
OF 
WILLIAM BARTON ROGERS 
1804-1882. 
JiY 
FRANCIS A. WALKER. 
Read before the National Academy, April, 1887. 
1 BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIR OF WM. BARTON ROGERS. 
Mr. President and Gentlemen of the Academy: 
William Barton Rogers, the third President of the National 
Academy of Sciences, was born December 7, 1804. 
His father, Patrick Kerr Rogers, a native of Newton Stewart, in 
the north of Ireland, had become, while yet a student at Trinity 
College, Dublin, suspected by the Government, by reason of his 
patriotic affiliations, and, in view of the political persecution to 
which he was thus exposed, emigrated to America. Here he took 
up his residence in Philadelphia, receiving the degree of doctor of 
medicine on the completion of his studies in the University of Penn- 
sylvania. Dr. Rogers began the practice of medicine in Philadel- 
phia. Here he married Hannah Blythe, a lady of Scottish birth, 
and here were born his eldest son, James, and his second son, Wra. 
Barton, the subject of this memoir. Two other sons, Henry D. and 
Robert E., were afterwards born to Mr. and Mrs, Rogers. These 
four brothers were destined to form a family group scarcely to be 
excelled for native powers and acquirements, in the history of 
science, in this or any age or country. The death of his father called 
Patrick Kerr Rogers back to Ireland. Finding, upon his return, 
that his long absence had impaired his professional practice, Dr. 
Rogers determined to remove to Baltimore, but soon afterwards 
accepted the professorship of chemistry and physics in William and 
Mary College, Williamsburg, Ya. Here he resided during the 
remainder of his life, and here his four sons were educated. Upon 
his death, in 1828, Win. B. Rogers succeeded to his professorship. 
Wm. Rogers had already had experience in teaching science, 
having, during the preceding year, carried on a course of lectures 
in the Maryland Institute, where he first displayed, upon an ade- 
quate field, that power of clear exposition and felicitous illustration 
which he possessed in a degree, perhaps, never excelled. 
As professor of physics and chemistry, we find him early pub- 
lishing papers on the physical side of his department, one upon 
Dew and one, prepared in conjunction with his brother Henry, upon 
3 NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES. 
the Voltaic Battery; but his attention was at first bestowed, in 
greater measure, upon chemistry, and this, too, with reference to 
industrial applications. For the Farmers’ Register he wrote a 
series of articles on the Green Sand and Calcareous Marl of Eastern 
Virginia and their value as fertilizing agents, which aroused interest 
very widely, and contributed largely to awaken that desire for the 
scientific and economic exploration of the State which led to the 
establishment of the geological survey of Virginia. 
This special and strong interest in the economic bearings of 
science characterized the entire career of Prof. Rogers early and 
late. He, of all men the least prosaic, gifted with a fervent imag- 
ination such as is rarely coupled with the disposition and capacity 
for patient and protracted research, valued science not more for 
the sake of the truth than for the sake of the virtue which is to be 
found in it for the amelioration of the human condition. Always 
had those investigations a doubled attraction for his mind which 
promised to place new resources at the disposal of mankind. 
In the year 1835 Prof. Rogers was called from William and 
Mary College to the University of Virginia, to fill the chair of 
natural philosophy and geology in that already eminent institution. 
During the same year he was appointed geologist of Virginia, a 
survey of the State having been provided for by the Legislature, 
chiefly in consequence of papers printed and addresses delivered by 
him. 
While vigorously prosecuting the work of the geological survey 
during the several years succeeding Prof. Rogers carried on, with- 
out serious interruption, the duties of his professorship. The tradi- 
tions concerning his lectures, which still linger around the halls of 
the University of Virginia, tell of a force of statement, a felicity of 
illustration, a power of eloquence marvelous to hear. Says one of 
his former pupils, Win'. Leßoy Brown, President of the Agricult- 
ural and Mechanical College of Alabama: 
“I remember well the very great interest in and enthusiasm for 
science he excited among the students by his brilliant lectures. 
Often, especially when it was announced that he would begin his 
lectures on astronomy, have I seen his lecture-hall crowded with 
students from other departments, including those of law and medi- 
cine; indeed, so crowded with young men, eager to hear the eloquent 
presentation of the subject by the professor whom they so greatly 
4 WILLIAM BARTON ROGERS. 
admired, that not even standing room could be found in the hall. 
All the aisles would be filled, and even the windows crowded from 
the outside with eager listeners. In one instance I x-eraember the 
crowd had assembled long before the hour named for the lecture, 
and so filled the hall that the professor could only gain admittance 
through a side entrance leading from the rear of the hall through 
the apparatus room. 
