- Benjamin Smith Lyman
Infobox Person
name = Benjamin Smith Lyman
caption =
birth_date =11 December 1835
birth_place =Northampton, Massachusetts ,United States
death_date =30 August 1920
death_place =Cheltenham, Pennsylvania United States
other_names =
known_for = Foreign advisor to MeijiJapan
occupation = engineer, scientist
nationality =United States Benjamin Smith Lyman (
11 December 1835 –30 August 1920 ) was an American mining engineer, surveyor and amateur linguist and anthopologist.Biography
Benjamin Smith Lyman was born in
Northampton, Massachusetts . He graduated fromHarvard University in 1855. After working briefly as a school teacher, he worked as an assistant to his uncle by marriage on a topographical and geological survey ofBroad Top Mountain inPennsylvania , which spurred his interest ingeology andmining engineering . He went for a year's study at theEcole Imperiale des Mines inParis (1859-60), followed by a practical course at theFreiburg Mining Academy inFreiberg ,Saxony (1861-62). Upon returning to the United States, Lyman opened an office as a consulting mining engineer inPhiladelphia and worked on surveys fromPennsylvania toNova Scotia ,Arizona andCalifornia .In 1870, Lyman surveyed oil fields in the Punjab for the Public Works Department of the government of
British India , and developed a lasting interest in theFar East .In 1872, Lyman was hired by the Japanese government to survey the
coal and oil deposits ofHokkaidō and along theSea of Japan coastline ofHonshu . His survey identified the most promising coal fields for Hokkaidō's eventually successfulcoal industry as well as reporting on progress in the reclamation of waste land, the nature of the soil in various districts; the customs, physique, and folklore of theAinu people ; useful ores and stones; the development of hydraulic power; importation of foreign capital; and the advantage of cooperation with foreign concerns in the mining industry. He stayed on in Japan from 1873-1879 as chief geologist and mining engineer to theMeiji government . While in Japan, he educated many Japanese in western techniques for natural resource surveys, and published the first geological map of Hokkaidō in 1876. Many of Lyman's Japanese assistants became proficient surveyors and some of them distinguished geologists, although his relations with the Hokkaidō Colonization Office were often strained. Before leaving Japan, he encouraged his assistants to form the Geological Society of Japan and to publish a journal. He donated his house to the new society for use as its headquarters.In his study of the
Japanese language , Lyman noticed that a necessary condition for the voicing (technically "rendaku") of the initial obstruent of the second word in a compound is that the word contain no voiced obstruent in a later syllable. (A sufficient condition for predicting "rendaku" is not known.) This constraint has come to be known as "Lyman's Law".After his return to the United States, Lyman returned to Northampton, and spent the next several years working on his reports, which he published at his own expense. He attended meetings of technical and scientific societies as well as the Oriental Club of Philadelphia, and held a reception each year on the birthday of the Emperor of Japan. Although he officially retired in 1895, Lyman made a journey to survey the coal lands near
Mount Lantauan onCebu in thePhilippines , for aNew York company building arailroad there in 1906-07. On the way, he visited his former assistants in Japan. He hoped to re-visit Japan on his return trip, but was prevented by a long bout withdysentery .Lyman, a
vegetarian for most of his life, published a scholarly cookbook of vegetarian recipes in 1917 at the age of 81. He diedAugust 30 ,1920 , aged 84, inCheltenham, Pennsylvania .Many of his personal journals, books, maps and papers are preserved at the “Benjamin Smith Lyman Collection” at the
University of Massachusetts at Amherst.Partial listing of works
* 1868 -- "Telescopic Measurement in Surveying"
* 1873 -- "Topography of the Punjab Oil region"
* 1874 -- "Preliminary Report on the First Season's Work on the Geological Survey of Yesso"
* 1877 -- "A General Report on the Geology of Yesso"
* 1877 -- "Geological Survey of the Oil Lands of Japan" "General Report on the Punjab Oil Lands"
* 1878 -- "Notes on Japanese Grammar"
* 1879 -- [http://books.google.com/books?id=RIARAAAAIAAJ&dq=Iwami+Ginzan+silver+mine&client=firefox-a&source=gbs_summary_s&cad=0 "Geological Survey of Japan: Reports of Progress for 1878 and 1879."] Tookei: Public Works Department. [http://www.worldcat.org/wcpa/oclc/13342563 OCLC: 13342563]
* 1892 -- "Japanese Swords"
* 1893 -- "The Great Mesozoic Fault in New Jersey"
* 1894 -- "Change from surd to sonant in Japanese compounds"
* 1894 -- "Age of Newark Brownstone"
* 1894 -- "Some New Red Horizons"
* 1897 -- "Against Adopting the Metric System"
* 1900 -- "Movements of Ground Water"
* 1902 -- "The Original Southern Limit of Pennsylvania Anthracite Beds"
* 1904 -- "Some Hindoo Marriage Ceremonies"
* 1907 -- "The Philippines"
* 1909 -- "Need of Instrument Surveying in Practical Geology"
* 1912 -- "Natural History Morality"
* 1915 -- "A Practical Rational Alphabet"
* 1916 -- "Natural Morality"
* 1917 -- "Vegetarian Diet and Dishes"External links
* [http://www.library.umass.edu/subject/easian/lyman.htm Lyman Collection at University of Massachusetts ]
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