The Lost World of James Smithson; Science, Revolution, and the Birth of the Smithsonian

New York: Bloomsbury, 2007. First U. S. Edition [stated]. First printing [stated]. Hardcover. Very good/very good. xi, 432, [2] pages. Illustrated endpapers. Illustrations (some in color). Maps. Genealogy Chart. Notes. Index. James Smithson, MA, FRS (c. 1765 - 27 June 1829) was an English chemist and mineralogist. He was the founding donor of the Smithsonian Institution. Smithson was the illegitimate child of the 1st Duke of Northumberland, and was born secretly in Paris, on an unknown date, possibly in the Pentemont Abbey, as Jacques-Louis Macie (later altered to James Louis). Eventually, he was naturalized in England and attended university, studying chemistry and mineralogy at Pembroke College, Oxford. At the age of twenty-two, he changed his surname from Macie to Smithson, his father's pre-marriage surname. Smithson traveled extensively throughout Europe publishing papers about his findings. Considered a talented amateur in his field, Smithson maintained an inheritance he acquired from his mother and other relatives. Smithson never married and had no children; therefore, when he wrote his will, he left his estate to his nephew, or his nephew's family if his nephew died before Smithson. If his nephew was to die without heirs, however, Smithson's will stipulated that his estate be used "to found in Washington, under the name of the Smithsonian Institution, an establishment for the increase and diffusion of knowledge among men." In 1835, his nephew died and so could not claim to be the recipient of his estate; therefore, Smithson became the patron of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. despite having never visited the United States. Fascinating and magisterial, Ewing's biography presents a sweeping portrait of a remarkable man at the center of the English Enlightenment and the creation of America's greatest museum.