Benjamin Smith Lyman
| Benjamin Smith Lyman | |
|---|---|
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| Born | 11 December 1835 Northampton, Massachusetts, United States |
| Died | 30 August 1920 (aged 84) Cheltenham, Pennsylvania, United States |
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| Occupation | engineer, scientist |
| Known for | Foreign advisor to Meiji Japan |
Benjamin Smith Lyman (11 December 1835 – 30 August 1920) was an American mining engineer, surveyor, and an amateur linguist and anthropologist.
Benjamin Smith Lyman was born in Northampton, Massachusetts. He graduated from Harvard University in 1855. After working briefly as a school teacher, he worked as an assistant to his wife's uncle on a topographical and geological survey of Broad Top Mountain in Pennsylvania, which spurred his interest in geology and mining engineering. He studied for a year at the Ecole Imperiale des Mines in Paris (1859–60), then took a practical course at the Freiburg Mining Academy in Freiberg, Saxony (1861–62). Upon returning to the United States, Lyman opened an office as a consulting mining engineer in Philadelphia and worked on surveys from Pennsylvania to Nova Scotia, Arizona and California.
In 1870, Lyman surveyed oil fields in the Punjab region for the Public Works Department of the government of British India, during which he developed a lasting interest in the Far East.
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