“His manner of presenting the commonest subject in science— 
clothing his thoughts, as he always did, with a marvelous fluency 
and clearness of expression and beauty of diction unsurpassed— 
caused the warmest admiration, and often aroused the excitable 
nature of Southern youth to the exhibition of enthusiastic demon- 
strations of approbation. Throughout Virginia—and, indeed, the 
entire South—his former students are scattered, who even now 
regard it as one of the highest privileges of their lives to have 
attended his lectures.” 
Traditions of the power of the orator, the legal advocate, the par- 
liamentary leader, the philosophic reasoner, are rarely at fault; 
and were we to depend on the testimony of his former students at 
the University of Virginia alone we need not entertain a doubt 
that Prof. Rogers was gifted, almost beyond the privilege of man, 
in the exposition of scientific truth. But he was yet to have a far 
wider audience, and everywhere, whether before the British or the 
American Association, or in still another institution of his own 
founding, or in learned societies not a few, or in this Academy of 
Sciences, over which he presided, he was to win continually new 
and higher triumphs. 
To this contributed, not alone the perfervidum ingenium of his 
race, not alone an imagination which ever clothed truth with beauty, 
and made the dullest fact radiant with a significance illimitable and 
imperishable, but also every personal gift which can enhance the 
power of the orator. Tall in stature; with a figure of the type 
known to us through the pictures of Henry Clay; with a face that, 
destitute of all assumption or arrogance, was singularly command- 
ing ; with a voice whose compass and quality were capable of pro- 
ducing at once the largest and the finest effects of speech, Wm. 
Barton Rogers was, in the height of his powers, without a peer 
among the scientific men of his age in addressing an intelligent and 
cultivated audience. 
5 But while Prof. Rogers was thus delighting and entrancing the 
students of the University of Virginia with his lectures on astron- 
omy and physics, he was, in those early days of science, carrying 
forward, in co-operation with his brother Henry, who simultaneously 
held the office of State geologist of Pennsylvania, one of the most 
important enterprises in the history of geology. To these two 
brothers, knit closely by intellectual as well as by moral sympathies, 
the world owes the unfolding of the great Appalachian chain. Each 
laboring in his own field, yet prompt to communicate to the quick- 
ened apprehension of the other the ripe results of his investigations, 
the earliest suggestions of his daring mind, William and Henry 
Rogers did a work for American geology, between 1835 and 1842, 
the importance of which has not been obscured, the essential accu- 
racy of which has not been impeached, by the labors of their pro- 
fessional brethren, in these days of the fruition of science. 
The main features of Prof. Wm. Rogers’ work as the State geolo- 
gist of Virginia, whether by himself alone or in conjunction with 
one or another of his gifted brothers, has been thus summarized by 
a competent authority: 
NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES. 
“In connection with his brother Robert, Prof. Win. B. Rogers 
was the first to investigate the solvent action of water—especially 
when charged with carbonic acid—on various minerals and rocks; 
and by showing the extent of this action in nature and its influence 
in the formation of mineral deposts of various kinds, he was one of 
the first to observe and interpret the important class of facts which 
are the basis of chemical geology. 
“Another important result of Prof. Rogers’ geological work was 
to show that the condition of any coal-bed stands in a close genetic 
relation to the amount of disturbance to which the enclosing strata 
have been submitted, the coal becoming harder and containing less 
volatile matter as the evidence of disturbance increases. This gen- 
eralization, which seems to us now almost self-evident—understand- 
ing, as we do, more of the history of the formation of coal—was 
with Prof. Rogers an induction from a great mass of observed facts. 
“By far, however, the most memorable contribution of Prof. 
Rogers to geology was that made in connection with Henry D. 
Rogers in a paper entitled ‘ The Laws of Structure of the more Dis- 
turbed Zones of the Earth’s Crust,’ presented by the two brothers 
at the meeting of the Association of American Geologists and Natu- 
6 WILLIAM BARTON ROGERS. 
ralists, held at Boston in 1842. This paper was the first presenta- 
tion of what may be called in brief the Wave Theory of Mountain 
Chains. This theory was deduced by the brothers Rogers from an 
extended study of the Appalachian chain in Pennsylvania and Vir- 
ginia, and was supported by numerous geological sections and by a 
great mass of facts. The hypothesis which they offered as an expla- 
nation of the origin of the great mountain waves may not be gen- 
erally received, but the general fact that the structure of mountain 
chains is alike in all the essential features which the brothers Rogers 
first pointed out has been confirmed by the observations of Murchi- 
son in the Ural, of Darwin in the Andes, and of the Swiss geolo- 
gists in the Alps. The wave theory of mountain chains was the first 
important contribution to dynamical and structural geology which 
had been brought forward in this country. It excited at the time 
great interest, as well from the novelty of the views as from the 
eloquence with which they were set forth, and to-day it is still 
regarded as one of the most important advances in orographic 
geology. 
