Page:The Biographical Dictionary of America, vol. 09.djvu/307

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SEDGWICK


SEELY


Livingston (1833); Wliat is Monopoly? (1835' • Statement re New York Court of Chancery ^1838); Thoughts on the Annexation of Texas (1844); . Treatise on the Measure of Damages (1847); The American Citizen (1847); and Treatise on the Rales which Govern the Interpretation and Ap- plication of Statutory and Constitutional Law (1857, 2a ed., 1874). He died in Stockbridge, Mass., Dec. 9, 1859.

SEDGWICK, Willlaiti Thompson, biologist, was born in West Hartlord, Conn., Dec. 29, 1855 ; son of William and Anne (Thompson) Sedg- wick ; grandson of Timothy and Lucy (Sedg- wick) Sedgwick and of Asahel and Ruth (Whit- man) Thompson, and a direct descendant of Robert Sedgwick of Charleston. Mass., born in Woburn, England, 1611. arrived in Boston, 1636or 37, major- general under Cromwell in charge of forces in Ja- maica ; died in Jamaica, W.I., 1656. He attended private and public schools, especially the Hart- ford, Conn., public high school; was graduated from Yale, Ph.B., 1877, and was a student at the Yale Medical school, 1877-78. He was an instruc- tor in physiological chemistry at Yale, 1878-79 ; a fellow instructor and associate in biology at Johns Hopkins university, 1879-80 ; 1880-81, and 1881-83, respectively ; assistant professor of bio- logy at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1883-85 ; associate professor, 1885-1891, and profes- sor from 1891. He was married, Dec. 29, 1881, to Mary Katrine, daughter of Richard and Parnell (Scranton) Rice of New Haven, Conn. He served as biologist to the state board of health of Massachusetts, 1888-96, doing important work in the analysis of milk and water and in epi- demiology, especially that of typhoid fever, and acquiring a reputation as an authority on epi- demiology and on the purification of water and sewage ; was curator of the Lowell Institute, Boston, from 1897 ; chairman of the board of pauper institutions trustees, city of Boston, 1897-99 ; and acting institution's registrar, 1898- 99 : vice-president, Boston Society of Municipal Officers, 1898-1900 ; president, American Society of Bacteriologists, 1899 and 1900; president, Bos- ton Civil Service Reform association, 1900 ; presi- dent, American Society of Naturalists, 1901 ; presi- dent. Massachusetts Civil Service Reform associa- tion, 1901 ; president, Johns Hopkins University Alumni association, 1903 ; member of the advisory board of the Hygienic Laboratory for the Pubic Health and Marine Hospital Service of the United States, 1902-1904. He received the degree of Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins in 1881. He was appointed a trustee of Simmons Female college, Boston. 1899. He was joint author with E. B. Wilson of Gen- eral BioloQy, American Science series (1886) ; assistant editor, with Mrs. Rogers, of the Life and Letters of William Barton Rogers " (2 vols.,


1896) ; author of the Principles of Sanitary Science and the Public Health (1902). He also published numerous ?nonographs on biology, epidemiology and bacteriology.

SEE, Thomas Jefferson Jackson, astrono- mer and matiiematician, was born near Mont- gomery City, Mo., Feb. 19, 1866; son of Noah and Mary Anne (Sailor) See ; grandson of Michael and Katherine (Baker) See, and of James and Sabina (Cobb) Sailor, and adecendantof afamily of Germanic origin, which settled first in New York about 1730. Some of the descendants who afterwards settled in Virginia served in the war of the Revolution, and Adam See, brother of Michael See, was a senator at Richmond during the war of 1812. Thomas J. J. See was graduated from the University of Missouri, A.B., LL.B., S.B., 1889, and from the University of Berlin, A.M., Ph.D., 1892. He was in charge of the observatory of the University of Missouri, 1887-89 ; traveled exten- sively in Italy, Egypt, Greece. Germany and England, 1890-92, and was a volunteer observer in the Royal observatory, Berlin, 1891. He or- ganized and had charge of the department of as- tronomy, and aided in the organization of the Yerkes observatory. University of Chicago, 1893-96 ; was astronomer of the Lowell observa- tory, located at the City of Mexico, and at Flag- staff, Ariz., in charge of the survey of south- ern heavens, 1896-98 ; lecturer before the Lowell Institute, Boston, 1899 ; in the latter year was ap- pointed by President McKinley, professor of mathematics, U.S.N. , and in December, 1899, as- sumed charge of the 26-inch telescope of the U.S. naval observatory. While at Flagstaff, Ariz., Professor See examined nearly 200,000 fixed stars in the zone between 15 and 65 degrees south declination, which led to the discovery of about 600 new double stars and to the remeasure- ment of some 1,400 double stars previously rec- ognized by Sir John Herschel and other ob- servers. He computed about 45 orbits of double stars, and became an authority on stellar as- tronomy. He was elected a fellow of the Royal Astronomical society ; a member of the Astrono- mische Gesellschaft ; the Deutsche Mathematiker- Vereinigung ; the Societe Mathematique de France ; and the more important American learned societies. He is the author of : Die EtitwicJcelung der Doppelstern Sysfeme (Berlin, 1898) ; Researches on the Evolution of the Stellar Systeins (vol. I, 1896) ; also double star catalogues, and about 150 contributions on as- tronomical subjects to technical journals and magazines.

SEELY, Henry B., naval oflScer, was born at Seneca Falls, N.Y., July 7, 1838. He was gradu- ated from the U.S. Naval academy in 1857 ; served on the Minnesota, East India squadron.