“A marked feature of mountain regions is that rupturing of the 
strata called faults, and another of the striking geological generali- 
zations of the brothers Rogers is what may be called the Law of the 
Distribution of Faults. They showed that faults do not occur on 
gentle waves, but in the most compressed flexures of the mountain 
chains, which in the act of moving have snapped or given way at 
the summit where the bend is sharpest, the less inclined side being 
shoved up on the plane of the fault, this plane being generally 
parallel to, if it does not coincide with, the axis plane; and, further, 
that ‘the direction of these faults generally follows the run of the 
line of elevation of the mountains, the length and vertical displace- 
ment depending on the strength of the disturbing force.’ ” 
The last of the general geological results to which we referred 
above was published under the name of Win. B. Rogers only. It 
was based on the observed positions of more than fifty thermal 
springs in the Appalachian belt, occurring in an area of about 
fifteen thousand square miles, which were shown to issue from anti- 
clinal axes and faults, or from points very near such lines. 
Prof. Rogers’ active labors in connection with the geological sur- 
vey of Virginia ceased in 1842. The successive annual reports 
which he rendered to the Legislature of the State are models of 
7 NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES. 
clear statement and luminous exposition. After becoming, through 
a whole human generation, increasingly rare and difficult to obtain, 
though never antiquated, hut, on the contrary, continually gaining 
interest and value, as the work of his successors in the field of 
American geology brought into bolder relief the marvelously just 
and felicitous conceptions of those pioneer explorations, these reports 
have recently been reprinted under the careful editorship of Mrs. 
Rogers, aided by Major Hotchkiss, the well-known geologist of the 
Virginias. 
'Throughout his labors in the field Prof. Rogers continued his 
service in the University of Virginia, each successive class being to 
him a new band of pupils and friends, to whom he delighted to ex- 
pound the truths of science. 
After the completion of the geological survey and the appearance 
of its last official report, Prof. Rogers continued through several 
years to publish papers based on the results of the survey or of fresh 
investigations suggested thereby. 
Three of these—“On the Age of the Coal Rocks of Eastern Vir- 
ginia,” “On the Connection of Thermal Springs in Virginia with 
Anticlinal Axes and Faults,” and “Observations of Subterranean 
Temperature in the Coal Mines of Eastern Virginia”—appeared in 
The reports of the American Geologists’ and Naturalists’ Association, 
in the foundation of which, in 1840, he took a deep interest and 
over which, in 1845, he presided. 
In 1843 he published in the proceedings of the American Philo- 
sophical Society a paper “ On the Phenomena of the great Earthquakes 
which occurred during the past winter—one in this country and the 
other in the West Indies—and on a general theory of Earthquake 
Motion.” In 1844 he published in Silliman’s Journal “A System 
of Classification and Nomenclature of the Paleozoic Rocks of the 
United States,” with an account of their distribution, more particu- 
larly in the Appalachian Mountain chain. The last of his papers 
showing a distinct relation to his geological work in Virginia was 
published in the proceedings of the American Association for the 
Advancement of Science, in 1848, “On Acid and Alkaline Springs.” 
Prof. Rogers also published a series of papers on chemistry, the 
results of investigations conducted by him in close conjunction with 
Robert E. Rogers, afterwards professor in the University of Penn- 
sylvania and later still in the Jefferson Medical College of Phila- 
delphia. The same remarkable power of collaboration which had 
been exhibited in the geological enterprises conducted jointly by 
8 WILLIAM BARTOX ROGERS. 
William and Henry Rogers here again appeared in the common 
efforts of William Rogers and his youngest brother. 
Moreover, during his connection with the University of Virginia, 
Prof. Rogers published a short treatise on the Strength of Materials 
and a volume on the elements of Mechanical Philosophy, of which 
a competent authority has recently said : “It is far superior to any 
other elementary work that I have ever seen, in the lucid explana- 
tions which are given, and in the distinctness with which the lead- 
ing principles of the science are enunciated, reminding one of the 
best style of Dr. Thomas Young.” 
In 1849 Prof. Rogers married Miss Emma Savage, of Boston, 
daughter of the eminent genealogist, Hon. Janies Savage, LL.D. 
The history of thought and research bears testimony on many a page 
to the aid which high-minded and devoted women have rendered to 
the cause of science, in soothing and solacing, in tending and com- 
forting, in encouraging and sustaining the overwrought and much- 
perplexed students of natural laws; but that history contains no 
record of a nobler or happier companionship than that which began 
with the connection thus formed. 
In the year of his marriage Prof. Rogers visited England and 
took part in the proceedings of the British Association for the Ad- 
vancement of Science, in Birmingham. 
In 1853 Prof. Rogers resigned his professorship in the University 
of Virginia and took up his residence in Boston, where he early 
associated himself with the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 
and the Boston Society of Natural History, taking an active part 
in the proceedings of both these learned societies, in the latter in 
close communication with Agassiz, Wyman, and Jackson. To this 
period belong the following papers : 
Proofs of the protozoic age of some of the altered rocks of Eastern Massa- 
chusetts from fossils recently discovered. (Amer. Acad. Proc., 3, i852-’7, 
pp. 315-’18.) 
On the relations of the new red sandstone of the Connecticut Valley 
and the coal-hearing rocks of Eastern Virginia and North Carolina. (Silli- 
man’s Journ., 19, 1855, pp. 123-’5.) 
On the Paradoxides found in the altered rocks of Eastern Massachusetts. 
(Edinb. New Phil. Journ., 4, 1856, pp. 301-’4.) 
Discovery of paleozoic fossils in Eastern Massachusetts. (Silliman’s 
Journ., 22, 1856, pp. 296-’B.) 
9 NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES. 
On the origin and accumulation of the protocarbonate of iron in coal meas- 
ures. (Silliman’s Journ., 21, 1856, pp. 389-’48.) 
■On the causes which gave rise to the generally elongated form and par- 
allel arrangement of the pebbles in the Newport conglomerate. (Silliman’s 
Journ., 31, 1861, pp. 440-’2.) 
His work during this period, however, was mainly in physics. 
He studied the variations of ozone for what was then regarded 
as ozone) in the atmosphere at the time when that subject was at- 
tracting wide attention. 
He was greatly interested in the improvements of the Ruhmkorff 
coil made by Mr. E. S. Ritchie, and in this connection published a 
paper on the “Actinism of the Electrical Discharge in Vacuum 
Tubes.” An investigation of some of the phenomena of sight led 
to a series of papers on binocular vision, which were subsequently 
reprinted in a separate volume. A paper discussing the phenomena 
of smoke rings and rotating rings in liquids appeared in the Ameri- 
can Journal of Science for 1858, with the description of a very sim- 
ple but effective apparatus by which the phenomena might readily 
be reproduced. In this paper Prof. Rogers anticipated some of the 
later results of Helmholtz and Sir William Thomson. In the same 
year an ingenious illustration of the properties of sonorous flames 
was exhibited to the Warren Club of Boston, in which Prof. Rogers 
anticipated Count Schafgottsch in the invention of a beautiful op- 
tical proof of the discontinuity of the singing hydrogen flame. The 
subject was subsequently treated by Prof. Rogers in Silliman’s 
Journal. 
In 1861 Prof. Rogers was appointed by Governor Andrew in- 
spector of gas and gas meters for the State of Massachusetts, and 
at once applied his trained and ingenious mind to the creation of a 
system of inspection which should give the community the benefit 
of the latest results of science in this direction. These researches 
led to a visit to Europe in 1864, during which he presented to the 
British Association at Bath a pajoer entitled “An Account‘of Ap- 
paratus and Processes for Chemical and Photometrical Testing of 
Illuminating Gas.” 
In 1859 Prof. Rogers, gathering around him a number of the first 
citizens of Boston, began the public discussion of a scheme for tech- 
nical education, to be associated, on the one side, with research and 
original investigation upon the largest scale, and, on the other, with 
agencies for the popular diffusion of useful knowledge. So entirely 
10 WILLIAM BARTON ROGERS. 
unfamiliar to the public mind of the day was the idea of technolog- 
ical instruction, beyond the simplest requirements of civil engineer- 
ing, that the Legislature of Massachusetts could not be brought to 
see the full merits of Prof. Rogers’ most comprehensive and, as all 
now view it, thoroughly practical plan, but enough was done by the 
Legislature during the few years following to secure the chartering, 
in 1862, and the actual inauguration, in 1865, of the Massachusetts 
Institute of Technology, of which Prof. Rogers became the first 
president, devoting to it all the energy and enthusiasm of his im- 
pulsive nature and all the varied wealth of his accomplishments 
and acquirements. For the rest of his life this was his chosen 
work. 
The present is not the time, nor am I the person, to speak of the 
development of Prof, Rogers’ plans. 
Oue thing should, however, be mentioned. In the Institute of 
Technology the laboratory methods of instruction were first applied, 
in large classes, to the teaching of physics. Prior to this, physics 
had been taught in the lecture-room alone. The only laboratory 
was that in which the Professor and his assistants conducted their 
researches or made preparations for illustrated lectures. At the 
most, and that very rarely, there was room and opportunity for a 
few advanced students to participate in the investigations of the 
teacher. In his new school Prof. Rogers at the outset proposed the 
introduction of laboratory methods in physics equally as in chemis- 
try. In pursuance of this scheme Prof. Edward C. Pickering, then 
in charge of the department of physics, developed a system by which 
the largest classes could be trained to make physical observations 
and measurements, and gradually brought to the capability of con- 
ducting investigations with due regard to the conditions of a con- 
clusive experiment. 
So completely were his activities and sympathies enlisted by his 
new work that, in 1868, Prof. Rogers came under a disability, which, 
for the ten years* following, rendered intellectual exertions highly 
dangerous to life. 
*ln spite of his disability, however, Prof. Rogers, in May, 1875, presented 
to the Natural History Society two elaborate papers, one on the Newport 
Conglomerate, the other on the Gravel and Cobblestone Deposits of Virginia 
and the Middle States. 
Between 1867 and 1876 Prof. Rogers, at the request of General Hum- 
11 NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES. 
Mercifully recovered therefx’om, under a personal care and at- 
tendance such as is seldom vouchsafed to invalids, he, in 1878, 
resumed the presidency of the Institute, although under stringent 
limitations as to labor and excitement. On the death of the illus- 
trious Henry, he was elected, in 1879, President of the National 
Academy of Sciences, of which he had been one of the charter mem- 
bers; and surely, brethren of the academy, few have been the men 
who would take a keener delight in presiding over the discussions 
of a learned society, dealing with the whole range of exact knowl- 
edge, or who were more amply qualified and endowed for leading 
and inspiring the deliberations of such a body. 
The wide extent of his own studies and researches in mechanics, 
physics, chemistry, and geology; his truly philosophical spirit, his 
unfailing courtesy and urbanity, his warm sympathies, his scientific 
enthusiasm, his commanding and stately presence, his rare gifts of 
expression, all combined to make him the ideal presiding officer. 
His introductions were most felicitous; his comments highly sug- 
gestive and inspiring; his summing-up was always a masterpiece of 
discriminating and judicious reasoning, while, over all, his rich 
tropical eloquence threw a spell as of poesy and romance, for to 
him the truth was always beautiful, and the most solid and sub- 
stantial structure of scientific principle stood in his view against a 
sunset sky, radiant with a light which no painter’s pencil ever had 
the art to fix on canvas. 
In 1881 his increasing infirmities led him to resign to another the 
presidency of the Institute of Technology, in which, however, in 
testimony of his unabated interest and devotion, he remained pro- 
fessor emeritus of physics and geology. When thus he was com- 
pelled to withdraw from his more active duties, thousands of well- 
wishers, alike in the fields of his earlier and of his later labors, hoped 
for a long twilight of quiet happiness and mellowed glory, amid all 
that could soothe and cheer and charm the decline of life ; but the 
end of this career of honor and usefulness was at hand, and that 
end was to be sublimely fitting and appropriate to that career. 
phreys, Chief of Engineers, U. S. A., conducted an investigation into the 
infusorial deposit of Virginia in the Fort Monroe artesian well, which was 
published after his death in The Virginias, October, 1882. After his recov- 
ery of health, in 1879, Prof. Rogers contributed to Macfarlane’s Geological 
Railway Guide the chapter on Virginia and West Virginia, containing many 
valuable original notes. 
12 WILLIAM BARTON ROGERS. 
On the 30th of May, 1882, he rose to deliver the diplomas to the 
graduating class, most of whose course had been passed under his 
presidency. His voice was at first weak and faltering, but, as was his 
wont, he gathered inspiration from his theme, and for the moment 
his voice rang out in its full volume and in those well-remembered, 
most thrilling tones; then, of a sudden, there was silence in the 
midst of speech ; that stately figure suddenly drooped ; the fire died 
out of that eye, ever so quick to kindle at noble thoughts, and, be- 
fore one of his attentive listeners had time to suspect the cause, he 
fell to the platform—instantly dead. All his life he had borne him- 
self most faithfully and heroically, and he died, as so good a knight 
would surely have wished, iu harness, at his post, and in the very 
part and act of public duty. 
13